Download A Brief History of Anthropology

A Brief History of
Anthropology
BEFORE
SOCIAL/CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
The Crystal Palace, Hyde Park, London,
1st May to 15th October 1851.
Over 13,000 exhibits were displayed and viewed by over 6,200,000
visitors to the exhibition the Great Exhibition of 1851. Visitors
marveled at the industrial revolution that was propelling Britain into
the greatest power of the time.
1850 inventions/discoveries
•first cast iron bridge
•2nd law of thermodynamics
•first submarine
formulated
•First electronic (telegraphic)
•theory of primary numbers
transmission of an image (FAX)
formulated
•measurement of speed of light to •speed
of
nervous
impulses
within 1% of true speed
determined
•Theory of continental drift first
•refrigeration to -30C
proposed
•first cast iron railway bridge
•first delivery of piped water
•first submarine telegraph cable
under pressure
•first flash photograph
•first description of ion exchange •first typewriter with a ribbon and
•first use of a thermometer to
keyboard
measure a patients temperature
•first daily weather maps (in USA)
•discovery that anthrax caused by •first rubber hoses
a bacterium
•steam hammer invented
•first public health organization
•first photographic paper (replacing
(in USA)
“anthropology is that great science which is now
engrossing the attention of all thinking men and
women' (anon. Anthropological Review 1868).
`at no previous time has the mind of thinking
men been fixed on the subject of human origin,
so generally, so intently, so discordantly, and, on
the whole, so rationally as now' (anon.
Anthropological Review 1869: 4).
To the Victorian
mind it was far
better to be
civilized than to be
a “savage”
Three Problems
1.Degenerationism Versus Progress
“We have no reason to believe any community ever
did, or ever can, emerge, unassisted by external helps
from a state of utter barbarism into anything that
can be called civilisation. Man has not emerged from
the savage state; the progress of any community in
civilisation, by its own internal means, must always
have begun from a condition removed from that of
complete barbarism, out of which it does not appear
that men ever did or can raise themselves.”
Richard Whately, the Archbishop of Dublin, On the Origin of
Civilization (1857)
2.Monogenism Versus Polygenism
3.Diffusion vs. Independent
Invention
Edward
Gibbon
(1737-94)
Based on an intricate correlation
of Middle Eastern and
Mediterranean histories and Holy
scriptures, he established the first
day of creation as Sunday 23
October 4004 BC.
James Ussher (1581-1656),
Archbishop of Armagh,
Primate of All Ireland
This date was incorporated into
an authorized version of the Bible
printed in 1701, and came to be
regarded with almost as much
unquestioning reverence as the
Bible itself.
Dr. John Lightfoot (1602-1675)
Vice-Chancellor of the University
of Cambridge refined the date to
October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine
o'clock in the morning
“the
low [i.e. recent] antiquity of our
species is not controverted by any
experienced geologist. It is never
pretended that our race co-existed with
assemblages of animals and plants of
which all or even a large proportion of
species are extinct” (Lyell 1837: 249;
emphasis original).
Anthropology: A Branch of History
`the history, not of tribes or nations, but of the
condition of knowledge, religion, art, custom, and the
like among them' (Tylor 1871 I: 5).
"no conception can be understood except through its
history is a maxim which all ethnographers may adopt
as a standing rule". (Tylor 1871).
`the past is continuously needed to explain the present
and the whole to explain the part' (Tylor 1865: 2).
`there seems no human thought so primitive as to have
lost its bearing on our own thought, nor so ancient as
to have broken its connection with our own life' (Tylor
1871).
Australia
The Savage Becomes
the Primitive
Making Stone Tools New Guinea
`the master-key to the
investigation of man's
primeval condition is
held by Prehistoric
Archaeology.
This key is the evidence of the Stone Age, proving that
men of remotely ancient ages were in the savage state'
(Tylor 1871 I: 58).
