Major Theoretical Trends in Cultural Anthropology
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 433.
| ¹ | Trend | Time of emergence, main representatives | Major theoretical and methodological conceptions |
| Evolutionism | The 19th century, Tylor and Morgan, Johann Jacob Bachofen,Sir James George Frazer,Sir John Lubbock | It attempted to explain variations in world cultures by the single deductive theory that they all pass through a series of evolutionary stages. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| All cultures pass through the same developmental stages in the same order. Evolution is unidirectional and leads to higher levels of culture. A deductive approach is used to apply general theories to specific cases. Ethnocentric because evolutionists put their own societies at the top. | Evolutionists cannot explain why some societies have regressed or even become extinct. Morgan's sequence for the evolution of the family is not supported by the enormous amount of ethnographic data that has been collected since his time. | ||
| Diffusionism | Graebner, Smith, Franz Boas | Theory that claims certain cultural features were invented in one or several parts of the world, and then spread to other cultures. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| Societies change as a result of cultural borrowing from one another. A deductive approach is used by applying general theories to explain specific cases. Overemphasized the essentially valid idea of diffusion. | Different cultures become increasingly similar to one another, most often as a result of travel and communication. The danger of cultural leveling is that it can erode the traditional cultural practices, beliefs and interests of one group, in favor of another, therefore creating one culture that dominates all others. | ||
| American historicism | The mid 19th and early 20th centuries, Grafton Elliot Smith, R. Fritz Graebner, Franz Boas, Alfred Louis Kroeber | Historicism is a mode of thinking that assigns a central and basic significance to a specific context, such as historical period, geographical place and local culture. It encompassing two distinct forms of historicism, diffusionism and historical particularism. This implied that the development of individual societies could be plotted with respect to that of other societies and their level of development ‘measured'. Low levels of development were attributed to relatively lower mental development than more developed societies. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| Ethnographic facts must precede development of cultural theories (induction). Any culture is partially composed of traits diffused from other cultures. Direct fieldwork is essential. Each culture is, to some degree, unique. Ethnographers should try to get the view of those being studied, not their own view. | Most of the criticism of historical particularism has arisen over the issue of data collection and fear of making broad theories. Eventually, salvage ethnography was also eschewed in favor of ethnography dealing with modern processes such as colonization and globalization. Instead of asking people about their past, some anthropologists have found it more important to study the cultural processes of the present. | ||
| Functionalism | Early 20th century, BronislavMalinowski, Radcliffe-Brown. | Understand how cultures work for well-being of the individual. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| Through fieldwork, anthropologists can understand how cultures work for the individual and the society. Society is like a biological organism with many interconnected parts. Empirical fieldwork is essential. The structure of any society contains indispensable functions without which the society could not continue. | Failing to conceptualize adequately the complex nature of actors and the process of interaction. Disregard of the historical process and presupposition that societies are in a state of equilibrium. Circular analysis: needs are postulated on the basis of existing institutions which are, in turn, used to explain their existence. | ||
| Psychological anthropology | The 1920s, Benedict, M. Mead, E. Sapir | This subdiscipline looks at the relations among cultures and such psychological phenomena as personality, cognition,emotions. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| Anthropologists need to explore the relationships between psychological and cultural variables. Universal temperaments associated with males and females do not exist. The demonstration of the importance of cultural rather than biological conditioning | It is reproached for the worst type of cultural determinism. | ||
| Neoevolutionism | The 1930s, L.White, Steward | Cultures evolve in proportion to their capacity to harness energy. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| Cultures evolve in proportion to their capacity to harness energy. Culture is shaped by environmental conditions. Human populations continuously adapt to techno-environmental conditions. | It can't explain why some cultures evolve by “capturing energy”. | ||
| French structuralism | The mid-20th century in France, Lévi-Strauss, Ferdinand de Saussure | Concentrates on identifying the mental structures that undergird social behavior. Human cultures are shaped by preprogrammed codes of the human mind. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| It laid the groundwork for agency theory. Structuralism also continued the idea that there were universal structuring elements in the human mind that shaped culture. This concept is still pursued in cognitive anthropology which looks at the way people think in order to identify these structures, instead of analyzing oral or written texts. | Static, ahistorical nature of theory. Theory does not account for human individuality. Theory does not account for independent human acts. Theory does not address dynamic aspects of culture. | ||
| Ethnoscience | 1950- 1960s, Sturtevant, Goodenough | Cultures must be described in terms of native categories. This theory attempts to make ethnographic description more accurate and replicable. Ethnographers use categories from their own cultures for describing another culture. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| The primary aim of ethnoscience is to identify the implicit rules, principles, and codes that people use to classify the things and events in their world. | It is difficult to compare data collected by ethnoscientists. | ||
| Cultural materialism | 1960-1970s, Marvin Harris, Julian Steward | Material conditions determine human consciousness. Explains cultural similarities and differences as well as models for cultural change within a societal framework consisting of three distinct levels: infrastructure, structure and superstructure. | |
| Advantages | Drawbacks | ||
| Rather than rely solely on native explanations of phenomenon, Harris and others urged analysts to use empirical and replicable methods. It promoted the notion that culture change can be studied across geographic and temporal boundaries in order to get at so-called universal, nomothetic theories. Archaeologists, too, have adopted cultural materialist approaches. An etic approach to cultural phenomena may uncover vital information that would be otherwise missed by a wholly emic analysis. | The cultural materialists empirical approach to culture change is too simple and straightforward. A cultural materialist approach can disregard the superstructure to such an extent that the effect of superstructure on shaping structural elements can be overlooked. The cultural materialist emphasis on an etic perspective creates biased conclusions. | ||
| Postmodernism | The late 20th century, Geertz | Postmodernism calls on anthropologists to switch from cultural generalization and laws to description, interpretation, and the search for meaning. Human behavior comes from how people perceive and classify their world. Rejection any understanding of time because for them the modern understanding of time is oppressive in that it controls and measures individuals. Rejection Theory because theories are abundant, and no theory is considered more correct that any other. |
| <== previous lecture | | | next lecture ==> |
| Phonetic Terminology | | |