Mythologiques is a four-volume work of cultural anthropology by Claude Lévi-Strauss . Originally written in French , the works were translated into English by John and Doreen Weightman.
98-402: The four volumes of Mythologiques are: This article about a book on cultural anthropology is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology , which perceives cultural variation as a subset of
196-451: A "thing", such as a particular commodity, as it is transported through the networks of global capitalism. Cultural evolution Cultural evolution is an evolutionary theory of social change . It follows from the definition of culture as "information capable of affecting individuals' behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation and other forms of social transmission". Cultural evolution
294-521: A Paleolithic lifestyle. One of the earliest articulations of the anthropological meaning of the term " culture " came from Sir Edward Tylor : "Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." The term "civilization" later gave way to definitions given by V. Gordon Childe , with culture forming an umbrella term and civilization becoming
392-470: A consensus that both processes occur, and that both can plausibly account for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers also pointed out the superficiality of many such similarities. They noted that even traits that spread through diffusion often were given different meanings and function from one society to another. Analyses of large human concentrations in big cities, in multidisciplinary studies by Ronald Daus , show how new methods may be applied to
490-462: A general model for quasiteleological processes for which organic evolution is but one instance". Others pursued more specific analogies notably the anthropologist F. T. (Ted) Cloak who argued in 1975 for the existence of learnt cultural instructions (cultural corpuscles or i-culture) resulting in material artefacts (m-culture) such as wheels. The argument thereby introduced as to whether cultural evolution requires neurological instructions continues to
588-558: A growing urge to generalize. This was most obvious in the 'Culture and Personality' studies carried out by younger Boasians such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict . Influenced by psychoanalytic psychologists including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung , these authors sought to understand the way that individual personalities were shaped by the wider cultural and social forces in which they grew up. Though such works as Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and
686-580: A number of developments in the 1960s and 1970s, including cognitive anthropology and componential analysis. In keeping with the times, much of anthropology became politicized through the Algerian War of Independence and opposition to the Vietnam War ; Marxism became an increasingly popular theoretical approach in the discipline. By the 1970s the authors of volumes such as Reinventing Anthropology worried about anthropology's relevance. Since
784-422: A parallel between genetic evolution and the "blind variation and selective retention" of creative ideas; work that was developed into a full theory of "socio-cultural evolution" in 1965 (a work that includes references to other works in the then current revival of interest in the field). Campbell (1965 26) was clear that he perceived cultural evolution not as an analogy "from organic evolution per se, but rather from
882-516: A particular kind of culture. According to Kay Milton, former director of anthropology research at Queens University Belfast, culture can be general or specific. This means culture can be something applied to all human beings or it can be specific to a certain group of people such as African American culture or Irish American culture. Specific cultures are structured systems which means they are organized very specifically and adding or taking away any element from that system may disrupt it. Anthropology
980-412: A posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions. Anthropologists have pointed out that through culture, people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in
1078-406: A specific set of questions they are trying to answer. In the case of structured observation, an observer might be required to record the order of a series of events, or describe a certain part of the surrounding environment. While the anthropologist still makes an effort to become integrated into the group they are studying, and still participates in the events as they observe, structured observation
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#17327917654071176-408: A translation fine-tuned in a repeated way, a process called the hermeneutic circle . Geertz applied his method in a number of areas, creating programs of study that were very productive. His analysis of "religion as a cultural system" was particularly influential outside of anthropology. David Schnieder's cultural analysis of American kinship has proven equally influential. Schneider demonstrated that
1274-416: A unified view between the natural and social sciences. There remains some accusation of biological reductionism , as opposed to cultural naturalism, and scientific efforts are often mistakenly associated with Social Darwinism . However, some useful parallels between biological and social evolution still appear to be found. Researchers Alberto Acerbi and Alex Mesoudi's criticism of Cultural Evolution lies in
