EPG Pathshala Anthro Theories

e-PG Pathshala
ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES
PAPER-1
6. Anthropological theories:
(a) Classical evolutionism (Tylor, Morgan and Frazer)

(b) Historical particularism (Boas); Diffusionism (British, German and
American)
(c) Functionalism (Malinowski); Structural-functionlism (Radcliffe-Brown)
(d) Structuralism (L’evi - Strauss and E.Leach)
(e) Culture and personality (Benedict, Mead, Linton, Kardiner and Cora –du
Bois).
(f) Neo - evolutionism (Childe, White, Steward, Sahlins and Service)
(g) Cultural materialism (Harris)
(h) Symbolic and interpretive theories (Turner, Schneider and Geertz)
(i) Cognitive theories (Tyler, Conklin)
(j) Post- modernism in anthropology
Introducing Anthropological Theory
This module is going to introduce anthropological theories to you the way it developed in different national
traditions. Fredrik Barth et.al (2005) in the book ‘One discipline ,Four ways’ have traced the theoretical
development of the discipline of Anthropology in four different national traditions of Great Britain, Germany,
France and United States. Alan Barnard (2000) also traced the link between anthropological theories and
national traditions especially highlighting the British, American and French traditions. The module is divided in
to four sections. First one deals with the interface between theory and method in the discipline, second one
discusses the relationship between the facts and different logics of drawing inferences and generalizations, the
third section introduces the emergence and nature of various anthropological theories that we are going to
discuss in the remaining modules of the whole course and finally we shall attempt to situate the manner in
which anthropological theories consolidated with in the Indian national tradition.
What is a Theory?
Every discipline is grounded on its own set of theories which develop over a particular point of disciplinary
history. Unfolding of the discipline can be better understood in terms of its (i) theoretical rigor and (ii)
methodological orientation. It’s the theory that provides the broad frame work or orientation for
interpretation of facts and the methodology provides specific rules, the logical guidelines for collection and
analysis of the data in this regard. Theory provides the template of ideas to think, methodology provides the
techniques for collection of ideas so that they can be logically connected to one another in form of a
theoretical frame work. Thus theory and methodology are two important basis for sustaining the edifice of the
discipline.
The most important question remains before us – what is a theory? Theory is a set of propositions or
postulates explaining the nature of ‘society’, ‘culture’, ‘human behavior’ and ‘social relationships’. Theories, in
simpler terms, are statements that use various concepts and ideas as analytical tools or heuristic devices to
explain social phenomena of different scale and magnitude. Theories are generally able to explain a wide range
of phenomena through a limited set of central and significant thought categories. Thus concepts constitute the
basic elements and logics cement them together. The relationships among these concepts are weaved
together in such a manner giving rise to a series of propositions or a grand proposition which is a theoretical
explanation of the phenomena. Theory is thus a body of knowledge that explains a wide range of phenomena
from different cultural back ground.
Elements of a theory
Every theory comprises of certain elements. These elements are interconnected each giving rise to the others
and each shaping the other. Thus a meaningful set of ideas logically interconnected and capable of explaining
other phenomena come up. Anthropological theory, like any other social science theory, comprises of the
following elements: (i) Questions (ii) Assumptions (iii) Methods and (iv) Evidence.
Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology
Introduction to Theories in Anthropology
Questions are the gaps in the system of knowledge. Many of our understandings are not perfect or complete.
The existing theories may explain the phenomena partly and therefore many questions remain unanswered
and that marks the beginning of the search for the new theories. The new theories are sought through
answering these questions. In other words, search for these questions may give rise to new theories. But the
point remains that how are this search carried out? Is there any specific manner in which it should be done?
What should mark the beginning of this search? What should be the point of departure?
The search for finding answer to these inexplicable phenomena often begins with some assumptions. The
anthropologists come up with certain probable or possible explanations. These are mere assumptions and not
the final statements. The assumptions are not accepted from the beginning. They are scrutinized, questioned
and verified before getting accepted. Assumptions if formulated systematically, takes the shape of a
hypothesis.
