Anthropological Theories
Late 19th Century
Nineteenth-century Evolutionism· Edward Burnett Tylor
· Lewis Henry Morgan
Sociological Thought· Emile Durkheim
Materialism· Karl Marx
· Friedrich Engels
Early 20th Century
Historical Particularism· Franz Boaz
· Alfred L. Kroeber
Functionalism· Bronislaw Malinowski
· Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown
· E. E. Evans-Pritchard
Culture and Personality· Ruth Fulton Benedict
· Margaret Mead
Mid 20th Century
Neoevolutionism· Julian Steward
· Leslie White
· Gerge Peter Murdock
Neomaterialism· Marvin Harris
· Roy A. Rappaport
Structuralism· Claude Levi-Strauss
Cognitive Anthropology· Stephen A. Tyler
· Harold C. Conklin
Recent Trends
Feminist Anthropology· Sally Slocum
· Eleanor Leacock
· Ann L. Stoler
Sociobiolgical Anthropology· Edward Wilson
Symbolic Anthropology· Clifford Geertz
· Mary Douglas
· Victor Turner
Postmodernism· Renato Rosaldo
· Vincent Crapanzano
Overview of Nineteenth-century Evolutionism
The theory of Nineteenth-century Evolutionism claims that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution. The theorists identified the universal evolutional stages and classified different societies as savagery, barbarian and civilization. The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists collected data from missionaries and traders and they themselves rarely went to the societies that they were analyzing. They organized these second-hand data and applied the general theory to all societies. Since Western societies had the most advanced technology, they put the societies at the highest rank of civilization.
The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists had two main assumptions that form the theory. One was that human minds share similar characteristics all over the world. This means that all people and their societies will go through the same process of development. Another underlying assumption was that Western societies are superior to other societies in the world. This assumption was based on the fact that Western societies were dominant because of their military and economic power against technologically simple societies.
The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists contributed to anthropology by providing the first systematic methods for thinking about and explaining human societies. Their evolutionary theory is insightful with regard to the technological aspect of societies. There is a logical progression from using simple tools to developing complex technology. In this sense, complex societies are more “advanced” than simple societies. However, this judgment does not necessarily apply to other aspects of societies, such as kin systems, religions and childrearing customs.
Contemporary anthropologists view Nineteenth-century Evolutionism as too simplistic to explain the development of various societies. In general, the Nineteenth-century evolutionists relied on racist views of human development which were popular at that time. For example, both Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Burnett Tylor believed that people in various societies have different levels of intelligence, which leads to societal differences. This view of intelligence is no longer valid in contemporary science. Nineteenth-century Evolutionism was strongly attacked by Historical Particularists for being speculative and ethnocentric at the early twentieth-century. At the same time, its materialist approaches and cross-cultural views influenced Marxist Anthropology and Neo-evolutionists.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881, The United States)
Lewis Henry Morgan is a unilineal evolutionist who claimed that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution. Morgan was fascinated with the Native American tribe Iroquois and gathered information on their customs, language and other aspects of the culture.
Through his study of the Iroquois and other Native American tribes, Morgan became interested in kinship systems in different societies. He distributed questionnaires to missionaries and travelers in order to collect information about kinship terms from people all over the world. Based on the result of the questionnaires, Morgan posited that all kinship systems in the world could be divided into two large groups: descriptive systems and classificatory systems. Descriptive systems distinguish lineal relatives and collateral kin. For example, English, which falls into one of the descriptive systems, distinguishes “father” and “father’s brother” by giving different terms, “father” and “uncle” respectively. In contrast, classificatory systems treat lineal and collateral kin as if they belong to the same category. Although classificatory systems distinguish generation and gender, they use the same term for “father” and “father’s brother,” or for “mother” and “mother’s sister.”
Morgan explained these two different kinship systems by presenting the evolutionary theory of human family structure. He argued that human family structures evolve from promiscuous intercourse to monogamy. In the “most primitive” stage, sexual behavior is not regulated and individuals do not know who their fathers are. Some societies with classificatory systems fall into this stage, where people use one general term to categorize their father and the father’s brothers, or their mother and the mother’s sisters. Morgan believed that “most civilized” family structure is patriarchal monogamy, where a male is the head of a married couple and their descent is reckoned in the male line. Some societies with descriptive systems fit in this stage, where people distinguish their parent and the parent’s siblings by using different terms.
In addition to examining the evolution of the family structure, Morgan surveyed technological, economic, political, and religious conditions throughout the world. Morgan believed in a hierarchy of evolutionary development from “savagery” to “barbarism” to “civilization.” According to Morgan, the crucial distinction between civilized society and earlier societies is private property. He described “savage” societies as communistic, contrasting with “civilized” societies, which are based on private property.
Although Morgan’s theory has been criticized for being speculative and ethnocentric, his evolutionary theory influenced the development of anthropology. First, Morgan outlined the importance of the study of kinship systems for understanding the social organizations. Second, Morgan conducted cross-cultural research that attempted to be systematic and large-scale. Finally, Morgan organized anthropological data and formulated the evolutionary theory rather than simply collecting cultural data.
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Biography of MorganSources:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1996 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Overview of Sociological Thought
Sociology and anthropology share many ideas in common. Both disciplines are based on the work of philosophers and scientists of the nineteenth century. The theories of the early sociological thinkers had great effects on anthropology that last until today. Among sociologists, Emile Durkheim, who is credited as the founder of modern sociology, had a tremendous influence on anthropology.
Durkheim’s influence permeates a wide range of anthropological studies, such as analysis of social system, anthropological approaches to religion, and questions about the origins and evolutions of societies. For example, Durkheim’s theory of social integration is passed down to functionalism, which examines the arrangement and interrelation of basic social segments. Another example of Durkheim’s influence is seen in the analysis of socially created systems of classification. He believed that these systems were essentially dualistic in nature. His emphasis on systems of classification and binary opposition would have enormous effect on structuralism, ethnoscience, and cognitive anthropology.
Sources:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917, France)
Emile Durkheim is credited with founding modern sociology and he also had a tremendous influence on anthropology. His central concern was the question of social cohesion. A society is composed of various kinds of segments, such as different kin groups, classes, and political and religious units. Still, these separate units stay together and are structured to become one coherent society. What is it that binds these different segments? In short, Durkheim wished to understand what elements held a society. Durkheim presented his answer by developing the concept of solidarity, which is a force to integrate separate segments in a society. This force is the result of a shared system of beliefs and values, which unites members of the society and controls individuals' behavior.
Durkheim compared many societies in the world and concluded that there are two different types of force that integrate separate segments of a society. He called these two patterns “mechanical solidarity” and “organic solidarity.” Mechanical solidarity applies to societies in which all members have common and shared social experiences, and special subdivisions within a society are either absent or weak. Because of this homogeneity, each individual is directly and equally attached to the society. An example of a mechanical solidarity society is a hunting and gathering society, which is small and simple enough to keep the similarity among individuals of the group.
Organic solidarity societies, on the other hand, are formed by a system of different organs, each of which has a specific role. Members of such societies belong to some of these organs and fulfill their specific tasks. Because individuals’ tasks do not cover all aspects of their survival, they need to depend on each other to live in the society. They are held together to each other by one central organ which controls the rest of the organism. For example, institutions in an industrialized society are interrelated under the legal system from the central government. Each institution, such as corporations, marriages, and families, nonprofit organizations, and political offices, is separate and different. However, all institutions are subordinate to the rule of law which keeps them functioning in harmony.
Durkheim extended this analysis to the evolution of societies. In mechanical (relatively primitive) societies, cohesion is achieved because of the minimization of individual differences. In organic (modern) societies differences resulting from a division of labor lead to integrated activities, thus cohesion of societies. The distinction between mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity are so clear that one society cannot have both aspects at the same time. This means that only after mechanical solidarity declines, organic solidarity develops as a new system. Historically, this change occurs systematically. First, innovations in the economy happen. Second, these innovations affect human population density. Finally, the increased population density leads to the division of labor.