1372-492: A wealth of details used to attack the theory of a single evolutionary process. Kroeber and Sapir's focus on Native American languages helped establish linguistics as a truly general science and free it from its historical focus on Indo-European languages . The publication of Alfred Kroeber 's textbook Anthropology (1923) marked a turning point in American anthropology. After three decades of amassing material, Boasians felt
1470-456: Is also criticized for being ethnocentric ; cultures are still seen as attempting to emulate western civilization. Under ethnocentricity, primitive societies are said to not yet be at the cultural levels of other Western societies. Much of the criticism aimed at cultural evolution is focused on the unilinear approach to social change. Broadly speaking in the second half of the 20th century the criticisms of cultural evolution have been answered by
1568-421: Is appropriate to influence the cultures they study, or possible to avoid having influence. In the 20th century, most cultural and social anthropologists turned to the crafting of ethnographies . An ethnography is a piece of writing about a people, at a particular place and time. Typically, the anthropologist lives among people in another society for a period of time, simultaneously participating in and observing
1666-523: Is concerned with the lives of people in different parts of the world, particularly in relation to the discourse of beliefs and practices. In addressing this question, ethnologists in the 19th century divided into two schools of thought. Some, like Grafton Elliot Smith , argued that different groups must have learned from one another somehow, however indirectly; in other words, they argued that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or " diffused ". Other ethnologists argued that different groups had
1764-433: Is in control of what they report about a culture. In terms of representation, an anthropologist has greater power than their subjects of study, and this has drawn criticism of participant observation in general. Additionally, anthropologists have struggled with the effect their presence has on a culture. Simply by being present, a researcher causes changes in a culture, and anthropologists continue to question whether or not it
1862-468: Is likely to interpret the same culture in a different way. Who the ethnographer is has a lot to do with what they will eventually write about a culture, because each researcher is influenced by their own perspective. This is considered a problem especially when anthropologists write in the ethnographic present, a present tense which makes a culture seem stuck in time, and ignores the fact that it may have interacted with other cultures or gradually evolved since
1960-564: Is meant to be a holistic piece of writing about the people in question, and today often includes the longest possible timeline of past events that the ethnographer can obtain through primary and secondary research. Bronisław Malinowski developed the ethnographic method, and Franz Boas taught it in the United States . Boas' students such as Alfred L. Kroeber , Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead drew on his conception of culture and cultural relativism to develop cultural anthropology in
2058-448: Is more directed and specific than participant observation in general. This helps to standardize the method of study when ethnographic data is being compared across several groups or is needed to fulfill a specific purpose, such as research for a governmental policy decision. One common criticism of participant observation is its lack of objectivity. Because each anthropologist has their own background and set of experiences, each individual
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#17327917654072156-494: Is not. The Human Relations Area Files , Inc. (HRAF) is a research agency based at Yale University . Since 1949, its mission has been to encourage and facilitate worldwide comparative studies of human culture, society, and behavior in the past and present. The name came from the Institute of Human Relations, an interdisciplinary program/building at Yale at the time. The Institute of Human Relations had sponsored HRAF's precursor,
2254-527: Is one of the principal research methods of cultural anthropology. It relies on the assumption that the best way to understand a group of people is to interact with them closely over a long period of time. The method originated in the field research of social anthropologists, especially Bronislaw Malinowski in Britain, the students of Franz Boas in the United States, and in the later urban research of
2352-497: Is so vast and pervasive that there cannot be a relationship between culture and race . Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not these claims require a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate. This principle should not be confused with moral relativism . Cultural relativism was in part a response to Western ethnocentrism . Ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which one consciously believes that one's people's arts are
2450-449: Is the change of this information over time. Cultural evolution, historically also known as sociocultural evolution , was originally developed in the 19th century by anthropologists stemming from Charles Darwin 's research on evolution . Today, cultural evolution has become the basis for a growing field of scientific research in the social sciences, including anthropology, economics, psychology, and organizational studies . Previously, it