E. B. Tylor
1832-1917
“Looking over a collection of their [quaternary
man's] implements and weapons on a museum
shelf we may fairly judge by analogy that in
their moral habits, as in their material arts,
they had much in common with the rudest
savages of modern times, users like them of
chipped stone and flint.” (Tylor 1873a: 702)
“The condition of savage and barbarous
tribes often more or less fairly represent
stages of culture through which our own
ancestors passed long ago' (Tylor 1871)
Central tenet
By comparing the various stages of civilization among
races known to history, with the aid of archaeological
inference from the remains of prehistoric tribes, it
seems possible to judge in a rough way of an early
general condition of man, which from our point of
view is to be regarded as primitive condition…This
hypothetical primitive condition corresponds in a
considerable degree to that of modern savage tribes,
who in spite of their difference and distance, have in
common certain elements of civilization, which seem
remains of an early state of the human race at large.”
p. 21
universal sequence
of “stages” through
which it was
hypothesized all
societies will sooner
or later pass unless
their development is
arrested by some
exogenous
circumstance
(extinction, conquest,
absorption by
another society or
achieving a perfect
equilibrium with the
environment)
CIVILIZATION:
Writing, urban life;
flowering of arts,
architecture
BARBARISM:
settled life; markets,
rise of chiefs and kings,
agriculture, arts develop
SAVAGERY:
hunting
and gathering; no surplus
production; no permanent
cohesive unit wider than
band, stone tools
Uniformitarian principle
The same kind of development in culture which has gone on
inside our range of knowledge has also gone on outside it, its
course of proceeding being unaffected by our having or not
having reporters present. If any one holds that human thought
and action were worked out in primæval times according to
laws essentially other than those of the modern world, it is for
him to prove by valid evidence this anomalous state of things,
otherwise the doctrine of permanent principle will hold good,
as in astronomy or geology. That the tendency of culture has
been similar throughout the existence of human society, and
that we may fairly judge from its known historic course what
its prehistoric course may have been, is a theory clearly
entitled to precedence as a fundamental principle of
ethnographic research. (1871a I: 32-33)
The phenomena of Culture may be classified and
arranged, stage by stage, in a probable order of evolution”
p. 6
Hand Gonne
c.1400
Matchlock
1400-1700
Wheellock 15001820
Flintlock 16081865
UNIFORMITY OF STAGES
A present day society in
the stage of Barbarism
(e.g. Hawai’i or Samoa)
could shed light on the
distant past when
northern European
society was in the stage
of Barbarism
just as an Australian
Aboriginal society could
inform Europeans of
their history in the stage
of Savagery
Hawai’i
Australian
Aborigines
Europeans
Survivals
“Among evidence aiding us to trace the course which the
civilization of the world has actually followed, is that great
class of facts to denote which I have found it convenient to
introduce the term”Survivals”. These are processes,
customs, opinions, and so forth which have been carried
on by force of habit into a new state of society different
from that in which they had their original home, and they
thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition
of culture out of which a newer has evolved…. Such
examples lead us back to the habits of hundreds and even
thousands of years ago, p. 16.
“games, popular sayings, customs, superstitions, and the
like”.
Maypole Dancing
Outskirts of London, 1891
John Ferguson McLennan, (1827-81)
1865 Primitive Marriage: An Enquiry into the Origin of the
Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies
first stage was a time of
sexual promiscuity
Female infanticide led to a
shortage of women, who had
to be shared in a polyandrous
matriarchal situation
Because men don’t like to
share wives they captured
them from neighbors
(exogamy) – patriarchy and
monogamy
Lewis Henry Morgan
(1818 – 1881)
1851 League of the Iroquois
1871 Systems of
Consanguinity and Affinity
1877 Ancient Society
Assumptions of Nineteenth Century
Evolutionism
1. Like the natural world the cultural world is
governed by laws that science can discover.
2. These laws operated on the distant past as they
do on the present. - Uniformitariamism
3. The present grows out of the past by a
continuous process - developmentalism
4. This growth is simple to complex.
5. All humans share a single psychic nature.
6. The moving force of cultural development is
interaction with the environment.
Assumptions of Nineteenth Century Evolutionism
Continued
7. Different development is due to different environments.
8. These differences can be measured.
9. In these terms cultures can be ordered in a hierarchical
manner.
10. Certain contemporary cultures are like earlier stages.
11. In the absence of data these stages can be reconstructed
by the comparative method.
12. The results of the comparative method can be
confirmed by the study of survivals.