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Biography of DurkheimSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Overview of Materialism
Materialism is one of the major anthropological perspectives for analyzing human societies. Materialism is a position that the physical world can impact and set constraints on human behavior. The materialists believe that human behavior is part of nature and therefore, it can be understood by using the methods of studying natural science. Materialists do not necessarily assume that material reality is more important than mental reality. However, they give priority to the material world over the world of the mind when they explain human societies. This doctrine of materialism started and developed from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were social thinkers.
Marx and Engels presented an evolutionary model of societies based on the materialist perspective. They argued that societies go through the following stages in order from tribalism to feudalism to capitalism to communism. Their work drew little attention from anthropology in the early twentieth-century. However, since the late 1920s, anthropologists have increasingly come to depend on their materialist explanations for analyzing societal development and some inherent problems of capitalist societies. Anthropologists who heavily rely on the insights of Marx and Engels include neo-evolutionists, neo-materialists, feminists, and postmodernists.
Sources:
· Scupin, Raymond and Christopher R. Decorse. 2000 Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Karl Marx (1818-1883, Prussia-France-Britain)
Karl Marx is considered a philosopher, economist, and political leader. Although he was not an anthropologist, his materialist theory of societal evolution has been a great influence on anthropology until today. Marx theorized that society evolves through the following stages in order from tribal to feudal to capitalist to communist. The tribal stage refers to societies consist of communal ownership among extended families. These small scale sorceries include hunting and gathering societies, pastoral societies, and simple agricultural societies. The more advanced stage, feudal, is based on hierarchical ownership, which divides a population into nobles and peasants. The nobles own land and the peasants work on the land for their own subsistence as well as payment for the land owner. After feudalism has fully developed, societies evolve into the capitalist stage. According to Marx, this industrial system divides members of societies into two classes, capitalists and workers. The capitalists own factories and the workers sell their labor to the owners as a commodity. The capitalist class exploits the workers in order to produce a surplus for their own profits. This industrial system causes class conflicts, which leads societies to the communist stage. In this final stage of communism, there is no hierarchy or individual ownership. All members share the means of production (factories,land, etc.) and wealth is distributed among the members. Therefore, class struggle or inequality does not exist in communism.
Marx believed that society constantly changes as a result of class conflicts within the society. He viewed this development as a result of exploitation, inequality of wealth and power, and class struggle. The central idea in Marx’s evolutionary theory is materialism. He believed that the system of producing material goods determines other aspects of society, such as social custom, political system, spirituality, and ideology. In other words, Marx gave priority to material conditions over human thinking regarding the evolution of society. Whether the evolution of society is determined by ideas or materials is a long-established debate among social scientists, including anthropologists. Marx’s theory is influential to anthropologists because its analysis of the relationship between material conditions and societal evolution.
It should be emphasized that current anthropologists do not fully accept the evolutionary model suggested by Marx. For example, most anthropologists think that Marx’s prediction on the transition from capitalism to communism is wrong. Historical facts reveal that communist revolutions occured in non-capitalist societies such as the former Soviet Union and China. Nevertheless, many anthropologists view Marx’s materialist analysis as valid for understanding societal development and some inherent problems of capitalist societies.
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Biography of MarxSources:
· Biography Resource Center. 2000 Marx, Karl (Heinrich). Electronic document, http://search.biography.com/print_record.pl?id=6048, accessed November 29.
· Scupin, Raymond and Christopher R. Decorse. 2000 Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Overview of Historical Particularism
Historical Particularism claims that each society has its own unique historical development and must be understood based on its own specific cultural context, especially its historical process. Historical Particularists criticized the theory of the Nineteenth-century Evolutionism as non-scientific and claimed themselves to be free from preconceived ideas. They collected a vast amount of first-hand cultural data by conducting ethnographic fieldwork. Based on these raw data, they described particular cultures instead of trying to establish general theories that apply to all societies.
The Historical Particularists valued fieldwork and history as critical methods of cultural analysis. At the same time, the anthropologists in this theoretical school had different views on the importance of individuals in a society. For example, Frantz Boas saw each individual as the basic component of a society. He gathered information from individual informants and considered such data valuable enough for cultural analysis. On the other hand, Alfred Kroeber did not see individuals as the fundamental elements of a society. He believed a society evolves according to its own internal laws that do not directly originate from its individuals. He named this cultural aspect superorganic and claimed that a society cannot be explained without considering this impersonal force.
Historical Particularism was a dominant theoretical trend in anthropology during the first half of the twentieth century. One of the achievements of the Historical Particularists was that they succeeded in excluding racism from anthropology. The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists explained cultural similarities and differences by classifying societies into superior and inferior categories. Historical Particualrists showed that this labeling is based on insufficient evidence and claimed that societies cannot be ranked by the value judgment of researchers.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Franz Boas (1858-1942, Germany-The United States)
Franz Boas is considered one of the founders of academic anthropology and is also credited with the theory of Historical Particularism. This theory claims that each society has its own unique historical development and must be understood based on its own historical context.
Until Boas presented Historical Particularsim, many anthropologists believed that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution. This belief, called the Unilineal Evolution, explained cultural similarities and differences among societies by classifying them into three sequential stages of development: savagery, barbarism and civilization. Boas criticized this belief as based on insufficient evidence. For example, Unilineal Evolution claims that matrilineal kin systems preceded patrilineal kin systems and that religions based on animism developed before polytheistic religions. Boas argued that this ordering is merely an assumption because there is no historical evidence or way to demonstrate its validity. He also criticized Unilineal Evolution for its method of gathering and organizing data. At that time many anthropologists relied on missionaries or traders for data collection and anthropologists themselves rarely went to the societies that they were analyzing. Boas argued that those armchair anthropologists organized that second-hand data in unsystematic manners to fit their preconceived ideas.
Based on his principle that cultural theories should be derived from concrete ethnographic data, Boas strongly advocated fieldwork. He developed the method of participant observation as a basic research strategy of ethnographic fieldwork. Based on this method Boas collected a vast amount of first-hand cultural data from Native American tribes in the United States. Using detailed ethnographic studies he argued that a society is understandable only in its own specific cultural context, especially its historical process. Boas did not deny the existence of general laws on human behavior and developed the position that those laws could be discovered from the understanding of a specific society. In later years Boas became skeptical about the possibility of deriving cultural laws because he realized that cultural phenomena are too complex.
Besides presenting the theory of Historical Particularism, Boas left a tremendous impact on the development of anthropology. By claiming that societies cannot be ranked by the degree of savagery, barbarity or civility, Boas called for an end of ethnocentrism in anthropology. Also because of his influence, anthropologists began to do ethnological fieldwork to gather sound evidence. His position that culture must be understood in its own context has been passed on to anthropologists as a basic approach to cultural analysis.
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Biography of BoasSources:
· Moore, Jerry D. 1996 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
· Scupin, Raymond and Christopher R. Decorse. 2000 Anthropology: A Global Perspective. UpperSaddle River: Prentice Hall.
Overview of Functionalism
The theoretical school of Functionalism considers a culture as an interrelated whole, not a collection of isolated traits. The Functionalists examined how a particular cultural phase is interrelated with other aspects of the culture and how it affects the whole system of the society. The method of functionalism was based on fieldwork and direct observations of societies. The anthropologists were to describe various cultural institutions that make up a society, explain their social function, and show their contribution to the overall stability of a society. At the same time, this functionalism approach was criticized for not considering cultural changes of traditional societies. The theory of Functionalism emerged in the 1920s and then declined after World War II because of cultural changes caused by the war. Since the theory did not emphasize social transformations, it was replaced by other theories related to cultural changes. Even so, the basic idea of Functionalism has become part of a common sense for cultural analysis in anthropology. Anthropologists should consider interconnections of different cultural domains when they analyze cultures.
To view theorists, please select from the left menu.
Sources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1997 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942, Poland-Britain-The United States)
Bronislaw Malinowski is credited with Functionalism, which explains a culture as an interrelated whole, not a collection of isolated traits. Based on his fieldwork in various areas of the world, particularly the Trobriand Islands in New Guinea, Malinowski established the theory of Functionalism. A culture is composed of many different elements, such as food acquisition, family relationships, and housing. Malinowski believed that all of these elements are connected and work together for one purpose, which is to meet the needs of individuals in the culture. In other words, culture exists to satisfy the basic biological, psychological, and social needs of individuals.
