The book analyzes the theoretical origins, the formation of organizational foundations and the development of various methodological areas of British social anthropology, a scientific discipline that has had a significant impact on the development of world social and humanitarian knowledge. It traces the ideological trends of European intellectual culture of the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. (ideas of M. J. Condorcet, C.-L. Montesquieu, A. Ferguson, O. Comte, G. Spencer, etc.), which became the prerequisite for the new science. The scientific activity of the founders of British social anthropology, standing on the position of evolutionism, is examined - E. B. Tylor, W. Robertson Smith, G. Main, J. J. Fraser; diffusionism - W. Rivers, G. Eliot Smith, W. Perry; structural-functional approach - B. K. Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, as well as scientists who determined the theoretical appearance of British social anthropology in the second half of the 20th century. – E. Evans-Pritchard, R. Fers, M. Fortes, M. Gluckman, E. Leach, W. Turner, M. Douglas and others. The book is intended for teachers and students - ethnologists, sociologists, historians, cultural scientists, philosophers and etc., as well as for everyone who is interested in the development of theoretical thought in the field of knowledge of society, culture and man.