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a broad statement pointing out a relationship between two variables under study. Variables are
social or biological phenomena whose value vary or differ from time to time or in different situations. The
variables can be measured with accuracy and precision. Some kind of relationship can be posited between two
seemingly unconnected variables. The relationship can be direct or inverse. If increase in one leads to increase
in other variable, the relationship is directly proportional. Similarly if decrease in one variable leads to decrease
in the other, then the relationship is also of directly proportional type. If increase in one variable leads to
decrease in the other (or the vice versa), then the relationship is of inversely proportional type.
The two variables we are talking of are also different nature. Depending on the phenomena in question one set
of variables may have independent existence and can manifest themselves without any support or help of the
other. Such variables are known as ‘Independent Variables’. While the second set of variables need the inputs
of the previous set of variables for their manifestations. The expressions of these variables are very much
connected to the other variables who determine the magnitude of the former. Thus they do not have any
independent existence; rather their manifestation depends on the magnitude of other variables. Therefore
these set of variables are called ‘Dependent Variables’. A good hypothesis is one which clearly makes a
statement about the relationship between independent variable and dependent variable which can be
measured following certain methods.
This takes us to the third important component of theory i.e. methods. We follow certain methods not only to
collect data but also to analyse them. Anthropology is a field science. Fieldwork is an important method in
anthropological research. There are other methods used in anthropology too. At this juncture it is important to
distinguish between technique and method. A technique is a tool or apparatus, verbal or mechanical, used for
eliciting information in the field .For example, observation, interview, questionnaire, case study, life histories
and genealogy etc. On the other hand method is a combination of various techniques. It is not only a mere
combination various techniques, but it refers to a complete set of rules and procedures for collection and
analysis of data .For example, comparative method, historical method, fieldwork method and survey or census
method.

Anthropology
The methods are used for collection and analysis of evidences. These are facts of social life grounded in the
empirical world. These evidences are analysed through certain logical procedure. Inferences are drawn
following two types of logical principles-inductive logic and deductive logic. When one moves from particular
to general i.e. after observing one instance moves to the second and third instance before generalizing about
the phenomena is called inductive method of generalization following inductive logic. In the second case if one
begins with the whole or the broad generalization and moves to verify it from particular instances then it is
called deductive method of generalizations based on deductive logic.
Theory, Facts and Concepts
There is a continuous feedback mechanism between theory and facts in the social world. The empirical world
has several social phenomena which can be regarded as facts. Facts are evidences that are relatively
unproblematic to understand or have more empirical reference in relation to other social phenomena which
may be based on confluence of facts. These may be regarded as building blocks of social theory or the basic
elements of generalizations. Existing theories, sometimes dated and obscure are basis for further questions or
some ethnographic work done earlier, or previously known possibilities or inductions based upon observations
may give rise to theory building. But finding of new facts on the basis of deductive or inductive method may
give rise to discovery of new facts from the empirical world or fresh interpretation of facts leading to
modifications in the existing theory.

Anthropology
In addition to facts, the concepts are also regarded as building blocks of theory. If facts are closer to the
empirical world’s concepts are derivations from it. At a very broad level we can say that if facts constitute the
empirical world, the concepts explain them. Concepts take us to the domain of abstraction linking theory and
facts. However, this generalization may appear too simplistic but points towards important analytical
possibilities.
Concepts are analytical tools or categories using which a variety of phenomena can be explained. Concepts get
weaved together in a grand scheme giving rise to a theory. These are mental constructs logically related to one
another giving rise to explanations in form of theories which are either of universal or of middle range nature.
In such cases theories explain a wide range of phenomena from a diversified cultural background. There are
also theories which can explain a phenomena occurring in the context of a given culture and hence they are
called as culture bound or culture specific theories.