For example, the first human need, metabolism, refers to “the process of food intake, digestion, the collateral secretions, the absorption of nutritive substances, and rejection of waster matter…” (Malinowski 1944:91). Culture meets this need by possessing the following different domains:
1) How food was grown, prepared, and consumed
2) Where food was consumed and in what social units
3) The economic and social organization of the distribution of foods (e.g., trade in canned salmon or reciprocal exchange of garden products)
4) The legal and customary rules that ensure the steady operation of food distribution
5) The authority that enforces those rules
All of these domains are linked and function together to meet the basic human need, metabolism. Malinowski called this whole function commissariat, which is a cultural response to metabolism. In this way, he outlined the basic human needs and cultural responses as follows.
Basic Needs
Cultural Responses
1. Metabolism
1. Commissariat
2. Reproduction
2. Kinship
3. Bodily Comforts
3. Shelter
4. Safety
4. Protection
5. Movement
5. Activities
6. Growth
6. Training
7. Health
7. Hygiene
Malinowski is known for his psychological analysis. A classic example is his analysis on magic. In Trobriand Islands, magic was used for various purposes, such as to kill enemies and prevent being killed, to ease the birth of a child, to protect fishermen, and to ensure harvest. Malinowski hypothesized that magic is reliable in domains where there is a limited amount of scientific knowledge. Magic appears to work in these areas because people cannot handle situations with systematic knowledge. For example, the Trobriand Islanders did not practice magic when they fished inside a protected coral reef because they were able to predict catch and safety by weather and the conditions of the sea. In contrast, they did rely on magic when they went ocean fishing because it was difficult to predict unknown dangers and the amount of fish they might harvest. Based on this data, Malinowski argued that magic has a profound function in exerting human control over those dimensions that are otherwise outside of our element. The essential function of magic is to extend control over uncontrollable elements of nature and thereby reduce anxiety.
Malinowski is also known as a pioneer of fieldwork, which is intense and long-term research conducted among people in a particular community. He set criteria for fieldwork and brought this method to a fundamental element of the discipline. His criteria require anthropologists to actually live in communities and to acquire the language of the people among whom they are conducting their researches.
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Biography of MalinowskiSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1997 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
· Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1944 A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955, Britain)
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown is credited with Structural Functionalism, which analyzes particular social systems in a wider context of many different societies. Radcliffe-Brown was concerned with what keeps societies from falling apart. He identified similar customs in different societies and compared them in order to discover the customs’ inherent functions. Through this comparative method, he attempted to explain underlying principles that preserve the structure of each society.
For example, Radcliffe-Brown analyzed exogamous moieties in aboriginal societies of Australia, Melanesia and America. An exogamous moiety is a custom in which a population is divided into two social divisions and a man of one group must marry a woman of another. Since these three different aboriginal societies had almost no contact in history, it is surprising that they shared the custom of exogamous moieties. How can this phenomenon be explained? Radcliffe-Brown found that the two social divisions of exogamous moieties within each culture were named after a pair of animals or birds which are similar, such as coyote and wild cat, or eaglehawk and crow. He argued that these animal pairs represent opposing characteristics of a society, for example, friendship and conflict, or solidarity and opposition. According to Radcliffe-Brown, those aboriginal societies incorporate the dual divisions in their kin systems in order to keep the balance between these opposing characteristics. This balance is important for the stability of the whole society.
Radcliffe-Brown successfully explained many aspects of family structures that other anthropologists viewed as primitive customs. His analysis of social structure and function encouraged anthropologists to look at how a particular custom plays a role in maintaining social stability. At the same time, his analysis was criticized for not considering historical changes of traditional societies, especially those caused by Western colonialism.
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Biography of Radcliffe-BrownSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Lavenda, Robert H. and Emily A Schultz. 2003 Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. Boston: Mc Graw Hill.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
· Winters, Christopher. 1991 International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York: Garland Publishing.
Edward Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973, Britain)
Edward Evans-Pritchard is known for his approach in analyzing non-western belief systems, especially those in Africa. He believed that anthropologists should analyze societies by considering the local people’s views and should not entirely rely on presupposed ideas about that society. In other words, an anthropologist needs to understand people’s behaviors and thoughts in their own context, which is based on their local reality. Evans-Pritchard studied seemingly alien norms in Africa and demonstrated that they make perfect sense from the local person’s point of view. His goal was to present ethnographies of indigenous beliefs in an accurate and coherent manner to those who do not belong to these indigenous societies.
One of the famous ethnographies by Evans-Pritchard is Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande, an analysis on witchcraft within the Azande society of East Africa. The Azande often credit witchcraft when they meet misfortunes. For example, when a building suddenly collapses and people who happen to be under its roof are injured, they say this happening is due to witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard argued that this witchcraft explanation supplies a missing link. The Azande know these two facts: that the supports for the roof were undermined and that people were sitting under the roof in order to escape the glare of the sun. However, the Azande need an explanation that also connects these two events, and that explanation is witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard’s analysis shows that the Azande’s witchcraft explanation is rational according to their way of reasoning. Besides anthropological values, this ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande has been a primary point of reference in philosophical arguments about rationality and relativism.
Since Evans-Pritchard valued contexts and meanings in cultures, he saw societies as moral systems rather than natural systems. He argued that anthropology should be modeled on humanities, especially history, rather than on science that searches for universal laws. He outlined three steps of anthropological analysis, each with direct parallels in historical methods. First, an anthropologist attempts to understand another society and translate it to his own. The only difference between anthropology and history is that the anthropologist’s data is produced from direct fieldwork while the historian relies on written record. Second, the anthropologist and historian use analysis to transform their raw data into sociological explanations of a society’s structure. Finally, the anthropologist compares the social structure that his analysis has revealed with that of other societies. Prior to Evans-Pritchard, Functionalists such as Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown had eliminated historical methods from anthropology, in order to make the discipline scientific. However, Evans-Pritchard reintroduced historical thinking back into anthropology by valuing local logic and value systems in his cultural analysis.
Evans-Pritchard and his work have made a great impact on the study of African societies in particular and the study of non-western systems of thought in general. His approach, which forces an anthropologist to step into local people’s shoes, is regarded as necessary by those who study different societies and cultures.
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Biography of Evans-PritchardSources:
· Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1996 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
· Salzman, Philip Carl. 2001 Understanding Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theory. Prospect Heights: Waveland Press.
Overview of the Theory of Culture and Personality
The theory of Culture and Personality explained relationships between childrearing customs and human behaviors in different societies. There were two main themes in this theoretical school. One was about the relationship between culture and human nature. The other was about the correlation between culture and individual personality.
The theory of Culture and Personality was based on Boas’ cultural relativism and Freud’s psychoanalysis about early childhood. If we premise that all humans are hereditarily equal, why are people so unique from society to society? The theoretical school answered this question by using Freud’s psychoanalysis: the differences between people in various societies usually stem from cultural differences installed in childhood. In other words, the foundations of personality development are set in early childhood according to each society’s unique cultural traits. Based on this basis, the theoretical school of Culture and Personality researched childrearing in different societies and compared the results cross-culturally. They described distinctive characteristics of people in certain cultures and attributed these unique traits to the different methods of childrearing. The aim of this comparison was to show the correlation between childrearing practices and adult personality types.
The theory of Culture and Personality was on the cutting edge when it emerged in the early 20th century. Its analysis of the correlation between childrearing customs and human behaviors was, at that time, a practical alternative to using racism explanations for analyzing different human behaviors.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978, The United States)
Margaret Mead is known for the approach called Culture and Personality. This approach answers the fundamental question in cultural anthropology of, “why are we the way we are?” by explaining the relationship between childrearing customs and human behaviors. She saw an individual as a product of culture that shape the person in unique manners. These cultural traits are learned by the individual as an infant, and they are reinterpreted and reinforced as the individual goes through its stages of life. In short, the differences between people in different societies are usually cultural differences imparted in childhood. This interaction between individual and culture is dynamic and a complex process by which humans learn to be humans.
