The community test tube of American civilization: Burt and Ethel Aginsky’s Social Science Field Laboratory, 1939–47

Abstract

The Social Science Field Laboratory (SSFL, 1939–47), a field school in the Ukiah Valley that trained students in social scientific and anthropological methodology, sheds light on a period in anthropology when methods were shifting from objective empiricism to meaningful participation. As analytic tools for framing the study of society failed to keep pace with social change, sociopolitical trends inside and outside anthropology situated a valley in northern California as the opportune place to gather a sample of ‘American history in vitro’. Founded by Columbia-trained anthropologists Burt and Ethel Aginsky, the SSFL responded to trends inside and outside anthropology. As the Great Depression directed anthropologists’ attention to the study of practical, modern problems in complex American communities—such as race relations, immigration, modernization, and urbanization—funding agencies strengthened the relations between sociology and anthropology and encouraged the development of interdisciplinary approaches. The Aginskys conceived of the Ukiah Valley as a ‘community test-tube of American civilization’, where scientists from all disciplines ‘can come for a convenient sample of the United States, past and present’. In teaching students how to collect data in the field, the Aginskys pierced the widely held notion that ethnographic technique cannot be taught but must be experienced by the lone individual in the field.