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Anthropological Theories
I. Unilineal evolution (1850s –1900s)
It was thought that cultures/societies evolve in a single direction toward complexity, progress, and civilization.
A. Sir Edward Tylor (1832 – 1917) English. Defined the concept of culture in 1871. He repudiated the idea of cultural evolution’s correlation with race or with the innate superiority of any population.
B. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818 – 1881) American.
Published the first complete field report on a Native American tribe, the Iroquois, in 1851.
Both men held ethnocentric views typical of their time period. Morgan’s theory: society evolves through progressive stages of cultural evolution as follows: Savagery à Barbarism à Civilization. The categories were based on increasingly complex technological sophistication, and each stage also included specific cultural patterns.
Tylor and Morgan’s ethnocentrism masks their positive contributions, especially the concept that people, regardless of technological achievements, are essentially equal in their innate abilities.
II. Diffusionism (Early 20th century)
This school of thought maintains that cultural change occurs when societies “borrow”
cultural traits from one another.
A. The early, British form was not only ethnocentric but also incorrect. It essentially held that there was one center of culture – Egypt. Everything had diffused, or spread, from Egypt to other human groups.
Egypt à Greece à Rome à Europe
B. Today the concept of cultural diffusion is very important, and explains how modernism has diffused into less complex cultures around the world.
Example: The Netsilik Eskimo now use snowmobiles and live in houses made from modern building materials.
III. Historical Particularism (Early 1900s)
A uniquely American response to unilineal evolution and primarily associated with Franz Boas (1858 – 1942).
A. Emphasis on fieldwork
B. Inductively focused: collect data first, before formulating theories
C. Cultural relativism emerges. It is necessary to understand a culture within the
context of its cultural system.
D. Holistic à look at all aspects of a culture and the interrelationships.
E. Rejected generalizations about cultures à Boas emphasized that intensive study of a particular society and its history was necessary to understand and explain it.
F. Instituted participant observation method as a basic research strategy of ethnographic fieldwork.
G. Practiced salvage ethnography. Boas believed that Native American cultures could die out through forced assimilation. He studied the Kwakiutl.
H. Boas was very influential throughout the 1st half of the 20th century. He trained generations of anthropologists and encouraged them to learn the languages of the people studied. He trained Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, psychological anthropologists, who were prominent in culture and personality theory in American anthropology.
IV. British Functionalism
Society consists of institutions (or structures, systems) that serve vital purposes for people. Functionalists are not interested in the evolution of societies, but the relationship among different systems, or structures, and how these structures serve society or the individual.
A. Structural functionalism – A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
Fieldwork done in Africa and the Andaman Islands in SE Asia. He focused on how various societal structures function to maintain harmony in the society.
1. Economic, social, political, and religious institutions (or systems) serve to integrate the society as a whole; they function to perpetuate the survival of the society > to maintain the social structure & promote stability.
2. Anthropology should not focus on individual actions, but should see beyond them to the governing structures. Societal norms (which guide behavior) are the window into those structures; they function to reduce tension & conflict, promote stability, and thus uphold the social structure.
B. Psychological Functionalism – Bronislaw Malinowski
1. Focused on how all elements of a society function to meet the needs of the individual. Identified three basic types of needs: biological (food, sex); instrumental (protection, education, social control) and integrative (a common worldview).
2. People developed institutions (or patterned ways of behaving) - law,
religion, kinship systems - to meet those needs. For example, individuals
use cultural patterns to meet needs: use magic in situations where
humans have no control over circumstances à weather, illness, death.
3. Considered the father of modern ethnography, Malinowski studied for 3
years in the Trobriand Islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea during
World War I.
V. Psychological Anthropology (1920s to present)
Culture-and-personality theories; these theorists assume all members of a given society share the same cultural knowledge.
A. Ruth Benedict
Studies included Native American societies especially Kwakiutl and Zuni. She labeled cultures according to personality types in Patterns of Culture (1934), either Apollonian (Zuni) or Dionysian (Kwakiutl).
B. Margaret Mead
1. Studies included isolated, small-scale cultures in the Pacific Islands (especially Samoa), but also addressed issues of concern to U.S. societies (adolescence, child care, child-rearing practices, male-female relationships). Wrote Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) in which she concluded that cultural conditions caused adolescence to be a time of stress and strain.
2. Very influential in the culture-and-personality area. Focused much of her work on parent-child relationships and thought the type of child-rearing practices translated into societal types. If the parent-child relationships are harmonious & peaceful, then society is harmonious and peaceful.
V. Cultural Ecology (1950s)
Primarily associated with Julian Steward
1. Stressed the importance of the environment and environmental adaptations à that led to change. Cultural ecology stresses the interrelationship among the natural conditions in the environment (rainfall, temperature, soils, etc.) and technology, social organization, and attitudes within a particular culture.
2. Focused on how specific sociocultural systems adapt to environmental conditions. Believes that explains how cultures change. Devised classification system of cultures (including idea of evolution from one stage to the next) as follows: bands à tribes à chiefdoms à states
3. Examples: China, Mesoamerica, Egypt – societies which practiced irrigation farming and had other similar cultural features; these areas had similar environmental conditions such as river valleys and alluvial plains, thus opportunities for emergence of agricultural civilizations
4. Steward instituted “multilineal evolution” (neoevolution) – a focus on development of individual cultures without expecting them all to follow the same trajectory of development.
VI. Cultural Materialism – Marvin Harris (1960s, ‘70s, & beyond)
A. Focuses on the following as key determinants in sociocultural evolution:
Technology Environment Energy Food Economy
B. Harris believes that material needs (food, technology, clothing, shelter) are
more important than abstract (values, ideas, religion) in determining cultural
behavior.
C. Examples: (Much criticism of this model.)
1. Aztec human sacrifice and cannibalism
To the Aztecs: a religious ritual; Harris: protein deficiency à craving for meat. Insufficient protein in the Aztec environment à need for protein à human sacrifice & cannibalism
D. Strength of model: encourages collection of empirical data to test ideas.
VII. Behavioral Ecology/Evolutionary Ecology – derived from Sociobiology
(1970s, 1980s, & beyond)
Basic premise: biological evolutionary principles - natural selection–can apply to social behavior
A. The reproductive success of the individual is the overall goal of behavior: the survival and perpetuation of one’s own genes.
B. Has been severely criticized. Response: genes do not determine behavior, but actions which contribute to reproductive success may have evolutionary significance.
IX. French Structuralism (approximately 1960s & ‘70s)
Strong focus on myth, ritual, and symbol
A. Claude Levi-Strauss
1. A more psychological or cognitive approach. Focuses on identifying how
the structure of the mind organizes ideas, symbols, and myths into patterns.
2. Basic tenet: the human mind thinks in binary opposites: hot-cold, male-
female, old-young, night-day, right-left, us-them. These dichotomies give
shape to culture.
X. Interpretive/Symbolic Anthropology(1970s & beyond)
Clifford Geertz (major example)
A. This is the opposite of cultural materialism. The focus is on nonmaterial aspects of culture such as symbols, values, worldviews, beliefs, motivations, ideas, perceptions, and thoughts à Geertz : “the imaginative make-up of a society.” Cultural symbols may be completely separate from material factors; concerned with the understanding or interpreting cultural symbolism.
B. Cannot explain human behavior by the scientific method – focus is more
inductive. Avoids hypothesis testing.
C. The goal is to interpret the meaning of symbols within the worldview of a particular society. Question for anthropologists: How do symbols help people produce meaning for themselves? (ex: A particular hairstyle may become a symbolic metaphor, communicating messages within the culture.)