Mead’s works had much in common. They were aimed at a popular audience as well as anthropologists and they were directly related to social problems in the United States. By using cross cultural data, Mead critiqued specific aspects of American life. One of her famous works was Coming of Age in Samoa, which argued that the turmoil associated with adolescence in the United States was not found in Samoa, and that therefore this adolescent confusion was a product of culture, not biology. In Samoa, adolescence was not a stressful period because in general Samoan society lacked stress. Since the transition from childhood to adulthood was easy and smooth in that society, the young did not suffer from tribulations. The implications of this research, and the argument that adolescent turmoil was not an inherent characteristic of the human condition, gave significance to Mead’s work.
This research was also a source of controversy 55 years later. In 1983 Derek Freeman published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and unmasking of an anthropological myth, in which he argued that Mead systematically distorted Samoan society. Based on his own research, Freeman depicted Samoan society as full of stress and competition. Even though Mead had passed away by then, Freeman’s view raised a serious debate that split anthropologists between Mead’s side and Freeman’s.
Not only an anthropologist, Mead was also a public character at that time. Her central concern, how a human infant is transformed into an adult member of a particular society, brought her to analyze parenting and child development. Her research had some influence on Dr. Spock’s writings on infant care, and consequently for the rearing of the post-world war II baby boomers.
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Biography of MeadSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Overview of Neoevolutionism
The theory of Neoevolutionism explained how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process. The theory of cultural evolution was originally established in the 19th century. However, this Nineteenth-century Evolutionism was dismissed by the Historical Particularists as unscientific in the early 20th century. Therefore, the topic of cultural evolution had been avoided by many anthropologists until Neoevolutionism emerged in the 1930s. In other words, it was the Neoevolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary anthropology. The main difference between Neoevolutionism and Nineteenth-century Evolutionism is whether they are empirical or not. While Nineteenth-century evolutionism used value judgment and assumptions for interpreting data, the new one relied on measurable information for analyzing the process of cultural evolution. The Neoevolutionary thoughts also gave some kind of common ground for cross-cultural analysis. Largely through their efforts, evolutionary theory was again generally accepted among anthropologists by the late 1960s.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Julian Steward (The United States, 1902-1972)
Julian Steward is an Neoevolutionist who focused on relationships between cultures and the natural environment. Although Steward learned Historical Particularism when he was a graduate student of anthropology, his interests later turned to environmental influences on cultures and cultural evolution. He argued that different cultures do have similar features in their evolution and that these features could be explained as parallel adaptations to similar natural environments.
Steward began his ethnographic career among the Shoshone, a Native American tribe in the Great Basin in the West of the United States. Through studying the Shoshone society in the dry harsh environment, he produced a theory that explained social systems in terms of their adaptation to environmental and technological circumstances. Steward’s evolutionary theory, cultural ecology, is based on the idea that a social system is determined by its environmental resources. Steward outlined three basic steps for a cultural-ecological investigation. First, the relationship between subsistence strategies and natural resources must be analyzed. Second, the behavior patterns involved in a particular subsistence strategy must be analyzed. For example, certain game is best hunted by individuals while other game can be captured in communal hunts. These patterns of activities reveal that different social behaviors are involved in the utilization of different resources. The third step is to determine how these behavior patterns affect other aspects of the society. This strategy showed that environment determines the forms of labor in a society, which affects the entire culture of the group. The principal concern of cultural ecology is to determine whether cultural adaptations toward the natural environment initiate social transformations of evolutionary change.
Although Steward did not believe in one universal path of cultural evolution, he argued that different societies can independently develop parallel features. By applying cultural ecology, he identified several common features of cultural evolution which are seen in different societies in similar environments. He avoided sweeping statements about culture in general; instead, he dealt with parallels in limited numbers of cultures and gave specific explanations for the causes of such parallels. Steward’s evolutionary theory is called multilinear evolution because the theory is based on the idea that there are several different patterns of progress toward cultural complexity. In other words, Steward did not assume universal evolutionary stages that apply to all societies. For example, he traced the evolutionary similarities in five ancient civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. These cultures shared parallels in development of form and function because all of them developed in arid and semi-arid environments where the economic basis was irrigation and flood-water agriculture. He argued that these similarities stem not from universal stages of cultural development or from the diffusion of civilization between these regions, but from the similar natural environments.
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Biography of StewardSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1997 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1998 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
· Winters, Christopher. 1991 International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York: Garland Publishing.
Leslie White (The United States, 1900-1975)
Leslie White developed the theory of cultural evolution, which was ignored by most anthropologists at that time. White’s attempts to restore the evolutionary topic started in the 1920s, when he was impressed by Morgan’s model and logic of his evolutionary theory. White decided that whatever problems the theory had, it could not be dismissed. His main contribution was that he provided scientific insights to the evolution of culture. He created a formula that measures the degree of cultural development.
First, White divided culture into three components: technological, sociological and ideological, and argued that the technological aspect is the basis of cultural evolution. The technological aspect is composed of material, mechanical, physical and chemical instruments, as well as the way people use these techniques. White’s argument on the importance of technology goes as follows:
1. Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival.
2. This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and diverting it for human needs.
3. Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently have an advantage over other societies.
4. Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an evolutionary sense.
Based on the logics above, White expressed the degree of cultural development by the formula: E x T = C. In this method, E is the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year, T shows the efficiency of the tools used for exploiting the energy, and C represents the degree of cultural development. Presenting this measurement, White asserted that developing effective control over energy is the prime cause of cultural evolution.
As shown in his theory of cultural evolution, White believed that culture has general laws of its own. Based on these universal principles, culture evolves by itself. Therefore, an anthropologist’s task is to discover those principles and explain the particular phenomena of culture. He called this approach culturology, which attempts to define and predict cultural phenomena by understanding general patterns of culture.
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Biography of WhiteSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
· Winters, Christopher. International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York
Overview of Neomaterialism
The theoretical school of Neomaterialism developed soon after Neoevolutionism emerged in the late 1930s. Neomaterialism was strongly influenced by Neoevolutionism, which asserted that material conditions determine other aspects of societies. Although both theories focus on surrounding environments of societies, they took different approaches. While Neoevolutionists considered environments to be independent forces that shape culture, Neomaterialists examined relationships between populations and environments. The Neomaterialists claimed that societies function to maintain a balance between human activities and the productive capacity of the environment. Neomaterialism was extremely popular in the 1970s and 1980s. This approach continues to be the most powerful and enduring theoretical positions within modern American anthropology.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Marvin Harris (1927-2001, The United States)
The Neomaterialist, Marvin Harris, developed the approach of Cultural Materialism, which explains culture based on the practical problems of earthly human existence. Cultural Materialism identifies three universal components in all societies: infrastructure, structure, and superstructure, as shown in Figure 1 below.
The infrastructure consists of fundamental elements for human survival and has two subcomponents: the mode of production and the mode of reproduction. The structure consists of domestic and political economy. The superstructure consists of shared cognitive and ideological patterns and behaviors in the society. Harris analyzed relationships among these three components of societies and argued that they are related through the “Principle of Infrastructural Determinism.” This principle asserts that the infrastructure is the basic foundation of sociocultural life and that it determines the formation of the structure. Then the structure asserts a strong influence on the formation of the superstructure. Harris stressed that the flow of these causal relationships could operate in the reverse direction, from superstructure to infrastructure. However, opposite flow happens with less frequency and is less significant. Harris also explained an explanation on why the infrastructure is so important for sociocultural life. In his view, the infrastructure has priority over the other structures because it directly relates to human survival and physical well-being. Only after basic needs are met, can humans become concerned with social organization and ideology. Harris’ Cultural Materialism approach was based on his belief that anthropology is a science. Since science is based on laws, anthropology should focus on infrastructures because they are governed by laws.
A famous example of Harris’ Cultural Materialism approach is the analysis of sacred cows in India. He argues that the Hindu taboo on killing cattle stems from material reasons rather than cognitive ones. In Indian society, it is economically efficient to use cows as draft animals rather than as meat. This analysis shows that infrastructures determine other aspects of a society, including symbolic-ideal realms of the culture. Harris made distinctions between etic and emic perspectives in Cultural Materialism research. Etic conveys an anthropologist’s point of view; emic represents the point of view of natives observed by the anthropologist. Harris regards the etic category as more important than emic category because outside researchers are able to see the basic foundations of social structures. Therefore, his analysis of India’s cattle is based on an etic perspective, which does not necessarily match with Indians’ feelings towards cows.