Anthropology before theory
The early years of anthropology was marked with colonial writings on the non-western other mainly by the
travelers, missionaries and administrators. These writers tried to project a particular image of the non-western
societies which was based on their colonial agenda of establishing their racial linguistic and cultural superiority.
It was highly ethnocentric and reflected the colonial bias towards the ‘orient’. The cultural practices that
appeared to be odd in western standards constituted the subject matter of study. Cultural practices such as
head hunting, polyandry, tribal dormitories, sexual laxity among tribal communities became point of attraction
for colonial administrators, travelers and missionaries. Orient was painted in inferior hues in terms of race
language and culture. Thus the initial years of the discipline was marked with engagement with non-western
other with a specific agenda to show them in poor light. It hardly followed any logical principle for conducting
research. Anthropology as a discipline has also been criticized for playing in to the hands of its colonial masters
going against the interests of poor and marginalized. However, professional anthropologists of orient and
global south are trying hard to come out of colonial hangover by developing anthropology in their own national
tradition with indigenous theory.
Major Theoretical Traditions
There are many anthropological theories within the national traditions of Great Britain and USA. The British
School mainly emphasized on the issues of society, social institutions and relationships. While the American
tradition focused on culture, cultural beliefs, practices and ideologies. The French tradition explored the
intricacies of human mind and its functioning following a universal principle. The anthropological theories we
are going to discuss here are:
Evolutionism
Diffusionism
Historical Particularism

Anthropology
Structure-Functionalism
Neo-evolutionism
Structuralism
New-ethnography
Post-structuralism
Post modernism
Theories with in national tradition of India
Needless to mention here that this is not an exhaustive list of anthropological theories that the unfolding of
the discipline has witnessed so far. There are many other theories either independent or subsumed under the
ones mentioned above. However, other modules of this course will outline in detail all the available theories
with in the discipline of anthropology. The theories chosen here because they provide the major shifts in the
theoretical and methodological orientation of the discipline.
Evolutionism
Evolutionism in anthropology was inspired by writings of Hebert Spencer and Charles Darwin. Evolutionists
tried to study evolution or emergence of social institutions in pre-literate society who never had any written
history. Henry Maine, L H Morgan, E B Tylor, James Frazer and Mc Lennan were some of the scholars who
contributed to this school of thought. Henry Maine’s work on evolution of law connected it to various social
practices such as authority of father and ideas associated with patria potesta. These were called legal fictions
which constituted the very basis of study of evolution of law. Tylor studied the manner in which early forms of
religion evolved in to the modern ones. He examined the logic used by the primitive mind to arrive at an
understanding of soul as different from body. Animism, the belief in soul gave rise to ancestor worship and
polytheism and finally to monotheism. Morgan’s scheme of Savagery, Barbarism and Civilization is an
explanation of the evolution of technology and associated socio economic formations. However, all these
efforts were made to arrive at an understanding of the evolution of social phenomena in societies about which
there was no written records. Thus these societies were devoid of authentic history. This was one of the
reasons for which these scholars were criticized. They were critiqued also for being speculative, unscientific
and highly conjectural and imaginary pursuits.
Diffusionism
Parallel to evolutionism came up another theoretical tradition which investigated the culture change through
the process of migration and diffusion. Migration takes place when the carriers of culture move from one place
to another there by bringing out diffusion of culture traits. But diffusion per se implies that culture traits move
either by imitation or borrowing from one culture to another culture. Here the people do not move but the
culture traits and practices get transmitted or get diffused over a larger area. There are different schools of
diffusion (i) British School of diffusion believed that Egypt is the source of all civilizations. On the fertile banks
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Anthropology
of river Nile the seeds sprouted spontaneously, agriculture came up leading to a well-developed hydraulic
system followed with invention of wheel and alphabets. The people who invented it were worshippers of Sun.
