German Anthropology Between Primitivism and Cosmopolitanism: Richard Thurnwald and the Theory of the Gift

The theory of the gift emerged in the early twentieth century as a definition of both “primitive” and modern society.  While primarily associated today with Marcel Mauss’s great essay, The Gift (1925), the definition of gift exchange as a fundamental social institution was the outcome of cosmopolitan cooperation between anthropologists of different countries.  One of the most visible anthropologists in this international discussion was Richard Thurnwald, who was widely admired in the United States during the 1920s and early 1930s but later compromised his reputation through his collaboration with the Nazi regime.

Thurnwald made his international reputation with his monograph on the Banaros (English 1916, German 1921), a “tribe” or traditional community on the Sepik River in New Guinea.   Thurnwald was supposed to collect artifacts and explore the little-known area, but he was determined to turn his work in a more theoretical direction.  His monograph on the Banaros was a rigorously functionalist analysis of marital exchanges among the Banaros.  It also challenged his contemporaries’ belief that without a state, traditional communities could not have a center of authority; he located power among the Banaros in the moral authority of the male elders but also noted the relative autonomy of women.  His preoccupation with power had subtle links to his right-wing politics, yet it was appropriated by Mauss to serve the Social Democratic ends of his celebrated 1925 essay, The Gift.   Thurnwald’s work on the Banaros illustrates the cosmopolitanism of interwar anthropology and its efforts through international exchange of ideas to define the “primitive.”