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Biography of HarrisSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1997 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1998 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Roy A. Rappaport (The United States, 1926-1997)
Roy A. Rappaport was a cultural materialist who explained cultural phenomenon in terms of material factors among people and the surrounding natural environment. One of his famous books, Pigs for the Ancestors, was an example of his cultural materialistic approach. This book describes the role of a religious ceremony among Tsembaga, a community of horticulturalists in New Guinea. This community conducted a ritual, called kaiko, when they won new land from warfare. In the ceremony, the Tsembaga planted ritual trees on the border of new territory and slaughtered a large number of pigs for pork. The Tsembaga explained to Rapapport that they slaughter pigs in order to offer the pork to their ancestors, and they plant ritual trees in order to create a connection with ancestral souls on their new land. In addition to describing Tsembaga’s point of view, Rappaport calculated caloric exchanges among the community, the natural environment, and neighboring populations.
As a result of this calculation, Rappaport found that the kaiko ritual was articulated with the ecological relationship among people, pigs, local food supplies, and warfare. Warfare and the succeeding kaiko ritual occurred every couple of years and this cycle corresponds with the increasing pig population. In other words, the ritual kept the number of pigs within the capacity of the natural environment and prevented land degradation. At the same time, the kaiko ceremony distributed surplus wealth in the form of pork and facilitated trade among people.
Rappaport’s analysis on kaiko ritual is typical of cultural materialist point of view. In general, religious ceremonies are strictly cultural and can be explained in terms of values and other non-material concepts. However, Rappaport revealed how the kaiko ritual is interrelated with material aspects of the Tsembaga society and their surrounding natural environment.
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Biography of RappaportSources:
· Barfield, Thomas 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Overview of Structuralism
Structuralism assumes that cultural forms are based on common properties of the human mind. The goal of Structuralism is to discover universal principles of the human mind underlying each cultural trait and custom. This theoretical school was almost single handedly established by Claude Levi-Strauss.
The theoretical basis of Structuralism came from linguistics. All of us know how to use our languages even though we are not aware of the grammatical and phonetic rules. The job of a linguist is to discover these unconscious principles of languages. In the same fashion, the Structuralists tried to design a systematic method to uncover this underlying structure of cultures.
Structuralism has been influential, especially in the analysis of kinship and marriage, and that of myth and symbolism. It also helped the emergence of contemporary theoretical schools, such as Symbolic Anthropology, Cognitive Anthropology, and Postmodernism. However, Structuralism has not been applied to other fields of anthropology. In order to claim that Structuralism constitutes a general science of communication and sociocultural behavior, it would be necessary to apply this approach to other areas, such as economic or political anthropology.
Sources:
· Kottak Conrad Phillip. 2000 Cultural Anthropology. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
· Seymour-Smith, Charlotte. 1986 Dictionary of Anthropology. Boston: G.K. Hall.
· Winthrop, Robert H. 1991 Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Greenwood Press.
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-Present, France)
Claude Levi-Strauss is credited with Structural Anthropology, which assumes that cultural forms are based on common underlying properties of the human mind. Levi-Strauss believed that human minds have certain characteristics which stem from the functions of the brain. These common mental structures lead people to think similarly, regardless of their society or cultural background. Since culture is formulated by human minds, which follows the same pattern of functions, all cultures are based on common general rules.
According to Levi-Strauss, among these universal mental characteristics is the need to classify: to impose order on aspects of nature, on people’s relationships with nature, and on relations between people. Levi-Strauss argued that a universal aspect of classification is opposition, or contrast. Furthermore, he discovered that one of the most common means of classifying is by using binary opposition, such as good and evil, white and black, old and young, high and low. He argued that a fundamental characteristic of the human mind is the desire to find a midpoint between such oppositions.
Levi-Strauss first applied his ideas about classification and binary opposition towards kinship and published The Elementary Structure of Kinship in 1949. One of the most famous writings by Levi-Strauss is his Mythologiques series, in which he applied Structuralism to the analysis of myths. He saw myths as symbols that represent our social existence. For example, in the story of Asdiwal, a myth among the Timshian in Canada, there are parallel opposite pairs, such as Matrilocal/Patrilocal, Journey West/Journey East, Sea/Land, and Sea Hunting/Land Hunting. In fact, each oppositional pair is composed by one real characteristic and one imaginary characteristic in the Tsimushian society. In other words, these opposites do not exist in reality. Levi-Strauss argued that these fantasy oppositions reveal our tendency of classifying our complicated reality by giving explanations.
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Biography of Levi-StraussSources:
· Kottak Conrad Phillip. 2000 Cultural Anthropology. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
· Seymour-Smith, Charlotte. 1986 Dictionary of Anthropology. Boston: G.K. Hall.
· Winters, Christopher. 1991 International Dictionary of Anthropologists. New York: Garland Publishing.
· Winthrop, Robert H. 1991 Dictionary of Concepts in Cultural Anthropology. New York: Greenwood Press.
Overview of Cognitive Anthropology
The theoretical school of Cognitive Anthropology examines how people perceive the world around them. The Cognitive Anthropologists believe that the world itself is chaotic and humans understand it through classification. In other words, we put in order the world by noticing some phenomena and ignoring others or by grouping some aspects together and excluding others. Cognitive Anthropologists argue that each culture has its own system of classification. People perceive and organize phenomena, such as materials, events, behaviors and emotions. For example, although the Americans distinguish between dew, fog, ice and snow, the Koyas of India do not. They call all of these forms mancu and do not think the differences among them are significant. On the other hand, the Koyas distinguish seven different kinds of bamboo by giving them different names while the Americans call all of them simply bambo. This example shows that people in different cultures may perceive the same phenomenon differently because of their own cultural systems.
The purpose of Cognitive Anthropologists is to discover how different people perceive the world based on their cultural systems. They use linguistic analysis, especially naming, as one of the main methods. For example, Harold C. Conklin examined how people name and categorize colors and revealed the order that people create in their culture. Instead of attempting to search for universal laws that apply to all cultures, Cognitive Anthropologists revealed classification systems which are unique to each culture.
The approach of Cognitive Anthropology forced anthropologists to rethink their traditional ethnographic methods. If each culture has its own classification system, anthropologists have inappropriately classified the behavior of different people based on anthropologists’ cultures’ classification systems. The relativistic approach of Cognitive Anthropology contributed to the development of Symbolic Anthropology and Postmodernism.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Harold C. Conklin (The United States, 1926-Present)
Harold C. Conklin is a Cognitive Anthropologist who examined how people perceive the world around them. In his field research Hanunoo color Categories, Conklin revealed that people in different cultures recognize colors differently because of their unique linguistic classification systems. Conklin conducted his research among the Hanunoo in the Philippines. He analyzed the Hanunoo color criteria and compared their classification system with the American one.
Conklin used linguistic methods because a vocabulary strongly influences the classification of colors. In addition to recording how the Hanunoo described colors of their natural and artificial surroundings, Conklin showed them painted cards, dyed fabrics, and many other colored materials. As a result, he found that the Hanunoo group colors at the following two levels. The first level is general, where there are four terms of colors: darkness, lightness, redness, and greenness. These colors are distinct from each other and people always used the same color name to describe a certain color sample. The second level is specific, with hundreds of color names. Since many color names overlap, people did not necessarily agree with each other when they classified colors in this level. In addition to actual colors, Conklin found that the Hanunoo pay attention to moisture, texture and shine of objects and give different color names according to these criteria.
