During the first half of the twentieth century, the efforts made by the founding fathers of French anthropology aimed at organizing and rationalizing the scientific labor division system, by separating and coordinating academic scientists from voluntary ethnographers. This whole system is very different from the romantic, and more common, view of the isolated anthropologist, an image that corresponds to the British case. In Britain, efforts were made for the scientist to be in the field; "professionalization" was simultaneous to the exclusion of all "amateurs," the latter being left to an obsolete state of investigative activity. The labor division model, dominant in France, required that "a huge mass os collaborators" be recruited, and it also favored the founding of a network that put the anthropology professionals in a disciplinary relation to all colonial assistance.
field work; history of anthropology; intellectual labor division; professionalization