What was wrong with evolutionism?
EVOLUTION VS. DIFFUSION
EVOLUTION = the directional nature of the pattern of change of
human societies and cultures over time — in the direction of
increasing complexity, internal integration, and control over
Nature
DIFFUSION = the movement of cultural phenomena (inventions,
objects, ideas, or even whole cultures) in space, from one place to
another
DIFFUSIONISM: a conception of human cultural development
which sees diffusion as a more common source of evolutionary
change in societies than independent evolution — that is, the
forces that lead to change are more commonly external rather
than internal
The criticism of the Diffusionists vis-à-vis the Evolutionists
was not that social evolution did not occur…
They believed it did — but not nearly so regularly as the
Evolutionists believed
Most human history, they believed, was shaped by
 diffusion
 borrowing
 migration
Important advances (agriculture, animal domestication,
metallurgy, state organization) were not invented multiple
times in different places — they were typically invented
once, then widely diffused
The Spread of Agriculture in Europe
Diffusionists’ take on human nature quite
different from the Evolutionists’:
• Evolutionists saw humans as inventive,
opportunistic, questing, possessing a
“psychic unity” which made disparate
groups equally likely to invent
• Diffusionists saw humans as much more
conservative…
 clinging to old cultural patterns and
with a bias against accepting new
patterns…
 and, when they did change, more
inclined to borrow than to invent
EXAMPLE: EAST AFRICAN CATTLE COMPLEX
A typical diffusionist culture complex:
• an item of technology which
diffused into Africa from the Middle
East circa 1100 CE — husbandry of
dairy cattle
• first appears in Horn and Eastern
Sudan, then diffuses progressively
southward to the Cape (with
exception of zone or tse tse fly
infestation in Central Africa)
• everywhere social values become
oriented to and expressed in terms
of cattle (wealth, power, beauty, and
even God)
• “cattle complex” cultures share a
broad similarity of economic
structure, social organization and
values
THE SEVEN CULTURE CIRCLES
4
2 1
5 3
6
7
In the Vienna School view, the human race had originated in Asia,
and the earth settled by processes of migration, which could be
traced thanks to the great conservatism of the “culture circles”,
which retained their basic patterns despite subsequent borrowing
THE BRITISH DIFFUSIONISTS
Finally, the diffusionist idea was taken
up in England by a pair of Cambridge
professors:
GRAFTON ELLIOT SMITH
WILLIAM J. PERRY
Smith and Perry carried the diffusionist
idea to its ultimate conclusion — all
cultural advancement came from one
single source, the ancient Egyptians, who
made the great leap forward to
civilization, and who (through migration
and borrowing) diffused it throughout the
world
GRAFTON ELLIOT SMITH
1871-1937
The Growth of Fieldwork
3 Impetuses
1. Increasing knowledge of other cultures
2. dissatisfaction with the quality and
quantity of much of the data contained in
the ethnological writings
3. the belief that the `savage' tribes in their
`natural' state were rapidly disappearing in
the face of contact with the more civilized
nations
Increasing knowledge of other cultures
 Explorers and travellers were replaced by
government officials and missionaries who formed a
closer association with the people they were in
contact with.
 Appearance of Literary journals such as
•The Fortnightly Review (1865-1934),
•The Nineteenth Century (1877),
•The Academy (1871)
•The Contemporary Review (1866- )
 First Monographs
Eg. The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), B.
Spencer and F. Gillen's
 Questionnaires
Notes and Queries on
Anthropology 1874
Purpose: `to promote accurate
anthropological observation on the part
of travellers, and to enable those who are
not anthropologists to supply the
information, which is needed for the
scientific study of anthropology at home'
(BAAS 1874: vii).
Fear that primitive tribes were rapidly disappearing
`In view of the fast vanishing "primitive" cultures, and the
rapid extinction of some of the more primitive and
ethnologically interesting races the importance of such
efforts to secure information ere it is too late cannot be
over-estimated' (Balfour 1905: 15).
