BATESON CENTENNIAL AAA Annual Meeting 2004 SESSION ABSTRACTS Presidential Session

Much of Gregory Bateson's work was misunderstood or unappreciated during his lifetime because it challenged people to think in new ways and defied disciplinary compartments. Textbook anthropology has tended to slot him into ‘functionalism’ or ‘culture and personality studies,' which is far too narrow an assessment of his contribution. Many of his ideas were in fields that were widely separated during his lifetime, anthropology, psychotherapy, the sociology of small group interaction, communication studies, education, general systems theory, developmental biology and ecology. Today, many of his ideas in these fields are more accessible than they were at the time of his death twenty years ago. Taken together, and situated within the overall thread of Bateson's discourse on ‘mind', and ‘pattern' they are remarkably prescient; this is why a Bateson quotation elegantly capturing the contours of a new idea is to be found in so many books. Bateson made streams of ideas flow together, and in this confluence he developed a rigorous understanding of holism, systemic wisdom as he sometimes referred to it, both within and beyond culture.