The reception of anthropological work in sociology journals, 1922-1951

The gradual disenchantment of American sociologists with the validity of ethnographic reports is examined by tracing the reception of anthropological work from 1922-1951 in three leading sociological journals: The American Journal of Sociology, The American Sociological Review, and Social Forces. Although prominent American sociologists initially welcomed Boasian syntheses of Native American and of exotic foreign cultures in the 1920s and 1930s, by the 1940s they began to wonder if the earlier assertions of cultural anthropologists about these exotic cultures were as shakily based as were their later assertions about cultural patterns in the United States.