2548-592: Is the use of multi-sited ethnography, discussed in George Marcus' article, "Ethnography In/Of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography". Looking at culture as embedded in macro-constructions of a global social order, multi-sited ethnography uses traditional methodology in various locations both spatially and temporally. Through this methodology, greater insight can be gained when examining
2646-486: The Chicago School of Sociology . Historically, the group of people being studied was a small, non-Western society. However, today it may be a specific corporation, a church group, a sports team, or a small town. There are no restrictions as to what the subject of participant observation can be, as long as the group of people is studied intimately by the observing anthropologist over a long period of time. This allows
2744-566: The Cross-Cultural Survey (see George Peter Murdock ), as part of an effort to develop an integrated science of human behavior and culture. The two eHRAF databases on the Web are expanded and updated annually. eHRAF World Cultures includes materials on cultures, past and present, and covers nearly 400 cultures. The second database, eHRAF Archaeology , covers major archaeological traditions and many more sub-traditions and sites around
2842-932: The natural sciences . Some anthropologists, such as Lloyd Fallers and Clifford Geertz , focused on processes of modernization by which newly independent states could develop. Others, such as Julian Steward and Leslie White , focused on how societies evolve and fit their ecological niche—an approach popularized by Marvin Harris . Economic anthropology as influenced by Karl Polanyi and practiced by Marshall Sahlins and George Dalton challenged standard neoclassical economics to take account of cultural and social factors and employed Marxian analysis into anthropological study. In England, British Social Anthropology's paradigm began to fragment as Max Gluckman and Peter Worsley experimented with Marxism and authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach incorporated Lévi-Strauss's structuralism into their work. Structuralism also influenced
2940-429: The " meme ", which is analogous to that of the gene. A meme is an idea-replicator that can reproduce itself, by jumping from mind to mind via the process of one human learning from another via imitation. Along with the "virus of the mind" image, the meme might be thought of as a "unit of culture" (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.), which spreads among the individuals of a population. The variation and selection in
3038-663: The 1980s issues of power, such as those examined in Eric Wolf 's Europe and the People Without History , have been central to the discipline. In the 1980s books like Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter pondered anthropology's ties to colonial inequality, while the immense popularity of theorists such as Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault moved issues of power and hegemony into the spotlight. Gender and sexuality became popular topics, as did
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3136-538: The 19th century alongside developments in the Western world. With these developments came a renewed interest in humankind, such as its origins, unity, and plurality. It is, however, in the 20th century that cultural anthropology shifts to having a more pluralistic view of cultures and societies. The rise of cultural anthropology took place within the context of the late 19th century, when questions regarding which cultures were "primitive" and which were "civilized" occupied
3234-497: The American folk-cultural emphasis on "blood connections" had an undue influence on anthropological kinship theories, and that kinship is not a biological characteristic, but a cultural relationship established on very different terms in different societies. Prominent British symbolic anthropologists include Victor Turner and Mary Douglas . In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as James Clifford pondered ethnographic authority, in particular how and why anthropological knowledge
3332-538: The Americas. Many American anthropologists adopted his agenda for social reform, and theories of race continue to be popular subjects for anthropologists today. The so-called "Four Field Approach" has its origins in Boasian Anthropology, dividing the discipline in the four crucial and interrelated fields of sociocultural, biological, linguistic, and archaic anthropology (e.g. archaeology). Anthropology in
3430-538: The Sword (1946) remain popular with the American public, Mead and Benedict never had the impact on the discipline of anthropology that some expected. Boas had planned for Ruth Benedict to succeed him as chair of Columbia's anthropology department, but she was sidelined in favor of Ralph Linton , and Mead was limited to her offices at the AMNH. In the 1950s and mid-1960s anthropology tended increasingly to model itself after
3528-598: The United States continues to be deeply influenced by the Boasian tradition, especially its emphasis on culture. Boas used his positions at Columbia University and the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to train and develop multiple generations of students. His first generation of students included Alfred Kroeber , Robert Lowie , Edward Sapir , and Ruth Benedict , who each produced richly detailed studies of indigenous North American cultures. They provided
3626-469: The United States in opposition to Morgan's evolutionary perspective. His approach was empirical, skeptical of overgeneralizations, and eschewed attempts to establish universal laws. For example, Boas studied immigrant children to demonstrate that biological race was not immutable, and that human conduct and behavior resulted from nurture, rather than nature. Influenced by the German tradition, Boas argued that