Conklin concluded that the Hanunoo color classification system is based on lightness, darkness, wetness, and dryness. These color criteria are different from the American color classification system, where moisture, texture and shine of objects are not considered. Prior to Conklin’s findings, researchers assumed that the Hanunoo confused colors because the people seemed to call the same color by different terms. However, Conklin showed that seeming contradictions stemmed from the researchers’ lack of understanding of the Hanunoo’s color criteria. The researchers could not understand Hanunoo’s color categories because the researchers imposed their own color criteria from their culture. Conklin’s analysis helped anthropologists see how people in different cultures conceptualize their world in their own ways.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Overview of Feminist Anthropology
The theoretical school of feminist anthropology emerged in the 1970s. The feminist anthropologists have questioned male-centered assumptions within anthropology and have researched women’s statuses and roles in societies. This theoretical school has developed over time, which can be divided into three periods: the 1970s, the 1980s, and from the late 1980s to the present.
When feminist anthropology emerged in the 1970s, the theoretical school revealed that women and gender relationships were significant topics of social life. The feminist anthropologists claimed that past anthropologists did not fully explore human culture because they neglected these gender issues. One of the feminist anthropologists of this period is Sally Slocum, who showed that scholars had neglected women’s roles in human evolution by focusing on men’s hunting rather than women’s gathering. The most obvious contribution of feminist anthropology of this period was the increased awareness of women within anthropological analysis and theories.
In the 1980s, feminist anthropology moved to cross-cultural analysis on women and gender issues. They demonstrated that the definition of gender changes historically and cross-culturally. For example, materialist feminists presented cross-cultural analysis on differences in women’s status, roles, and power. Eleanor Leacock falls into this category of study.
Until the mid-1980s, the feminist anthropologists tended to assume women to be a homogenous group where they shared a subordinate position under men. In the late 1980s, however, feminist anthropologists began to attack this notion. They argued that the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s was led by white-middle class scholars and that the movement failed to consider a variety of divisions within women. These feminist anthropologists showed that wealthy women’s social positions and attitudes support social systems that oppress poor women, especially non-white women. For example, one of the feminist anthropologists, Ann L. Stoler, examined European colonialism in Asia and revealed that European women contributed to the colonialism by enforcing racial segregations.
The new trend started in the late 1980s led to a greater multicultural focus in the 1990s and the present. Some feminist anthropologists question the objectivity of science and argue that anthropologists are not the only interpreters of culture. These feminist anthropologists are exploring new, experimental forms of ethnographic writing. One way is to include a variety of viewpoints in ethnographic writing. Another way is to introduce researchers’ own thoughts and experiences in their ethnography. Some feminist anthropologists encourage women of color to write about their cultures for themselves and challenge other anthropologists to take their voices into account. In addition, some feminist anthropologists have adopted nontraditional forms of anthropological writing, such as poetry and fiction.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Eleanor Burke Leacock (The United States 1922-1987)
Eleanor Burke Leacock is a feminist anthropologist who showed that female inferiority is not a universal condition, but a product of economic conditions. Until the 1960s, anthropologists believed that women were inherently subordinate to men in any society in the world. This inferior status of women was explained as the reflection of gender differences. Leacock argued that this theory was false. She showed that the subordination of women has stemmed from the change in economic system from communal style to capitalistic one. Leacock pointed out that women in egalitarian societies have a great degree of independence over their lives and activities. Although these traditional societies do have different gender roles between men and women, this separation does not mean unequal gender statuses. Leacock argued that anthropologists had confused this gender-based division of labor with female inferiority because of their own class-based social system.
Influenced by Marxist materialism, Leacock claimed that economic development causes women to lose their independence and become subordinate to men. She showed this correlation by three steps. First, kin-based societies tend to be characterized by communal ownership, egalitarian social relations, and nonhierarchical gender relationships. Then, a class system evolves and the development of capitalism breaks the population into two groups: those who have a control over resources or labor and those who do not. This new economic system damages the nonhierarchical gender relationships by denying unquestioned cooperation, reciprocity and respect for individual autonomy. In this capitalistic system, men dominate resources and rely on women for unpaid domestic work. Finally, women are deprived of control over their labor even though women’s domestic labor is essential to the reproduction of the workforce. In this way, the subordination of women is an inevitable outcome of economic development.
Leacock’s historical ethnography among the Montagnais in Canada revealed how the change of economic system leads to the subordination of women. Since the contact with Europeans, the Montagnais had traded furs for manufactured goods from Europe. This trade introduced capitalism, which undermined the basis of egalitarianism in the Montagnais society. A full century later after the European contact, the Jesuit missionaries arrived and enforced economic and social reform to the Montagnais. In addition to a capitalistic economic system, the missionaries imposed Catholic family values, which are based on patriarchy, monogamy, female sexual fidelity and the abolition of divorce. This historical process in the Montagnais society reveals that the subordination of women is not an inherent characteristic of human societies but the product of economic change.
With other feminist anthropologists, Leacock corrected male-centered assumptions within anthropology by providing detailed ethnographic research in various societies. It is almost commonsense in contemporary anthropology that female subordination is not a universal condition or an inherent gender relationship.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Ann L. Stoler (1949-Present, The United States)
Anne L. Stoler is a feminist anthropologist who showed there are different social statuses and power relationships within the category of women. Her article, Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in Twentieth-Century Colonial Cultures, revealed a mechanism where privileged women can oppress poor women and men by simply following dominant social systems. Stoler examined European colonialism in Asia including the areas of contemporary India, Indonesia and Malaysia. Her examples of European colonialists included the Dutch, French and British. Stoler claimed that European women in colonies had two contrasting roles regarding their social status. They were oppressed by European men and also they oppressed indigenous people. The following description details this dynamic.
Stoler claimed that European colonialism was based on racial differences between whites and non-whites. The colonialists justified their prestige by defining themselves as a superior race compared to colonized people, who usually had darker skin. Although this racial distinction was useful for creating colonial authority, there was a pitfall in this system---the existence of mixed race children between European men and local women. Colonial administrations saw mixed-race children as a serious problem because their existence would blur the distinction between the superior and inferior races.
According to Stoler, European colonialism made profits from a particular economic system, where indigenous women lived in European men’s house doing domestic work. The use of local women kept wages low and also provided colonialists a way to control local economy and legal rights. Until the 20th century, colonial administrations were often hesitant to let European women live in colonies because the administrations believed that women would create a class of poor whites and would damage European prestige. Because of this political consideration, many European colonists were single men and they tended to generate mixed-race children with indigenous women living in their houses. Since these mixed-race children were illegitimate, they lived in poor circumstances outside of indigenous communities or became orphans. Colonial administrations considered these fair-skinned children as a danger that would undermine the basis of European colonialism.
In the early twentieth-century, European women were introduced to colonies in order to keep European men from generating mixed-race children. These women were controlled with strict rules that would benefit European colonialism. As wives of European men in colonies, they were responsible for watching their husbands to assure that they would not have contacts with indigenous women. European women fulfilled this responsibility by providing a happy family life for their husbands. In order to run a European household in the colonies, colonial European women were trained with detailed instructions about cleaning, cooking, childrearing and employer-servant relationships . They also made efforts to prevent their children from taking on customs and ideas of local culture. The ultimate purpose of these rules was to enforce racial and class distinctions between European colonists and native people. To achieve this goal, European women in colonies often created organizations to preserve European lifestyle and thought in colonies.
Stoler’s research reveals that European women in colonies had two contrasting roles: the oppressed and the oppressor. They were subject to strict rules that were aimed at providing a happy family life for men. In this sense, they were oppressed by this unbalanced gender relationship. At the same time, the same women contributed to European colonialism by actively enforcing racial segregation. In this sense, they oppressed indigenous people who otherwise would have had more freedom and self-determination.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Overview of Sociobiological Anthropology
Sociobiological Anthropology explains human social behavior from biological perspectives, especially genes. Sociobiological Anthropologists are concerned with social behaviors that are shared by all human beings, or human universals. For example, all human beings use language for communication but individuals from different cultures may speak different languages. The behavior of using language for communication is a human universal even though each culture has its own language. Sociobiological Anthropologists believe that the universal ability to use language is affected by genes. On the other hand, the skill of speaking a specific language is not the result of genetics because this skill is a learned behavior, not an inherent biological characteristic. In other words, Sociobiological Anthropologists distinguish universal traits with cultural variations and study the former. Therefore, this theoretical school is different from the 19th century evolutionism, which attributed cultural or ethnic variations to genetics.