From Egypt civilization spread to different corners of the world. (ii) The German School or Kulturkreise school
explains the process of diffusion by examining its spread in different culture circles. Kulturkreise in Germany
means culture circle. The culture traits get diffused from one region to another in terms of concentric culture
circles. The older the culture trait, larger is the area of its spread. This formula to determine the origin and
spread of culture traits came to be known as age-area hypothesis. (iii) The American School of diffusion came
up with the idea of culture areas, each having a set of culture traits distributed with in a particular geographical
area. A L Kroeber classified the different culture areas in North America on the basis of occurrence of particular
set of culture traits.
Historical Particularism
While the scholars of diffusion came up with grand theories explaining the intricacies of the process of
diffusion, Franz Boas, an American anthropologist severely critiqued the theories propounded by various
schools of diffusion. He believed that theorization should be done only after adequate data has been
generated on the phenomena in question. He argued that for the understanding of human history and
migration we need to understand it in the context of a particular culture by emphasizing on a four fold
approach to study race, language, culture and history. This is what came to be known in anthropology as
historical particularism.
Structure-functionalism
As histories of these preliterate communities were not available some anthropologists felt that there is no
need to run after something which does not exist. At the same time these anthropologists were trying to make
anthropology more and more scientific. Structure-functionalism brought out a scientific orientation to the
discipline. The pioneers of this theory argued that anthropology is a science of humanity and therefore it
should move away from being conjectural and speculative. As a science it needs to come up with laws
governing human societies and laws can be deciphered through comparison and generalization. In a humanity
which is characterized by highly variable culture, comparison becomes problematic. Therefore, Radcliffe-Brown
came up with concept of ‘social structure’ which, he claimed, facilitates comparison. Social structure is
understood as a particular mode of arrangements of parts. The parts can be interpersonal or dyadic
relationship between person and person (Radcliffe-Brown) or relationship between enduring groups such as
lineages and clans (Evans-Pritchard) or critical/cardinal relationship (Firth). It is only through comparison and
generalization that we arrive at generation of law. The idea of function was intricately connected to the idea of
structure. Every structure carries out its activities in such a manner that it fulfills certain needs of the individual
or the social system. This is the function of the social institutions. Malinowski identified seven basic needs that
culture fulfills in all known human societies. Culture is a vast apparatus or instrument which satisfies the basic
human needs. Ideas of structure and function have given rise to an empirical understanding of culture and
society known as structure-functionalism.
Neo- evolutionism

Anthropology
While the classical evolutionism was severely criticized for being speculative, a renewed interest in the idea of
evolution was witnessed in the writings of few American anthropologists such as Gordon Childe, Julian Steward
and Leslie White. These scholars felt that there is nothing wrong in examining the evolutionary process in case
of preliterate societies where there is no written history. But it is important to select the appropriate units for
study. The classical evolutionists selected units like religion, family, marriage study of which became
problematic. Instead they selected units such as time, energy, technology, environment and the associated
social variables. Thus several schemes of evolution, unilinear and multilinear, were propounded explaining how
harnessing of natural resources and energy has given rise to a particular form of social adaptation which is an
evolved form from the earlier ones.
Structuralism
Structuralism investigates how human mind perceives things through the principle of ‘binary opposition’. This
was influenced by the theoretical tradition of structural linguistics. The principles of binary contrast such as
raw - cooked, left – right and man-woman are important in providing a structure to the phenomena.
Structuralism is often regarded as a method which is neither scientific nor humanities. Structuralism was
deeply inspired by the intellectual revolution in the field of structural linguistic which wanted understand the
unconscious linguistic infrastructure and not the surface structure of the linguistic phenomena. Likewise the
structuralists are interested in the deeper structure of the social phenomena which can be deciphered by using
a structural method which is a middle path between science and humanities.
New ethnography
In early 1960s, an intellectual current in America started studying the mental processes of actors belonging to
different cultures. Every culture has its own mechanism of perceiving, classifying and understanding
phenomena around itself. They started to collect folk classifications of color, animals, seasons, plants, soils and
human relationship. All these classifications have a logical underpinning in accordance with the cultural
grammar. They believed that every culture has its own logic and reason. To unravel this cultural logic is the task
of new ethnographer. They are called new ethnographers because they did not remain confined to the study of
behavior but explored human cognition and are also known as cognitive anthropologists. Therefore, If
structuralism focusses on one cultural rule of binary opposition to understand how human mind functions ,
new ethnography tries to arrive at multiple rules for unraveling the cultural grammar of different cultures
.David Schneider and victor Turner are the pioneers in the field.