Alfred Court Hadddon (1855-1940)
W H R Rivers 1864-1922
1898 Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits
Survey Versus Intensive Fieldwork
A typical piece of intensive work is one in which the worker
lives for a year or more among a community of perhaps
four or five hundred people and studies every detail of their
life and culture; in which he comes to know every member
of the community personally; in which he is not content
with generalized information, but studies every feature of
life and custom in concrete detail and by means of the
vernacular language. It is only by such work that one can
fully realise the immense extent of the knowledge which is
now awaiting the inquirer, even in places where the culture
has already suffered much change. It is only by such work
that it is possible to discover the incomplete and even
misleading character of much of the vast mass of survey
work which forms the existing basis of anthropology”
Rivers 1913
Still Evolutionary Theory
 Rivers’
“the goal of anthropology is the
reconstruction of the history of `primitive' peoples
 Balfour “the ethnographer's purpose
determine their `place in time' (1905: 18)
is
to
 Haddon's aim “to elucidate the `nature, origin and
distribution of the races and peoples of a limited
ethnological area and to define their place in the
evolutionary tree‘
Two things were absent from fieldwork at this time
1. participation
 `at Bendiyagalge we were particularly well situated to
observe their behaviour, our camp being out of sight of
the Vedda camp but within two hundred yards of it, here
we could listen to their unrestrained chatter and
laughter' (Seligman and Seligman The Vedda 1911: 85).
 Most ethnographers at this time also relied heavily on
translators
2. sociological theory
Emile Durkheim
(1858-1917).
What is a Social Fact?
“A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or
not, capable of exercising on the individual
an external constraint; or again, every way
of acting which is general throughout a
given society, while at the same time existing
in its own right independent of its individual
manifestations”
Social Facts Characteristics
External to the Individual
• found ready-made at birth
• Objective
Leaned
•Relative
Endowed with coercive power
A new variety of phenomena
•source is not the individual but in society a
collective phenomenon
Rules of the Sociological Method
Society is part of nature and a science of society must be
based on the same principles as those of the natural
sciences
 Social facts must be treated as things I.e. objectively
The properties of the totality cannot be deduced from
those of the individuals who combine to form it. Rejection
of “methodological individualism”
Social facts have to be explained in terms of their
function
Functional Explanation
Functional
function of a social item refers to its correspondence with “the
general needs of the social organism not the individual
Function must be clearly distinguished from intention or purpose
The root idea in functionalism:
 Human societies consist of a number of institutions
which
over time achieve a harmonious “fit” to one
another
 integration
serve adaptive ends — i.e. contribute to the
survival of the overall society
 function
do not just reflect universal human nature, but
shape it in distinctive ways
 determinism
Functionalist view of a society (1)
INSTITUTIONS
SOCIETY
PERSON
• A society consists of a distinct set of institutions
which introject distinctive motivations into its
members from earliest childhood
Functionalist view of a society (2)
• Different institutions produce different persons
with different motivations
Functionalism in a Nutshell
how does a social phenomenon
contribute to the survival of the
society as a whole
BRONISŁAW MALINOWSKI
1884
1942
Trobriand Is.
“Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear on
a tropical beach close to a native village while the launch or dinghy
which has brought you sails away out of sight”.
“Imagine yourself then, making your first entry into the village”
“Some natives flock around you, especially if they smell tobacco”
“He ought to put himself in good conditions of work, that is, in the
main, to live without other white men, right among the natives”
“One step further in this line can be made by the Ethnographer who
acquires a knowledge of the native language and can use it as an
instrument of inquiry.” (p. 23)
The Goal of Ethnography
The goal [of the Ethnographer] is, briefly; to
grasp the native's point of view, his relation to
life, to realise his vision of his world” P. 25
Perhaps through realising human nature in a
shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall
have some light shed on our own. P. 25
Participant
• It is good for the Ethnographer
sometimes to put aside camera,
note book and pencil, and to
join in himself in what is going
on p. 21
inside
view
Observation
• An ethnographic diary, carried
on systematically throughout
the course of one’s work in a
district would be the ideal
instrument for this sort of study
outside
(analytical)
view
A functional account is an analyst’s account which
asks what is the `sociological function of these customs
what part do they play in the maintenance and
development of civilization?”