Sociobiological Anthropology was based on Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory. He claimed that the biological evolution of physical characteristics is the result of natural selection. The Sociobiological Anthropologists applied Darwin’s theory to explain the evolution of social behavior. In evolutional explanation, the ultimate goal of human species is reproductive success, which means to pass down one’s genes to his or her offspring and future generations. Humans generally develop certain patterns of social behavior that accurately fit to their societies and surrounding environments. Sociobiological Anthropologists argue that this evolution of social behavior is the result of reproductive success. As a result of natural selection, those individuals with certain genes survive because their genes cause behavior which adapts to a particular environment. In other words, Sociobiological Anthropologists consider genes a primary source for shaping our universal social behaviors.
Sociobiologists study the social behavior of early humans and the social structures of contemporary simple societies. Since they analyze behaviors from biological perspectives, they focus on such factors as population growth, gene flow, and demography rather than cultures. Sociobiologists also study animal societies, their population structure, and communication systems in order to explain human societies.
There are three main topics in Sociobiological Anthropology: evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, and the study of human universals. The evolutionary psychologists attempt to describe the function of the human brain by studying our hunter-gatherer ancestors. They believe our brain function has been designed by the natural selection that our ancestors went through to solve adaptive problems. Next, human behavioral ecology is the study of the connection between social behavior and environment. Sociobiological Anthropologists in this group focus on specific populations and test if culturally patterned traits really enhance adaptation to surrounding environments. Finally, those who study human universals attempt to discover characteristics found in all human societies. This approach presumes that such universal traits are based on evolutionary biology and adaptation to environments.
As the above description shows, Sociobiologcal Anthropology explains universal human behavior by discovering a few unifying biological principles. Although this approach is useful for understanding some human behavior, it is also challenged for the following reasons. First, Sociobiological Anthropology does not consider effects of culture and learning, which most anthropologists see as powerful influences on human society. Second, since most Sociobiological Anthropologists research animals and insects rather than humans, other anthropologists are skeptical about applying their research findings to general human behavior. Third, Sociobiological Anthropology emphasizes genes as the explanation of human social life. This view runs contrary to cultural anthropologists’ emphasis on culture. Because of these criticisms, Sociobiological Anthropology remains controversial in anthropology.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Edward O. Wilson (1929-Present)
Edward Wilson is a Sociobiologist, who explained human social activities from biological perspectives, especially genes. He claimed that all cultural behavior will come to be understood as a reflection of underlying genetic forces. Humans generally develop certain patterns of social behavior that fit their societies and surrounding environments. Wilson clearly presented this view in his book Sociobiology, where he reduces philosophy to a biological issue.
For example, Edward Wilson explained why human societies have developed altruism in his book, Sociobiology: The New synthesis. He used altruism to describe unselfish behaviors which prohibit individuals to pass down their genetic traits to their next generation. At surface, altruism seems to reduce personal benefits of individuals. Why has the process of natural selection preferred individuals that possess altruistic behaviors? Wilson’s answer for this question was kinship and genes. He explained this mechanism by using ant colonies. Only queen ants reproduce while the rest of the ants are workers who give up their reproductive potential. These workers are devoted to supporting the queen ants who share the same genes with the workers. Wilson discovered that worker ants actually pass on a larger percentage of their genetic material to future generations by supporting the queens rather than by reproducing offspring themselves.
Based on the research findings from ant colonies, Wilson explained altruism in human societies as follows. Those who are altruistic take care of their offspring better than those who are selfish. Therefore, the children of altruistic parents have more potential for survival and tend to gain altruistic traits from their parents. When these children become adults, they will raise their offspring in altruistic manners. As a result of this cycle, altruistic individuals are more successful in passing down their genes to the next generation than those who do not possess altruistic traits.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Overview of Symbolic Anthropology
The theoretical school of Symbolic Anthropology assumes that culture does not exist beyond individuals. Rather, culture lies in individuals’ interpretations of events and things around them. With a reference to socially established signs and symbols, people shape the patterns of their behaviors and give meanings to their experiences. Therefore, the goal of Symbolic Anthropology is to analyze how people give meanings to their reality and how this reality is expressed by their cultural symbols.
Symbolic Anthropology emerged in the 1960s and is still influential. Symbolic Anthropology does not follow the model of physical sciences, which focus on empirical material phenomena. The Symbolic Anthropologists view culture as a mental phenomenon and reject the idea that culture can be modeled like mathematics or logic. When they study symbolic action in cultures, they use a variety of analytical tools from psychology, history, and literature. This method has been criticized for a lack of objective method. In other words, this method seems to allow analysts to see meaning wherever and however they wish. In spite of this criticism, Symbolic Anthropology has forced anthropologists to become aware of cultural texts they interpret and of ethnographic texts they create. In order to work as intercultural translators, anthropologists need to be aware of their own cultural basis as well as other cultures they research.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Clifford Geertz (1926-Present, The United States)
Clifford Geertz is credited as one of the principal Symbolic Anthropologists. He researched and examined the meaning of cultural behaviors by his interpretations. Geertz viewed culture as an organized collection of symbolic system. He saw people’s cultural behaviors based on these signs and symbols. With a reference to socially established signs and symbols, people shape the patterns of their behaviors and give meanings to their experiences. In other words, people rely on meanings in order to sustain their social life. According to Geertz, “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs.” (1973:5)
Geertz believed that each culture is unique and refused to seek universal laws among different cultures. Therefore the task of anthropology is to figure out signs and symbols in a specific society and to sort them out according to their significance. This method requires anthropologists to read meanings not only as the native people do but also beyond that level. The goal of this method is to determine the patterns of meanings in the society and make people’s behaviors interpretable to outsiders. This method implies that anthropologists are intercultural translators who use ethnography to convey the meanings of different cultures. One example of Geertz’s work is his analysis of a funeral in Java, the main island of Indonesia. Geertz dealt with religious and political symbols, and depicted their clash caused by a recent social change. He focused on a specific funeral case, where shifting political divisions and their symbolic expressions were affecting the ritual and emotions related to death.
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Biography of GeertzSources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Geertz, Clifford. 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Mary Douglas (1921-Present, Britain)
Mary Douglas is a symbolic anthropologist who examines how people give meanings to their reality and how this reality is expressed by their cultural symbols. She has believed that humans actively create meanings in their social lives in order to maintain their society. By analyzing these meanings, Douglas attempted to find universal patterns of symbolism.
Douglas gained wide recognition by her publication Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. In the book, Douglas cross-culturally examined people’s definition of impurity and argued that pollutants play an important role in maintaining social structures. For example, in the Lele culture of Zaire, people have rules for protecting themselves from what they define as polluted, such as the following: feces, blood, military groups, milk, used clothing, and sexual intercourse. Another example is the Old Testament, whose dietary rules define dozens of unclean animals. Obviously, these two examples are not about hygiene, but about moral symbols based on people’s concepts of impurity. By defining what is polluted, people classify their social life into two opposite categories: what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. This symbolic system gives moral order to societies. Douglas further argued that in societies where the categories of purity and pollutants are rigid, people have developed secular and religious rituals to keep themselves physically and morally pure. She claimed that these practices enforce the symbolic system and keep order in the society.
Douglas’ analysis on the links between symbolic classifications and social systems leads to her next book, Natural symbols. In this book Douglas claimed that all societies can be compared by their two cultural dimensions: group and grid. Group is the degree of division between insiders and outsiders of a society. Grid refers to rules that relate individuals to one another. For example, in a society with strong grid and strong group, individuals are regulated for the sake of the group. Within the group clearly defined social sectors, such as classes, castes and age-grades, play specialized roles that are beneficial to the whole society. This type of society tends to be larger than others and lasts longer due to less internal conflict. On the other hand, in a society with low grid and low group, people are viewed more as individuals than as a part of the group. Due to the lack of group mentality, all social classifications are negotiable and people can transact and transfer social position freely. However, this type of society has political laws to regulate individuals. In such a society, egalitarian individualism is a predominant social value. As seen in these two examples, Douglas classified different societies based on her grid and group categories. Then, she linked these two variables to other dimensions of culture, such as economic and political aspects.