3724-715: The United States. European "social anthropologists" focused on observed social behaviors and on "social structure", that is, on relationships among social roles (for example, husband and wife, or parent and child) and social institutions (for example, religion , economy , and politics ). American "cultural anthropologists" focused on the ways people expressed their view of themselves and their world, especially in symbolic forms, such as art and myths . These two approaches frequently converged and generally complemented one another. For example, kinship and leadership function both as symbolic systems and as social institutions. Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists refer to
3822-556: The United States. Simultaneously, Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe Brown 's students were developing social anthropology in the United Kingdom. Whereas cultural anthropology focused on symbols and values, social anthropology focused on social groups and institutions. Today socio-cultural anthropologists attend to all these elements. In the early 20th century, socio-cultural anthropology developed in different forms in Europe and in
3920-417: The ambiguity surrounding the analogy between cultural and genetic evolution . They clarify the distinction between cultural selection (high-fidelity replication of traits) and cultural attraction (reconstruction of traits with lower fidelity). They argue that both mechanisms coexist in cultural evolution, making it essential to empirically determine their prevalence in different contexts, addressing confusion in
4018-408: The anthropologist as if they are a document in a foreign language. The interpretation of those symbols must be re-framed for their anthropological audience, i.e. transformed from the "experience-near" but foreign concepts of the other culture, into the "experience-distant" theoretical concepts of the anthropologist. These interpretations must then be reflected back to its originators, and its adequacy as
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4116-436: The anthropologist is familiar with, they will usually also learn that language. This allows the anthropologist to become better established in the community. The lack of need for a translator makes communication more direct, and allows the anthropologist to give a richer, more contextualized representation of what they witness. In addition, participant observation often requires permits from governments and research institutions in
4214-419: The anthropologist made observations. To avoid this, past ethnographers have advocated for strict training, or for anthropologists working in teams. However, these approaches have not generally been successful, and modern ethnographers often choose to include their personal experiences and possible biases in their writing instead. Participant observation has also raised ethical questions, since an anthropologist
4312-575: The anthropologist to develop trusting relationships with the subjects of study and receive an inside perspective on the culture, which helps him or her to give a richer description when writing about the culture later. Observable details (like daily time allotment) and more hidden details (like taboo behavior) are more easily observed and interpreted over a longer period of time, and researchers can discover discrepancies between what participants say—and often believe—should happen (the formal system ) and what actually does happen, or between different aspects of
4410-522: The anthropology of industrialized societies . Modern cultural anthropology has its origins in, and developed in reaction to, 19th century ethnology , which involves the organized comparison of human societies. Scholars like E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer in England worked mostly with materials collected by others—usually missionaries, traders, explorers, or colonial officials—earning them the moniker of "arm-chair anthropologists". Participant observation
4508-490: The area of study, and always needs some form of funding. The majority of participant observation is based on conversation. This can take the form of casual, friendly dialogue, or can also be a series of more structured interviews. A combination of the two is often used, sometimes along with photography, mapping, artifact collection, and various other methods. In some cases, ethnographers also turn to structured observation, in which an anthropologist's observations are directed by
4606-426: The author's methodology; cultural, gendered, and racial positioning; and their influence on the ethnographic analysis. This was part of a more general trend of postmodernism that was popular contemporaneously. Currently anthropologists pay attention to a wide variety of issues pertaining to the contemporary world, including globalization , medicine and biotechnology , indigenous rights , virtual communities , and
4704-407: The body of knowledge surrounding it. One of the hallmarks of evolutionary epistemology is the notion that empirical testing alone does not justify the pragmatic value of scientific theories but rather that social and methodological processes select those theories with the closest "fit" to a given problem. The mere fact that a theory has survived the most rigorous empirical tests available does not, in
