Chapter 4, The Growth of
Anthropological Theory
Key Terms

American historicism
Headed by Franz Boas, a school of
anthropology prominent in the first part of the
twentieth century that insisted upon the
collection of ethnographic data (through direct
fieldwork) prior to making cross-cultural
generalizations.

barbarism
The middle of three basic stages of a
nineteenth-century theory developed by
Lewis Henry Morgan that all cultures evolve
from simple to complex systems: savagery,
barbarism, and civilization.

binary oppositions
A mode of thinking found in all cultures,
according to Claude Lévi-Strauss, based on
opposites, such as old–young, hot– cold, and
left–right.

cultural ecology
An approach to the study of anthropology that
assumes that people who reside in similar
environments are likely to develop similar
technologies, social structures, and political
institutions.

cultural materialism
A contemporary orientation in anthropology
that holds that cultural systems are most
influenced by such material things as natural
resources and technology.

deductive approach
The act or process of reasoning from general
propositions to specific cases, used by the
early cultural anthropologists of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

dysfunction
The notion that some cultural traits can cause
stress or imbalance within a cultural system.

ethnoscience
A theoretical school popular in the 1950s and
1960s that tries to understand a culture from
the point of view of the people being studied.

evolutionism
The nineteenth-century school of cultural
anthropology, represented by Tylor and
Morgan, that attempted to explain variations
in world cultures by the single deductive
theory that they all pass through a series of
evolutionary stages.

French structuralism
A theoretical orientation that holds that
cultures are the product of unconscious
processes of the human mind.

functionalism/functional theory
A theory holding that social stratification
exists because it contributes to the overall
well-being of a society.

functional unity
A principle of functionalism that states that a
culture is an integrated whole consisting of a
number of interrelated parts.

hypothesis
An educated hunch as to the relationship
among certain variables that guides a
research project.

inductive approach
The act or process of reasoning involving the
development of general theories from the
study of a number of specific cases. An
approach insisted upon by Franz Boas.

interpretive anthropology
A contemporary theoretical orientation that
holds that the critical aspects of cultural
systems are such subjective factors as
values, ideas, and worldviews.

multilinear evolution
Mid-twentieth-century anthropological theory
of Julian Steward who suggested that specific
cultures can evolve independently of all
others even if they follow the same
evolutionary process.

neoevolutionism
A twentieth-century school of cultural
anthropology, represented by White and
Steward, that attempted to refine the earlier
evolutionary theories of Tylor and Morgan.

postmodernism
School of anthropology that advocates the
switch from cultural generalization and laws
to description, interpretation, and the search
for meaning.

psychic unity
A concept popular among some nineteenthcentury anthropologists who assumed that all
people when operating under similar
circumstances will think and behave in similar
ways.

psychological anthropology
The subdiscipline of anthropology that looks
at the relationships between cultures and
such psychological phenomena as
personality, cognition, and emotions.

savagery
The first of three basic stages of cultural
evolution in the theory of Lewis Henry
Morgan; based on hunting and gathering.

structural functionalism
A school of cultural anthropology, associated
most closely with Radcliffe-Brown, that
examines how parts of a culture function for
the well-being of the society.

theory
A general statement about how two or more
facts are related to one another.

unilinear evolution
A theory held by anthropologists such as
Tylor and Morgan attempting to place
particular cultures into specific evolutionary
phases.

universal evolution
White’s approach to cultural evolution, which
developed laws that apply to culture as a
whole and argued that all human societies
pass through similar stages of development.

universal functions
A functionalist idea that holds that every part
of a culture has a particular function.