In addition to classic anthropological analysis, Douglas has dealt with contemporary issues such as the following: environmental regulation, religious revivalism, social justice, AIDS and its contamination, consumer society, and aesthetic taste. What is radical about her analysis is that instead of classifying human societies into different categories, that require different analysis criteria, Douglas applies the same principles to all societies.
Sources:
· Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
· Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1997 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
· Moore, Jerry D. 1998 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
Overview of Postmodernism
The theoretical school of postmodernism claims that it is impossible for anyone to have objective and neutral knowledge of another culture. This view comes from the notion that we all interpret the world around us in our own way according to our language, cultural background, and personal experiences. In other words, everybody has their own views based on his or her social and personal contexts. Because of this aspect of human nature, anthropologists can never be unbiased observers of other cultures. When postmodern anthropologists analyze different societies, they are sensitive to this limitation. They do not assume that their way of conceptualizing culture is the only way.
The postmodernists believe that anthropological texts are influenced by the political and social contexts within which they are written. Therefore, it is unreasonable when authors try to justify their interpretations and underlying biases by using the concept of objectivity. The postmodernists claim that the acceptance of an interpretation is ultimately an issue of power and wealth. In other words, we tend to legitimize particular statements represented by those with political and economic advantage. In order to heighten sensitivity towards those who are not part of mainstream culture, the postmodernists often promote unpopular viewpoints, such as those of ethnic minorities, women and others through their works.
The postmodern anthropologists gave other anthropologists an opportunity to reconsider their approaches of cultural analysis. The anthropologists try to become sensitive to their unconscious assumptions. For example, anthropologists now consider whether they should include in ethnographies different interpretations of culture other than their own. Furthermore, anthropologists need to determine their own standards for choosing what kind of information can be counted as knowledge. This reflection leads anthropologists to enrich their work.
At the same time, the challenges by postmodernists often result in backlash from those who feel their understandings are threatened. Some anthropologists claim that the postmodernists rely on a particular moral model rather than empirical data or scientific methods. This moral model is structured by sympathy to those who do not possess the same privilege that the mainstream has in Western societies. Therefore, postmodernism will undermine the legitimacy of anthropology by introducing this political bias. Another typical criticism on postmodernism comes from the fear of extremely relativistic view. Such critics argue that postmodernism will lead to nihilism because it does not assume a common ground of understanding. Some opponents claim that postmodernism will undermine universal human rights and will even justify dictatorship. Postmodernism is an ongoing debate, especially regarding whether anthropology should rely on scientific or humanistic approaches.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Renato Rosaldo (1941- Present, The United States)
Renato Rosaldo is one of the Postmodern Anthropologists, who points out problems of conventional anthropological analysis and suggests different approaches. His work, Grief and a Headhunter’s Rage includes several important points of Postmodernism. Here is the summary of his essay:
The Ilongot tribe in the Philippines used to have a custom of killing a victim when a loved one died. Although the Ilongot no longer practice this old tradition, Rosaldo researched the custom during his fieldwork in the tribe. He asked older Ilongot men why they cut off human heads when they mourned the death of their loved ones. Their answer was simple: their rage, which was born of grief, impelled them to kill other people. Rosaldo had a hard time understanding this head-hunting custom. At first, he tried to explain the tradition by using an exchange theory, a classic anthropological model of population control. However, his explanation was absolutely unintelligible to the Ilongot’s point of view. Only after his wife’s accidental death in the field, did Ronado finally understood why the Ilngot men took heads for their loved ones. His unbearable sorrow led him to see what drove the Ilongot. At the same time, he realized why he previously misunderstand the Ilongot head-hunting custom: he attempted to apply a Western scientific model to the tribe, even though they did not share the same concepts.
Rosaldo’s work above includes the following points which are considered Postmodern approaches. First, rather than writing a conventional anthropological report, Rosaldo focuses on the process of doing fieldwork. He describes his personal experiences that lead him to understand Ilongot head-hunting. The Postmodernists value the process of understanding another culture and often write about their fieldwork experiences. This reflexivity includes the analysis of their own cultures, which is necessary to understand other cultures. Therefore, the Postmodernists see their fieldwork as the opportunity to reflect upon and analyze their own cultures as well as to analyze other cultures.
Secondly, the Postmodernists do not assume there are absolutely objective ways of analyses. When Rosaldo tried to apply the classic exchange theory to the Ilongot head-hunting, he realized this model was invalid under the local contexts of the Ilongot. Even though the theory explains observed behaviors, Rosaldo did not see it as absolute because its ideas were totally incomprehensible to the Ilongot themselves. Social scientists usually give special credibility to certain types of explanations and dismiss others in order to justify their theoretical positions. Reacting against this general trend, the Postmodernists argue that Western social science has favored a theoretical model used in physical sciences. This preference has led anthropologists to forcefully apply “objective” explanations to non-Western societies. In other words, the Postmodernists claim that anthropologists should consider local contexts of their fields and give legitimacy to explanation by the people.
Thirdly, the Postmodernists break the distinction between anthropologists and those who are observed by the anthropologists in fieldwork. In conventional situations, anthropologists’ interpretations have priority over the views of the observed. Rosaldo did not count on this kind of authority and left room for other interpretations by the Ilongot themselves. When anthropologists do not assume this authority, they are simply individuals who are trying to know certain things about another culture.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Vincent Crapanzano (1939-Present)
Vincent Crapanzano is one of the postmodern anthropologists who claim that objectivity does not exist in cultural analysis. In his work, Hermes’ Dilemma, Crapanzano demonstrates this principle by analyzing ethnographic writing of others. One of Crapanzano’s analyses is on Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight by the symbolic anthropologist, Clifford Geertz. The cockfight is a traditional gambling for prestige in Bali. Geertz depicted symbolic meanings in the cockfight and explained how these meanings influenced the Balinese lives.
Crapanzano states that Geertz’ writing is far from objective descriptions of Bali culture because Geertz controlled the texts by using various rhetorical devices. Crapanzano first points out the non-existence of the author in the texts, or a lack of reflection. Geertz described Bali society as if his presence did not affect the people in the society. Since Geertz was not a member of Bali society, he must have influenced the Balinese behaviors and thoughts just by being there. Crapanzano argues that Geertz did not consider this impact. For example, Geertz stated that the Balinese did not pay attention to him, and therefore, they acted as if he “simply did not exist” (McGee and Warms 2004:602). Crapanzano argues that Geertz’ view is not necessarily accurate. Just because Geertz felt like a non-person does not mean the Balinese viewed Geertz that way.
Crapanzano argues that ethnographers tend to mix what they believe natives think with how natives actually feel. This mistake stems from authors’ attempts to establish their authority regarding the accuracy of their texts. When an author does not distinguish between his own view and native’s views, readers tend to forget that the author’s voice is the only one they hear in the writing. Therefore, readers feel as if the text is transmitting an objective reality without any bias or interpretation of the author.
Another point Crapanzano makes is that anthropologists generalize the whole population of a particular society. For example, based on his experience with a group of informants in his research, Geertz described Balinese character as follows: “the Balinese never do anything in a simple way when they can contrive to do it in a complicated way” (McGee and Warms 2004:603) and “the Balinese are shy to the point of obsessiveness of open conflict” (McGee and Warms 2004:603). Crapanzano argues that this kind of generalization reveals a conventional attitude of anthropologists in front of their research subjects. Anthropologists tend to separate themselves from a population they are studying and reject to see the people as equal individuals. Crapanzano claims that Geertz, as an anthropologist, separated the “anthropologist” and “his Balinese” (McGee and Warms 2004:603).
The underlying concept of Crapanzano’s work is that anthropologists construct meanings by writing ethnography. Although ethnographic data themselves are mute, the act of writing is a literary construction of the author. As previous analysis shows, Crapanzano takes apart and examines rhetorical devices in ethnographic writings. The method for this critical analysis is called deconstruction, which reveals interpretations and hidden biases that authors have for justifying their authority. Deconstruction does not resolve inconsistencies, but rather reveals underlying hierarchies involved in conveying information. With this knowledge, we can look at texts with a different, more critical perspective. Deconstruction forced anthropologists to become sensitive to their unconscious assumptions and authorities.
Source:
· McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