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralists attempt to synthesize the binarity between objective and subjective phenomena. Theory of
Practice by Pierre Bourdieu is one of the examples of post structuralist theory along with that of Michael
Foucault .These scholars explore body, mind and culture interface. Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus, doxa and the
field are important concepts of theory of practice.
Postmodernism
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Anthropology
Postmodernist scholars believe that truth is not singular. Most of the social science theories came up during a
particular period of human history and in a particular world region. Singularity of social voice is critiqued.
Multiple voices and contested versions find legitimate place in post modernism.
In India these theories find different manifestations. Concepts and theories given by Indian scholars such as
sanskritizations, westernization, dominant caste, sacred complex and nature man sprit complex are in
connection with the major theoretical developments of world anthropology. Indian anthropology has also
developed the innovative way of combining Indological sources with the Empirical insights for building up an
ingenious theory with in the national tradition of India.
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Anthropology
Description of Module
Subject Name Anthropology
Paper Name 10 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology
Module Name/Title Evolutionism
Module Id 04
Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

Anthropology Evolutionism
Contents
INTRODUCTION
1. Concept of Evolution
1.1 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
1.2 Edward .B .Tylor
1.3 L.H. Morgan
2. Evolution is of two types:
2.1 Classical/19th century evolution/Victorian evolution
2.2 Neo-Evolution
3. Universal and multilinear evolution
4. Multilinear evolution in relation to Unilinear evolution
5. Differential evolution
Summary
Learning outcome:
1. To know the concept of Culture.
2. Able to write short note on contributions of Evolutionary thinkers.
3. Understand the term Evolution and its types.
4. Able to write about the Spencer‘s evolution.
5. Able to write about Evolutionism.

INTRODUCTION
Evolutionism is a set of ideas or doctrine concept of Evolution. It is a sequential, directional and

gradual occurring process. It is process of systematic change. In cultural and social anthropology the
gradual, structural change of human culture is subject of study by evolutionists. The beginning of the
18th century evolutionary perspective is related to the origins of Europe rapid modernization and some
peoples thought that civilization started from Europe. In 1833 Sir Charles Lyell (1794-1875) published
Charles Lyell (1794-1875) Charles Darwin (1809-1892)
the third and last volume of ―Principles of Geology‘‘, which highly influenced Charles Darwin which
allows him to think evolution as a slow evolving process in which slow changes accumulated over a
span of time. Charles Darwin concentrated his effort on the evolution of biological forms. In his view
the most important principle governing evolution was natural selection, survival of better adapted
species. Lyell said that geological processes present in the past were much the same as those we see
today — forces such as sedimentation in rivers, erosion by wind or deposition of ash and lava by
volcanic eruptions. This is the principle of uniformitarian. This is against the theory of Noah's Flood
which is known as catastrophism. Concept of evolution is a Pre-Darwinian .The evolutionism came
around beginning of 2nd half of 19th century after the publication of Charles Darwin "origin of
species" in 1859. Darwin work was based on the Exploration on "voyage of beagle". Darwin brought
the evidence based on fact, empirical substanted the idea of evolution. These theories later influenced
by biological theory of evolution. Anthropology is a child of Darwinism said by the R.R. Merit. Most
of the early 19th and some of the 20th century aimed to develop approaches of evolution of mankind.
Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide models and theories for the
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evolution of mankind as a single entity. However, most 20th-century approaches, such as multilinear
evolution, focused on changes specific to individual societies.