4802-419: The calculus of probability, predict its ability to survive future testing. Karl Popper used Newtonian physics as an example of a body of theories so thoroughly confirmed by testing as to be considered unassailable, but they were nevertheless improved on by Albert Einstein 's bold insights into the nature of space-time. For the evolutionary epistemologist, all theories are true only provisionally, regardless of
4900-742: The capability of creating similar beliefs and practices independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention", like Lewis Henry Morgan , additionally supposed that similarities meant that different groups had passed through the same stages of cultural evolution (See also classical social evolutionism ). Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could not have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy could not have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there
4998-408: The chosen group of people, but having an idea of what one wants to study before beginning fieldwork allows an anthropologist to spend time researching background information on their topic. It can also be helpful to know what previous research has been conducted in one's chosen location or on similar topics, and if the participant observation takes place in a location where the spoken language is not one
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#17327917654075096-436: The copying process enables Darwinian evolution among memeplexes and therefore is a candidate for a mechanism of cultural evolution. As memes are "selfish" in that they are "interested" only in their own success, they could well be in conflict with their biological host's genetic interests. Consequently, a "meme's eye" view might account for certain evolved cultural traits, such as suicide terrorism, that are successful at spreading
5194-518: The critical theory of the Frankfurt School , Derrida and Lacan . Many anthropologists reacted against the renewed emphasis on materialism and scientific modelling derived from Marx by emphasizing the importance of the concept of culture. Authors such as David Schneider , Clifford Geertz , and Marshall Sahlins developed a more fleshed-out concept of culture as a web of meaning or signification, which proved very popular within and beyond
5292-445: The cultural progression. Morgan gave no example of lower savagery, as even at the time of writing few examples remained of this cultural type. At the time of expounding his theory, Morgan's work was highly respected and became a foundation for much of anthropological study that was to follow. There began a widespread condemnation of unilinear theory in the late 19th century. Unilinear cultural evolution implicitly assumes that culture
5390-560: The degree of empirical testing they have survived. Popper is considered by many to have given evolutionary epistemology its first comprehensive treatment, but Donald T. Campbell had coined the phrase in 1974. As a relatively new and growing scientific field, cultural evolution is undergoing much formative debate. Some of the prominent conversations are revolving around Universal Darwinism , dual inheritance theory, and memetics. More recently, cultural evolution has drawn conversations from multi-disciplinary sources with movement towards
5488-476: The discipline. Geertz was to state: Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. Geertz's interpretive method involved what he called " thick description ". The cultural symbols of rituals, political and economic action, and of kinship, are "read" by
5586-573: The distinct ways people in different locales experience and understand their lives , but they often argue that one cannot understand these particular ways of life solely from a local perspective; they instead combine a focus on the local with an effort to grasp larger political, economic, and cultural frameworks that impact local lived realities. Notable proponents of this approach include Arjun Appadurai , James Clifford , George Marcus , Sidney Mintz , Michael Taussig , Eric Wolf and Ronald Daus . A growing trend in anthropological research and analysis
5684-438: The field of anthropology. Like other scholars of his day (such as Edward Tylor ), Morgan argued that human societies could be classified into categories of cultural evolution on a scale of progression that ranged from savagery , to barbarism , to civilization . Generally, Morgan used technology (such as bowmaking or pottery) as an indicator of position on this scale. Franz Boas (1858–1942) established academic anthropology in
5782-408: The field. Cultural evolution has been criticized over the past two centuries that it has advanced its development into the form it holds today. Morgan's theory of evolution implies that all cultures follow the same basic pattern. Human culture is not linear, different cultures develop in different directions and at differing paces, and it is not satisfactory or productive to assume cultures develop in
5880-693: The first half of the 20th century before American anthropologists, including Leslie A. White , Julian H. Steward , Marshall D. Sahlins , and Elman R. Service , revived the debate on cultural evolution. These theorists were the first to introduce the idea of multilinear cultural evolution. Under multilinear theory, there are no fixed stages (as in unilinear theory) towards cultural development. Instead, there are several stages of differing lengths and forms. Although, individual cultures develop differently and cultural evolution occurs differently, multilinear theory acknowledges that cultures and societies do tend to develop and move forward. Leslie A. White focused on
