Republic of the Philippines

PARTIDO STATE UNIVERSITY

Goa, Camarines Sur

College of Education

Module 2: The Origins of Cultural Anthropology

Course Code: SSED10 Week No./Date: Week 2/ August 23-27, 2021

Course Title: Socio-Cultural Anthropology Professor: Ralph C. Navelino
Section: BSED-SS3A Term: 1st Semester 2021-2022

A. Introduction

Cultural anthropology is sometimes called social anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, or

ethnology. Cultural anthropology also includes pursuits such as ethnography, ethnohistory, and cross-cultural
research. The central organizing concept of cultural anthropology is culture, which is ironic given that culture is
largely an abstraction that is difficult to measure and even more difficult to define, given the high number of
different definitions of the concept that populate anthropology textbooks. Despite over a century of
anthropology, the most commonly used definition of anthropology is Edward Burnett Tylor’s, who in 1871
defined culture as “that complex whole that includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other
capabilities and habits acquired by humans as members of a society.”
This module explores the origins of cultural anthropology and its different theories.

B. Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. describe the origins of cultural anthropology;
2. evaluate the theories of cultural Anthropology; and
3. Create Timeline Informatics regarding the origins of cultural anthropology.

C. Learning Content

INTRODUCTION

Tylor’s definition is resonant with contemporary anthropologists because it points to some important,
universally agreed-upon aspects of culture, even though it does not satisfactorily define what culture is.
Teachers of cultural anthropology often cite culture as a constellation of features that work together to guide
the thoughts and behaviors of individuals and groups of humans. Aspects of culture often seen in introductory
classes include: (1) Culture is commonly shared by a population or group of individuals; (2) cultural patterns of
behavior are learned, acquired, and internalized during childhood; (3) culture is generally adaptive, enhancing
survival and promoting successful reproduction; and (4) culture is integrated, meaning that the traits that make
up a particular cultural are internally consistent with one another.

How Cultural Anthropology Differs from Sociology

Cultural anthropology is unique because its history as a discipline lies in a focus on exploration
of the “Other.” That is, the anthropologists of the 19th century took a keen interest in the lives and
customs of people not descended from Europeans. The first anthropologists, E. B. Tylor and Sir James
Frazer among them, relied mostly on the reports of explorers, missionaries, traders, and colonial
officials and are commonly known as “armchair anthropologists.” It was not long, however, before
travel around the globe to directly engage in the investigation of other human societies became the
norm. The development of cultural anthropology is directly tied to the colonial era of the late 19th and
early 20th centuries.

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 Republic of the Philippines
PARTIDO STATE UNIVERSITY
Goa, Camarines Sur

In the United States, the development of anthropology as a field-based discipline was driven
largely by westward expansion. An important part of westward expansion was the pacification and
extermination of the indigenous Native American cultures that once dominated the continent. By the
late 1870s, the Bureau of American Ethnology was sponsoring trips by trained scholars, charged with
recording the life-ways of American Indian tribes that were believed to be on the verge of extinction.

In Britain, some of the earliest investigations of aboriginal peoples were conducted by W. H. R.

Rivers, C. G. Seligmann, Alfred Haddon, and John Meyers, members of the 1898 expedition to the
Torres Straits. The expedition was a voyage of exploration on behalf of the British government, and for
the anthropologists it was an opportunity to document the lives of the indigenous peoples of the
region. 

History/Origins of Cultural Anthropology

The earliest historical roots of cultural anthropology are in the writings of Herodotus (fifth
century BCE), Marco Polo (c. 1254-c. 1324), and Ibn Khaldun (1332—1406), people who traveled
extensively and wrote reports about the cultures they encountered. More recent contributions come
from writers of the French Enlightenment, such as eighteenth-century French philosopher Charles
Montesquieu (1689-1755). His book, Spirit of the Laws, published in 1748, discussed the temperament,
appearance, and government of non-European people around the world. It explained differences in
terms of the varying climates in which people lived.
The mid- and late nineteenth century was an important time for science in general. Influenced
by Darwin’s writings about species’ evolution, three founding figures of cultural anthropology were
Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) in the United States, and Edward Tylor (1832-1917) and James
Frazer (1854-1941) in England. The three men supported a concept of cultural evolution, or cumulative
change in culture over time leading to improvement, as the explanation for cultural differences around
the world. 
The cultural evolutionists generated models of progressive stages for various aspects of
culture. Morgan’s model of kinship evolution proposed that early forms of kinship centered on women
with inheritance passing through the female line, while more evolved forms centered on men with
inheritance passing through the male line. Frazer’s model of the evolution of belief systems posited
that magic, the most primitive stage, is replaced by religion in early civilizations which in turn is
replaced by science in advanced civilizations. These models of cultural evolution were unilinear
(following one path), simplistic, often based on little evidence, and ethnocentric in that they always
placed European culture at the apex.
Most nineteenth century thinkers were “armchair anthropologists,” a nickname for scholars
who learned about other cultures by reading reports of travelers, missionaries, and explorers. On the
basis of readings, the armchair anthropologist wrote books that compiled findings on particular topics,
such as religion. Thus, they wrote about faraway cultures without the benefit of personal experience
with the people living in those cultures. Morgan stands out, in his era, for diverging from the armchair
approach. One of his major contributions to anthropology is the finding that “other” cultures make
sense if they are understood through interaction with and direct observation of people rather than
reading reports about them. 

