Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2725

Letter from Spencer MacCallum, Room 229, 1101 Campus Parkway, Seattle 5, Washington

November 6, 1957

 

 

Hi Popdaddy:

 

I’ve been putting off writing you until I could write a regular “letter”; but now I’m not going to wait any longer and I’ll just send this note.

     Enclosed is a copy of a paper I wrote last month for a seminar. Corpy read it too, and the marks in the margin on this copy are his; I thought you’d like to see the kinds of things he marked. The paper was very successful, so I’m starting off on the right foot!

     You’ll notice that the paper doesn’t go very far in the direction of CMA — but I didn’t mean it to. I want to become a good anthropologist first — in the conventional sense. And there’s a lot that’s sound in conven­tional anthropology! Everything about kinship, village community, development of property, can be groundwork on which to build later on.

     On page 20, you’ll see a new thought about the possible causes for the transition from village community to political organization that we didn’t get in CMA. It’s an interesting thought, and maybe we’ll get it into one of the new editions.

     A new development out here of the last couple of years has been a growing cooperation between the sociolo­gists and the anthropologists. I understand that as recently as five years ago, there was an atmosphere of aloofness, if not hostility. The sociologists are recognizing the need to understand the foundations and beginnings of society, and the anthropologists are recognizing the inadequacy of studying just the primitives. Some anthropologists are making analyses of some U.S. and Canadian communities after the pattern of their studies of aboriginal communities in Australia and such places. So far, they are limiting these analyses to small towns — which show the most resemblance to the primitive communities they are familiar with. I^’ve been thinking that perhaps I could make such a socio-anthropological analysis in a couple of years from now, of a modern hotel as a community and after establishing the analogy (or homology), show the differences and bring out the implications of corporate organization. If it were done right, I think this could be very acceptable as an academic paper, and be thought of as something decidedly new but not necessarily as radical. Well, we’ll see.

     In line with the changes that are taking place in anthropology, some of the graduate students the other night over coffee were rebelling against the exclusively data-gather­ing approach of anthropology in the past and saying that the time must be here, or very rapidly approaching, when we can begin looking for generalizations and laws in society — when we can begin using the data we have collected.  These were older students, some of whom have been out working in the field, and they had been talking about the tremendous advances anthropology has made just since the War in gathering informa­tion.

     I haven^’t said anything about proprietary adminis­tration — there hasn’t been any time to anyhow. But I have donated a copy of CMA to the Library, and the jacket may be displayed in a general reading room.

     Also, I’ve corrected a considerable oversight on our part. I checked at a local book store and discovered that CMA is not listed in the standard reference lists of published books. This means that bookstores cannot find out where to order copies of CMA unless they get the information from a library. Checking the library here, I found that this is difficult unless the library is large enough to have a Union Catalogue of the Library of Congress. HOWEVER, this is corrected now. I’ve written CUMULATIVE BOOK INDEX and have heard from them, and have listed CMA (with Bookmailer as the distri­butor) in their next volume. I also wrote and am expecting to hear from BOOKS IN PRINT and PUBLISHERS’ TRADE LIST ANNUAL, both published by Bowker Company. These should complete it.

     Please send me some more sets of quotations about the book. And what’s been happening this fall? What mail, and what have you seen of Dr. Harper and FEE? Any reviews appearing anywhere yet?

     Oh, I forgot to say above, when I was talking about anthropology, that I’ve found a successor for Sir Henry Maine! — an English anthropologist (who died last year!): his name is A.R. Radcliffe-Brown. His studies don’t go beyond the primitive community, so he didn’t see contract as the relationship setting off Western society from kinship and political organization. But his background was both law and science, and his generaliza­tions about primitive institutions, and his prognosis of an objective science of society are a joy to read. He was a pro­fessor at Oxford. I think his studies are going to be one of the big influences in anthropology in the next ten and twenty years, now that the reaction is beginning to come about in anthropology against the “particularistic”, or “rags and patches” approach to society as a hodge-podge of “culture traits”. Some considerable attention is being given him this year in one of the courses here — for the first time, I believe.

     Did you get the book by Seebohm on early English communities that I sent you? Keep track of it, because I’m having to renew it each two weeks at the library here.

     Popdaddy, you’ve launched Proprietary Administra­tion, and it’s got a good tight hull. It’s structurally sound and will keep afloat, and sooner or later someone is going to put a good strong engine in it. Enough people have the book and are interested in it for one reason or another that it will be talked about and will circulate for a long time to come. And in the meantime, we have sufficient good endorsements of it that we can command the attention of almost anyone we might want to.

     I’m saying this, because I’d hate to see the promotion, or even the improvement of CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR taking up very much of your time. I’d like to see anything more you do in that direction; but the direction, at least, is clearly laid out. Now what I’d really like to see you work up is a clear science of physics. I’ve been worrying some lest the advertising of CMA cut into your time and attention.

     I’d personally like to work with you on the religious-esthetic side, the deadline for that being 1960 — the Bross Foundation Award. And I’d love nothing better than to read chapters of that as you write them and send them out here to me. But the deadline for that is two years away. Maybe you could put some summers or odd times in on that.  What I’d really like to see you work up is your physics.

     What I’m trying to say is that socionomy is done now; it’s well presented, and I’d like to see you go on to develop religion and physics, leaving socionomy behind pretty much as a closed chapter.  Regarding the religion, I’d like to work up something with you for the Bross Competition in 1960. But between these two, religion and physics, I’d like to see you give precedence to the physics.

     Well, those are just my ideas about it. It lets you know how I’m thinking.

     I’d better pull this out of the typewriter and send it on to you. If I’d known how long this was going to be, I’d probably be putting it off still!

     Let me know how things are going.

So long,

 

 

A final correction on my address: they’ve asked us to use the Room Number as well. So it now stands officially:

Room 229

1101 Campus Parkway

Seattle 5, Washington