Unilinear cultural evolution was an important concept in the emerging field of anthropology during the
18th and 19th centuries. Scholars began to propagate theories of multilinear cultural evolution in the
1930s, and these neo-evolutionism perspectives continue. This marks the beginning of Anthropology
as a scientific discipline and shift from ''Primitive to advanced Societies''.
1. Concept of Evolution
Evolution is gradual occurring, slow process and imperceptible i.e. too small to see. Evolution is a idea
of time. It is vertical in approach. The theory of evolution is first discovered by Charles Darwin in his
book "origin of species". Darwin was empiricist while other is metaphysist. Darwin's evidences called
Natural history expedition. Darwin shows with the help of evidences, observation his work become
highly convincing. There is other concept also like Revolution, which came later. Revolution is a
sudden change in structure and produces unanticipated changes, due to this revolution disturbs,
disrupts and disorganized. In other words revolution is a radical, relatively abrupt change that involves
change in some kind of struggle against something and somebody.
Theory of creationism : It is meant by evolution as a change from simple to complex and gradual/
imperceptible(can‘t seen) and this is contrary to the Darwinian ideas as it says that god created the
universe including humans and other living things. Creationists say that creatures started out as distinct
and separate organisms when God created them and they do not believe that organisms change into
complete differently and distinct animals through evolution.
1.1 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
He is an English philosopher and Contemporary of Darwin. He is author of book "Principles of

Sociology". He defines evolution as a change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite and
coherent homogeneity through continuous differentiation and integration and he gave the concept of
evolution in terms:
1) Process of change where all things change from the simplest of the forms to the most complex.
2) Things which are relatively undifferentiated to the things which are differentiated which mean that
one part is different from other.
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Example: Amoeba which is undifferentiated and Human being which is differentiated.
3) Change from Homogeneous (part look alike) to the Heterogeneous.
Idea of Evolution in terms of:
 Simple Complex
 Homogenous Heterogeneous
 Undifferentiated Differentiated
He thought the process of evolution is Progressive change, it is not a retrogressive. He said that all
system irrespective to other are evolving therefore he regarded as‘‘ Philosopher of universal
evolution‘‘
Evolution is a process, within it there are 2 processes:
1) Process of Differentiation -Things become different on time or dissimilar on time and it make one
part different from other. Always have probability that these parts will fall apart.Attempt to link one
part to other.
2) Process of Integration-They all are being connected. Integration go side by side with
differentiation. It compensates for differentiation. Spencer said that both the process is required side by
side. Higher the system (more evolved) betters the Integration.Spencer says that some society are
perpetually in motion i.e. unstable and unstable dissipation of motion. As a society evolve they are
more integrations of matter because of instability, motion have been taken away.
Out of Africa –origin
 Evolution involves ―dissipation of Motion and more integration of matter‖.
 Two kinds of societies:
1) Military society and
2) Industrial society.
Survival of the fittest
A major issue of Spencer is:
Struggle for food

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Elimination of weak
It was Herbert Spencer who actually coined the phrase "Survival of the fittest" in which there is a
constant struggle amongst the species i.e. struggle for food. As a result there is a continual struggle,
the stronger species survived and while the weaker species die, this is known as ―Elimination of weak‖.
J.D.Y. Peel said that most of the scholars were impressed by Spencer‘s ideas than Darwinian ideas.
Many scholars talk about evolution of human society/ culture. Some talk about Biological evolution in
which we study about stages through which we passed. In this we find the reasons origin of a
phenomenon.
Our study comprises of two things:
 Origin of society and
 Sequence of evolution.
It is not that we have to answer both the question because we are not able to answer the Origin but we
should attempt or try to find the answer.
In 1871, two prominent works were published and these are:
Edward .B .Tylor L.H.Morgan (1818-1881)
1.2 Edward .B .Tylor (1832-1917) - He talked about the Primitive culture. He mainly concern with
origin of religion. Tylor look through missionaries' accounts, explorlers' journals, ancient texts and
ethnological reports to search for similarities in human culture. Then he look that how these similarities

arrive , two possible explanations arrived - one is that the similarities is due to parallel invention or the
evidences of contacts-direct or indirect , contemporary or historical.