5978-405: The formal system; in contrast, a one-time survey of people's answers to a set of questions might be quite consistent, but is less likely to show conflicts between different aspects of the social system or between conscious representations and behavior. Interactions between an ethnographer and a cultural informant must go both ways. Just as an ethnographer may be naive or curious about a culture,
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#17327917654076076-564: The history of their development and discipline of origin but in how they conceptualize the process of cultural evolution and the assumptions, theories, and methods that they apply to its study. In recent years, there has been a convergence of the cluster of related theories towards seeing cultural evolution as a unified discipline in its own right. Aristotle thought that development of cultural form (such as poetry) stops when it reaches its maturity. In 1873, in Harper's New Monthly Magazine , it
6174-426: The idea in 1887: "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes." Although Boas did not coin the term, it became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas Boas had developed. Boas believed that the sweep of cultures, to be found in connection with any sub-species,
6272-409: The idea of " cultural relativism ", the view that one can only understand another person's beliefs and behaviors in the context of the culture in which they live or lived. Others, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (who was influenced both by American cultural anthropology and by French Durkheimian sociology ), have argued that apparently similar patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in
6370-423: The idea that different cultures had differing amounts of 'energy', White argued that with greater energy societies could possess greater levels of social differentiation. He rejected separation of modern societies from primitive societies. In contrast, Steward argued, much like Darwin's theory of evolution, that culture adapts to its surroundings. 'Evolution and Culture' by Sahlins and Service is an attempt to condense
6468-404: The impact of world-systems on local and global communities. Also emerging in multi-sited ethnography are greater interdisciplinary approaches to fieldwork, bringing in methods from cultural studies, media studies, science and technology studies, and others. In multi-sited ethnography, research tracks a subject across spatial and temporal boundaries. For example, a multi-sited ethnography may follow
6566-469: The innate capacity for acquiring language. Darwin's ideas, along with those of such as Comte and Quetelet , influenced a number of what would now be called social scientists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hodgson and Knudsen single out David George Ritchie and Thorstein Veblen , crediting the former with anticipating both dual inheritance theory and universal Darwinism. Despite
6664-412: The larger area of difference. Once a single connection has been established, it becomes easier to integrate into the community, and it is more likely that accurate and complete information is being shared with the anthropologist. Before participant observation can begin, an anthropologist must choose both a location and a focus of study. This focus may change once the anthropologist is actively observing
6762-425: The limits of their own ethnocentrism. One such method is that of ethnography . This method advocates living with people of another culture for an extended period of time to learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially, into that culture. In this context, cultural relativism is of fundamental methodological importance, because it calls attention to the importance of the local context in understanding
6860-593: The main issues of social scientific inquiry. Parallel with the rise of cultural anthropology in the United States, social anthropology developed as an academic discipline in Britain and in France. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), a lawyer from Rochester , New York , became an advocate for and ethnological scholar of the Iroquois . His comparative analyses of religion, government, material culture, and especially kinship patterns proved to be influential contributions to
6958-458: The meaning of particular human beliefs and activities. Thus, in 1948 Virginia Heyer wrote, "Cultural relativity, to phrase it in starkest abstraction, states the relativity of the part to the whole. The part gains its cultural significance by its place in the whole, and cannot retain its integrity in a different situation." The rubric cultural anthropology is generally applied to ethnographic works that are holistic in approach, are oriented to
7056-470: The members of that culture may be curious about the ethnographer. To establish connections that will eventually lead to a better understanding of the cultural context of a situation, an anthropologist must be open to becoming part of the group, and willing to develop meaningful relationships with its members. One way to do this is to find a small area of common experience between an anthropologist and their subjects, and then to expand from this common ground into
7154-436: The meme of martyrdom, but fatal to their hosts and often other people. "Evolutionary epistemology" can also refer to a theory that applies the concepts of biological evolution to the growth of human knowledge and argues that units of knowledge themselves, particularly scientific theories, evolve according to selection. In that case, a theory, like the germ theory of disease , becomes more or less credible according to changes in
