Download Nineteenth-Century Evolutionism

Nineteenth-Century Evolutionism
Study Guide
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IV.
Antecedents of Anthropology
a. Two streams of thought
i. Cultural differences among societies
ii. Biological origins of humans
b. Forerunners of Ethnography
i. Herodotus
ii. Ibn Khaldun
c. European writings about “exotic” peoples encountered by travelers
i. Marco Polo
d. Questions raised
i. Were they human?
ii. Did they have free will/morality or were they part of “brute natural
law”?
iii. How to explain social differences?
Early answers
a. Degenerationism
b. Progressivism
i. Goals
Foundations of Biological-Evolutionary Thought
a. Linnaeus
b. Leclerc
c. Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin
d. Charles Darwin
i. Adaptation
ii. Natural selection
Unilineal Evolution
a. Key Themes
i. All societies lead through same stages, progressing towards
civilization, with Victorian society as most-evolved example
ii. Comparative method
b. Main Theorists
i. Herbert Spencer
1. General evolution
2. Simple to complex
3. Organic analogy (“a growth and not a manufacture”)
4. Definition of “primitive societies”
5. Social Darwinism
6. “The Social Organism”
ii. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881)
1. Unilineal evolution
2. Focus on family (kinship) and subsistence (property)
patterns
V.
3. 3 grand stages
4. mechanism of change
5. “Ethnical Periods”
iii. Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917)
1. Unilineal evolution through clear, natural Laws
2. “Survivals”
3. Evolution of religion
4. Psychic unity
5. “The Science of Culture”
a. definition of culture
b. stages of culture
c. methods
d. political implications
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
a. Materialist philosophy
b. History as sequence of evolutionary stages
c. Modes of production
d. Conflict as mechanism
e. Link with Morgan