1.3 L.H. Morgan (1818-1881) - He talked about Ancient society. He concerns with origin of the entire
society and study the evolution of human society and culture. This is influential and enraging. He was
a pioneering American anthropologist and social theorist and he is best known for his work on kinship
and social structure, his theories of social evolution. Interested in what holds societies together, he
proposed the concept that the earliest human domestic institution was the matrilineal clan not the
patriarchal family.
2. Evolution is of two types:
 Classical/19th century evolution/Victorian evolution
 Neo-evolutionism
2.1 Classical/19th century evolution/Victorian evolution
The nineteenth century concept of evolution is known as unilinear evolution as it emphasized one
straight – line course of development. It is macro-cultural i.e. applicable to entire human society/
culture. It is ceaseless i.e. always continuing, never stop there is apocalyptic aspects (beyond which no
evolution can occur or happen).Initially Unilinear evolution regarded as a progressive change or
development and this change is good, beneficial, improvement in earlier stages. Evolution is separated
from progress. Evolution is a gradual change and a neutral term while progress is value-loaded concept
of goodness. This 19th-century unilinear evolution suggested that societies were in primitive state in
the beginning and gradually become more civilized over time, and equated the culture and technology
of Western civilization with progress. Spencer's theory of 'cosmic evolution' has much more similar
with the works of Jean-Baptist Lamarck and Auguste Comte than with contemporary works of Charles
Darwin. Spencer developed and published his theories several years earlier than Darwin.
The unilinear evolution, according to Steward, was characterize by the classical evolutionist-who ‗dealt
with particular cultures, placing them in the stages of a universal sequence ‘‘Morgan and Tylor fit in
this category. The anthropological theory tried to explain the cultural development in terms of cultural
evolution in which new culture form emerged out of the older ones. Tylor is called as Father of modern
anthropology for his contribution to the concept of culture. In the book ‗Primitive Culture‘ (1871) he
defined culture or civilization. He talk about origin of religion and postulated that culture is evolved
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from simple to complex and all societies had passed through some stages of development and identify
3 stages:
1) Animism (Worship of Soul) - It is the earliest concept of the religion and it belief in existence
of spiritual things. Belief in existence of Soul (anima).
2) Polytheism-Worship of God and Goddess.
3) Monotheism-Worship of single God.
Morgan believes that it is a uniform and progressive cultural evolution and believed that human
societies had evolved from lower to higher types through successive stages. In the book ‗Ancient
society‘ Morgan wrote about human society that passes from 3 stages:
1) Savagery (lower stage)- when human largely depend on nature for their survival. They are
hunter and food gatherers. They use fire, bow etc.
2) Barbarism (middle stage) – These are perceived to be uncivilized. Discovery of pottery for
food storage.
3) Civilization (final stage) –Human being start using Machines for food production. Technology
arrived which makes things better and easier.
These are applied to human society which includes Institution (religion, polity, kinship, economics,
specific culture traits like language, fire, plough. Cultural parallels thought to be arrive from the idea of
the psychic unity of mankind- belief that in terms of psychic make up Man was same everywhere that
we have same need, same mental framework, and same response and think alike. This psychic unity of
mankind is given by the Adolf Bastian. This account for same stages of evolution, fact that all society
will pass through the same stages (one line of evolution) known as Unilinear evolution. Although
different society have different speed some society become monotheism while other become animism.
Besides Tylor and Morgan, Haddon and Levi Bruhl also contribute in evolutionary sequences. Haddon
trace it through art forms from an early realistic stage through geometric to symbolic or abstract forms.
Because all human think alike thus, everywhere the same phenomena will originate and occurred in all
societies in same manner inspite they were quite apart and isolated from each other. This is known as
idea of Parallelism or idea of Parallel evolution.
Criticism of Unilinear Evolution
1) High degree of Ethnocentrism – People judge other culture in terms of their own belief.