7252-416: The mind of not only Freud , but many others. Colonialism and its processes increasingly brought European thinkers into direct or indirect contact with "primitive others". The first generation of cultural anthropologists were interested in the relative status of various humans, some of whom had modern advanced technologies, while others lacked anything but face-to-face communication techniques and still lived
7350-399: The most beautiful, values the most virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful. Boas, originally trained in physics and geography , and heavily influenced by the thought of Kant , Herder , and von Humboldt , argued that one's culture may mediate and thus limit one's perceptions in less obvious ways. This understanding of culture confronts anthropologists with two problems: first, how to escape
7448-616: The point where civilization develops hierarchies. The concept behind unilinear theory is that the steady accumulation of knowledge and culture leads to the separation of the various modern day sciences and the build-up of cultural norms present in modern-day society. In Lewis H. Morgan 's book Ancient Society (1877), Morgan labels seven differing stages of human culture: lower, middle, and upper savagery; lower, middle, and upper barbarism; and civilization. He justifies this staging classification by referencing societies whose cultural traits resembled those of each of his stage classifications of
7546-555: The present day . In the 19th century cultural evolution was thought to follow a unilineal pattern whereby all cultures progressively develop over time. The underlying assumption was that Cultural Evolution itself led to the growth and development of civilization. Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century declared indigenous culture to have "no arts, no letters, no society" and he described facing life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." He, like other scholars of his time, reasoned that everything positive and esteemed resulted from
7644-402: The rediscovery of Mendelian genetics but were revived, especially by Fisher , Haldane , and Wright , who developed the first population genetic models and as it became known the modern synthesis. Cultural evolutionary concepts, or even metaphors, revived more slowly. If there were one influential individual in the revival it was probably Donald T. Campbell . In 1960 he drew on Wright to draw
7742-537: The relationship between history and anthropology, influenced by Marshall Sahlins , who drew on Lévi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel to examine the relationship between symbolic meaning, sociocultural structure, and individual agency in the processes of historical transformation. Jean and John Comaroff produced a whole generation of anthropologists at the University of Chicago that focused on these themes. Also influential in these issues were Nietzsche , Heidegger ,
7840-474: The same way. A further key critique of cultural evolutionism is what is known as "armchair anthropology". The name results from the fact that many of the anthropologists advancing theories had not seen first hand the cultures they were studying. The research and data collected was carried out by explorers and missionaries as opposed to the anthropologists themselves. Edward Tylor was the epitome of that and did very little of his own research. Cultural evolution
7938-439: The sense that cultures were no longer compared, but they were assessed uniquely. Boas, along with several of his pupils, notably A.L. Kroeber , Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead , changed the focus of anthropological research to the effect that instead of generalizing cultures, the attention was now on collecting empirical evidence of how individual cultures change and develop. Cultural particularism dominated popular thought for
8036-419: The slow development away from this poor lowly state of being. Under the theory of unilinear Cultural Evolution, all societies and cultures develop on the same path. The first to present a general unilineal theory was Herbert Spencer . Spencer suggested that humans develop into more complex beings as culture progresses, where people originally lived in "undifferentiated hordes" culture progresses and develops to
8134-429: The social and cultural life of the group. Numerous other ethnographic techniques have resulted in ethnographic writing or details being preserved, as cultural anthropologists also curate materials, spend long hours in libraries, churches and schools poring over records, investigate graveyards, and decipher ancient scripts. A typical ethnography will also include information about physical geography, climate and habitat. It
8232-418: The stereotypical image of social Darwinism that developed later in the century, neither Ritchie nor Veblen were on the political right. The early years of the 20th century and particularly World War I saw biological concepts and metaphors shunned by most social sciences. Even uttering the word evolution carried "serious risk to one's intellectual reputation." Darwinian ideas were also in decline following
8330-482: The structure of human thought (see structuralism ). By the mid-20th century, the number of examples of people skipping stages, such as going from hunter-gatherers to post-industrial service occupations in one generation, were so numerous that 19th-century evolutionism was effectively disproved. Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated
8428-447: The tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distinct places/circumstances). Cultural anthropology has a rich methodology , including participant observation (often called fieldwork because it requires the anthropologist spending an extended period of time at the research location), interviews , and surveys . Modern anthropology emerged in
