The Development of Anthropological
Thought

 Nineteenth Century: Origins
 Early Twentieth Century: Development
 Mid-Century Evolutionary Approaches
 Anthropological Thought Today: Divisions

 Scientific Orientations
 Humanistic Orientations
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Either/Or?
Why Can’t All Those Apologists Agree?

 Anthropology became a separate academic field.
 Studied how humans progressed to a
"civilized" cultural existence.
 Unilineal Evolution - applied the theory of evolution to culture.

1.
2.
3.
Compile accounts of other cultures written by observers.
Compare the cultures to determine which are the simplest and most complex.
Classify the cultures into stages of development.

4.
5.
6.
Label theses stages: Savagery,
Barbarism, Civilization.
Place any new cultures in the classification.
Invent an explanation for why the people in one stage developed into the next stage.

 Each culture is unique and must be studied on its own terms.
 Each culture changes along its own path, depending on the influences that affect it.

 Fieldwork is the primary means of acquiring reliable information.
 Cultural differences and biological differences have little to do with each other.

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Diffusionists
 Anthropologists who study how cultural elements (“traits”) were transmitted
(“diffused”) from one people or region to another.
Configurationalism
 Each culture develops a distinctive set of feelings and motivations that orients the thoughts and behaviors of its members.

 The cultural features of a people should be explained by the functions they perform.
 Contributions:
 Importance of fieldwork.
 Relativism and Holistic perspectives .

 Theory that analyzes cultural elements in terms of their useful effects to individuals or to the persistence of the whole society.

 Return to cultural evolution.
 White emphasized importance of technology.
 Steward emphasized the adaptation to the local environment in making cultures the way they are.

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Scientific Approach
 Studies focus on humans as part of nature and seek to account for similarities and differences in human cultures.
Humanistic Approach
 These scholars believe that humans are unique because they are conscious, cultural beings, and their main goal is to describe and interpret particular cultures.

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
Sociobiology or Evolutionary Psychology
 Assumes that a body and its behavior are means of replicating itself
Cultural Materialism
 All mammals have the same imperative needs: food and water, regulation of body temperature (shelter and clothing), reproduction, coping with disease, competing for resources and so on.

 Interpretive Anthropology
 Emphasizes the uniqueness and particularity of each culture and that all social behavior has an inherent symbolic component.

 Postmodernism
 Emphasizes the relativity of all knowledge and focuses on how the knowledge of a particular time and place is constructed, especially on how power relations affect the creation of ideas and beliefs.

1. Several changes which led to the beginnings and growth of anthropology are: a) b) c) d)
Darwinism and the more ancient age of the earth
Historical particularism and functionalism
Marxism and cultural materialism
Unilineal and multilineal evolutionism

Answer: a
 The new theories of Charles Darwin and the knowledge that the earth was older than previously thought , led to the development of anthropology as a field of study.

2. The theory of unilineal evolution: a) developed from Darwin’s ideas on natural selection b) states that different peoples represent different grades of development c) defines stages of savagery, barbarism, and civilization d) all of the above

Answer: d
 The theory of unilineal evolution developed from Darwin’s ideas on natural selection , states that different peoples represent different grades of development, and defined savagery, barbarism and civilization as stages of development.

3. Materialists emphasize: a) b) c) d) human uniqueness ideas cultural adaptation of resources the cultural construction of resources

 Materialists emphasize the cultural adaptation of resources .