Functional accounts don’t worry about how an
institution arose
–most institutional origins lost in the mists of time
–can at most speculate about them (“conjectural
history”
For functionalists, what is important is not how
things originated but how they work (function)…
–how they contribute to peoples’ lives
Various Institutional Functions
language  binds the community together
Magic  warrants a myth's truth,
Myth  expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it
safeguards and enforces morality'
Scientific knowledge  ensures Man's survival
Religion  establishes, fixes, and enhances all valuable
mental attitudes, such as reverence for tradition, harmony
with environment, courage and confidence in the struggle
with different cultures and at the prospect of death
law  curbs certain natural propensities, to hem in and
control human instincts and to impose a non-spontaneous,
compulsory behaviour'
Malinowski’s Hierarchy of needs
‘Basic’ needs
Food, shelter, sex, etc.
universal
this supplies a certain commonality to all human
cultures and is ultimately what makes them comparable.
Also makes ethnology scientific
each culture responds to the particular needs of its
members through institutions
every institution centers around a fundamental need
For example, tools function to provide Man's food, and
construct his shelters
The variation in the form of the institution is culturally
determined
instrumental’ needs
but tools require skilled artisans and trade groups etc.
In a sense, the tools themselves have needs.
These are instrumental needs
 the three primary ones being economic organization,
law, and education
integrative needs
these institutions must in turn be functionally adjusted
to each other in order to form a more or less consistent
pattern…
this produces requirements not of individuals but of the
cultural system itself
2. STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM
The dominant theoretical
paradigm of the British
school of social
anthropology, 1930–1955.
Associated with the
theoretical writings of A. R.
Radcliffe-Brown in Structure
and function in primitive
society
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown 1881-1955
Biopsychological Functionalism
or “Needs” Functionalism
(Malinowski)
Structural Functionalism
(Radcliffe-Brown)
Exchange Functionalism (Mauss)
Structural Functionalism
Structuralism: theory examines cultures in terms of
systems of structured relationships between social
phenomena.
Functionalism: theory that all social facts can and
should be explained by their function in relation to
society.
Structural Functionalism: societies seen as having
structure and order, and all phenomena occurring
within the culture are seen to have the underlying
goal of maintaining the overall societal structure and
order, despite individual motivation..
FIVE BASIC PRINCIPLES
1. Society is seen as an organically structured whole akin
to a biological organism.
2. Society has a social structure - an ordered arrangement
of parts.
3. Structure is ideally integrated, unified, and exists in
equilibrium.
4. This structure is the object of analysis; the most valued
data is the structure you can abstract.
5. The function of Social activities and institutions is
ultimately interpreted in terms of maintaining the whole
social structure of the society
THE STRUCTURE IS INTEGRATED
INSTITUTIONS:
 Distinguishable sets of roles, norms, and statuses
within a social system e.g. kinship system
 it is to institutions that the concept of “function” is
applicable
 the function of an institution is its contribution to the
overall perpetuation and adaptation of the society
 For social life to persist or continue the various
institutions must exhibit some kind of measure of
coherence or consistence
THE FUNCTION OF INSTITUTIONS IS TO
MAINTAIN THE STRUCTURE
 The problem for society is to survive — to maintain its
structure
 But basic human nature is inherently selfish and is
therefore inimical to that survival.
 Therefore the behaviour of individuals must be
molded to the requirements society needs to survive
 Conflict must be restrained and the conduct of
persons in their interrelations with each other must be
controlled by norms or rules of behaviour
 Failure of the individual to follow these norms results
in sanctions.
MALINOWSKI: Society seen as
a nurturing, comforting, cocoon
emanating from, and responding
to, human needs
RADCLIFFE-BROWN: Society
seen as a tyrannical entity, often
at odds with human nature, which
controls humans by injecting
fears and anxieties into their
psyches, and if necessary
sacrificing them for its own sake
REACTION AGAINST
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
DEVELOPMENT OF
NATIONAL SCHOOLS
1930
1940
AMERICAN
CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
Boas
EVOLUTIONISM
BRITISH
SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
DIFFUSIONISM
Malinowski
FUNCTIONALISM
Radcliffe Brown
DURKHEIMIAN
SOCIOLOGY
PERIOD OF GRAND THEORY
FRENCH
ETHNOLOGIE
MODERN PERIOD