8526-454: The unconscious bonds of one's own culture, which inevitably bias our perceptions of and reactions to the world, and second, how to make sense of an unfamiliar culture. The principle of cultural relativism thus forced anthropologists to develop innovative methods and heuristic strategies. Boas and his students realized that if they were to conduct scientific research in other cultures, they would need to employ methods that would help them escape
8624-469: The understanding of man living in a global world and how it was caused by the action of extra-European nations, so highlighting the role of Ethics in modern anthropology. Accordingly, most of these anthropologists showed less interest in comparing cultures, generalizing about human nature, or discovering universal laws of cultural development, than in understanding particular cultures in those cultures' own terms. Such ethnographers and their students promoted
8722-406: The views of White and Steward into a universal theory of multilinear evolution. Robert Wright recognized the inevitable development of cultures. He proposed that population growth was a crucial component of cultural evolution. Population has a symbiotic relationship with technological, economic, and political development. Richard Dawkins ' 1976 book The Selfish Gene proposed the concept of
8820-480: The ways in which culture affects individual experience or aim to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. Social anthropology is a term applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion, give analytical priority to the organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewhat secondary to
8918-416: The work of both sets of predecessors and have an equal interest in what people do and in what people say. One means by which anthropologists combat ethnocentrism is to engage in the process of cross-cultural comparison. It is important to test so-called "human universals" against the ethnographic record. Monogamy, for example, is frequently touted as a universal human trait, yet comparative study shows that it
9016-415: The world was full of distinct cultures, rather than societies whose evolution could be measured by the extent of "civilization" they had. He believed that each culture has to be studied in its particularity, and argued that cross-cultural generalizations, like those made in the natural sciences , were not possible. In doing so, he fought discrimination against immigrants, blacks, and indigenous peoples of
9114-462: The world. Comparison across cultures includes the industrialized (or de-industrialized) West. Cultures in the more traditional standard cross-cultural sample of small-scale societies are: Ethnography dominates socio-cultural anthropology. Nevertheless, many contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists have rejected earlier models of ethnography as treating local cultures as bounded and isolated. These anthropologists continue to concern themselves with
9212-593: Was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized. 20th-century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order, on the grounds that such a notion does not fit the empirical facts. Some 20th-century ethnologists, like Julian Steward , have instead argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments. Although 19th-century ethnologists saw "diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually exclusive and competing theories, most ethnographers quickly reached
9310-539: Was believed that social change resulted from biological adaptations ; anthropologists now commonly accept that social changes arise in consequence of a combination of social, environmental, and biological influences (viewed from a nature vs nurture framework). There have been a number of different approaches to the study of cultural evolution, including dual inheritance theory , sociocultural evolution , memetics , cultural evolutionism , and other variants on cultural selection theory . The approaches differ not just in
9408-437: Was borne out of the United States and Western Europe . That was seen by many to be racist, as it assumed that some individuals and cultures were more evolved than others. Franz Boas , a German-born anthropologist, was the instigator of the movement known as 'cultural particularism' in which the emphasis shifted to a multilinear approach to cultural evolution. That differed to the unilinear approach that used to be favoured in
9506-425: Was possible and authoritative. They were reflecting trends in research and discourse initiated by feminists in the academy, although they excused themselves from commenting specifically on those pioneering critics. Nevertheless, key aspects of feminist theory and methods became de rigueur as part of the 'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnographies became more interpretative and reflexive, explicitly addressing
9604-618: Was written: "By the principle which Darwin describes as natural selection short words are gaining the advantage over long words, direct forms of expression are gaining the advantage over indirect, words of precise meaning the advantage of the ambiguous, and local idioms are everywhere in disadvantage". Cultural evolution, in the Darwinian sense of variation and selective inheritance, could be said to trace back to Darwin himself. He argued for both customs (1874 p. 239) and "inherited habits" as contributing to human evolution, grounding both in
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