Expansion of Cultural Anthropology

Cultural ecology emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. Anthropologists working in this area
developed theories to explain cultural similarity and variation based on environmental factors. These
anthropologists said that similar environments (e.g., deserts, tropical rainforests, or mountains) would
predictably lead to the emergence of similar cultures. Because this approach sought to formulate cross-
cultural predictions and generalizations, it stood in clear contrast to Boasian historical particularism.
One approach, descended from cultural ecology, is cultural materialism. Cultural materialism,
as defined by its leading theorist Marvin Harris (1927-2001), takes a Marxist-inspired position that
understanding a culture should be pursued first by examining the material conditions in which people
live: the natural environment and how people make a living within particular environments. Having
established understanding of the “material” base (or infrastructure), attention may then be turned to

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 Republic of the Philippines
PARTIDO STATE UNIVERSITY
Goa, Camarines Sur

other aspects of culture, including social organization (how people live together in groups, or structure)
and ideology (people’s way of thinking and their symbols, or superstructure). 

Late Twentieth and Turn of Century Growth

Starting in the 1980s, several additional theoretical perspectives and research domains
emerged in cultural anthropology. Feminist anthropology arose in reaction to the lack of
anthropological research on female roles. In its formative stage, feminist anthropology focused on
culturally embedded discrimination against women and girls. As feminist anthropology evolved, it
looked at how attention to human agency and resistance within contexts of hierarchy and
discrimination sheds light on complexity and change. In a similar fashion, gay and lesbian anthropology,
or “queer anthropology,” has exposed the marginalization of gay and lesbian sexuality and culture in
previous anthropology research and seeks to correct that situation.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, two theoretical approaches became prominent and link
together many other diverse perspectives, such as feminist anthropology, economic anthropology, and
medical anthropology. The two approaches have grown from the earlier perspectives of cultural
materialism and French structuralism, respectively. Both are influenced by postmodernism, an
intellectual pursuit that asks whether modernity is truly progress and questions such aspects of
modernism as the scientific method, urbanization, technological change, and mass communication.

Theories of Cultural Anthropology

1. Cultural Evolutionism: According to this theory, all cultures undergo the same order. To develop a
better understanding of these various development stages is important to briefly review these various
stages and their sub-stages. Savagery, barbarism and civilization were three classifications that classical
anthropologists used to divide culture.
2. Diffusionism: Was a deductive and rather theoretical, lacking of evidence from the field. It maintained
that all societies change as a result of cultural borrowing from one another. It highlighted the need to
consider interaction between cultures but overemphasized the essentially valid idea of diffusion.
3. Historicism: Start by collecting specific data and then move on to develop general theories. Each
culture is, to some degree unique.
4. Functionalism: Through direct fieldwork, anthropologists seek to understand how the parts of
contemporary cultures contribute to the well-being of the individual and society.
5. Neo-evolutionism: Cultures evolve in direct proportion to their capacity to harness energy.

D. Learning Activities and Assessment Tasks

Task 1. Q & A: Answer the following questions in two to three sentences only regarding the Origins of Cultural
Anthropology.

1. How do the origin of cultural anthropology influence the research approaches?

2. What are the different theories of cultural anthropology?

3. Which theory of cultural anthropology is the most applied in today’s culture?

Task 2. TIMELINE INFORMATICS: Create a timeline showing the Origins of Cultural Anthropology.

Scoring Rubric:

Criteria 4 3 2 1
Background Helps reader to Appropriate range Inadequate range Insufficient range
understand the but lacks details in and missing and detail
case; all important some areas. important details. provided.

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 Republic of the Philippines
PARTIDO STATE UNIVERSITY
Goa, Camarines Sur

details included.
Writing Quality Some Inconsistent,
Concise, consistent Needs significant
inconsistencies rambling, unable to
writing. editing.
across document. comprehend.
Format Included all Included all Used a different
Did not include
sections and sections but some format but did not
required sections
formatted format justify in cover
or use a format.
consistently. inconsistencies. letter.
Artifacts and Most of the Some of the
All artifacts are No artifacts are
significant artifacts are artifacts are
accompanied by a accompanied by
accompanied by a accompanied by
caption that clearly the caption that
caption that clearly the caption that
explains the clearly explains the
explains the clearly explains the
importance of the importance of the
importance of the importance of the
item including item including
item including item including
date. date.
date. date.

E. Assignment: Answer the following question in two to three sentence only.

1. What are the role of cultural relativism in sociology?

2. Differentiate the differences between cultural relativism and ethnocentrism?

3. What is the relationship of human rights in cultural relativism?

F. References:
Shultz, Emily & Lavenda, Ed. (2009). Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition. Oxford UP
Incorporated

Kottak, Conrad (2012). Mirror for Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. McGraw-Hill

Lewis, Elizabeth (2019, April 08). An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.

https://www.thoughtco.com/cultural-anthropology-4581480

Appadurai, Arjun (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota
Press.

Borofsky & Robert, Ed. (1994). Assessing Cultural Anthropology. McGraw-Hill.

Prepared by: Reviewed by: Approved:

RALPH C. NAVELINO JOAN A. MONFORTE, PhD MARITA S. MAGAT, PhD

FACULTY PROGRAM DIRECTOR DEAN

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