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2) Over ambitious approach- Approach did not realize that the fact of past can never be
completely known because there are no residue of it or evidence to support it.
3) Archeological implements were shattered not everything available, only some evidences were
available and some are un-perished like stone implements.
4) Based on little ethnographic data- Data collected from travelllers and missionaries in which
some stories about past may be faulty or some may forget about past.
They get information of past society on the basis of contemporary ''Primitive societies''.Society may
have traits of past called as '' Survivals'' / "remnants". These are called ―social fossils" by Tylor
because they are survival of the past. Morgan called them ―remnants of the past” but this was his
assumption. No proof were there that these are characters of past society. Therefore it is Pejorative to
call these people.
A.R. Radcliffe Brown called classical evolution as a ―pseudo historical‖ and ―conjectural history‖.
B.Malinowski said ―limbs of Conjectural reconstruction‖
5) Role of Cultural contact- Use idea of culture sharing and borrowing. Morgan study kinship
terminology and collect data by preparing questionnaire and send to people working in non-western
e.g. missionaries, soldiers. He analysis it but didn‘t understand the role of cultural contact. Due to all
these reasons Unilinear evolution get rejected which led to formation of theory of Neo-evolution.
2.2 Neo-Evolution
Anthropologist revived their interest in evolutionary approaches of culture and it did not wiped out in
the nineteenth century. One of the vehement critics was R.H. Lowie said that, ‗‗evolution is far from
dead and our body is merely to define it with precision‖ (1917). Later idea of neo evolution was
brought up mainly by the anthropologist like V.G. Childe (1892-1957), J.H. Steward and L.A. white.
Neo-evolution emerged in the 1940s, by the work of the American anthropologists Leslie A. White and
Julian H. Steward and others. L.A White hypothesized that cultures became advanced as they became
more efficient at harnessing energy and that technology and social organization were both influential.
Neo-evolution is advanced concept of classical or unilinear theory of evolution. Neo-evolution dealt

with the culture as a whole, than a particular culture. They are in favor that the evolution was
essentially divergent as the cultures of the world did not pass through the similar stages of development
and cultures of development depend upon the bio-cultural balance on the ecological niche. For them
growth of culture is important rather than reconstruction of culture.
10

Marshall Sahlins, co-editor with Elman Service of Evolution and Culture (1960) Marshall Sahlins and
Elman Service were students and colleagues of White and Steward. They combine their views and
form two different kind of evolution, Specific and General Evolution. They concluded that evolution
move in two directions at a time. Specific evolution means that new forms appear from old. This
divergence and adaptation is known as Specific evolution. While General evolution refers as society
for which higher form arise from the lower forms by suppressing it and Sahlins found the Parallelism
and Convergence.
3. Universal And Multilinear Evolution
Steward did not coined the term ―multilinear evolution‖ but theory of multilinear evolution is
associated with him. Universal evolution dealt with culture rather than cultures. Steward coined the
term ‗Universal evolution‘ to label the ideas of L.A. White and V. Gordon Childe who gave the
concept of evolution of a culture as a process of Thermodynamics. It is the increase in energy and
technology for which culture is progressed i.e. culture = Energy X Technology. White focused on how
to harnessing the energy as a measure of cultural development, while Childe focused on the
technological revolution. Ultimately they both the Scholars were focusing on the advancement in the
social and mental plane. Steward did not agree with the theory of universal evolution because it does
not able to explain specific instance of cultural evolution so he came up with multilinear evolution.
Steward‘s third type of evolution called as Multilinear evolution which is a 20th-centuary social theory
and interested in particular cultures instead of finding local variations and diversity. This theory
replaced the older theory of 19th century of Unilinear evolution. The critiques of classical evolution
were widely accepted, which led to emergence of Modern theories which are free from ethnocentric
speculation, comparisons, unsourced, more or less regarding individual societies.
For Steward, ―multilinear evolution is essentially a methodology based on the assumption that
significant regularities in cultural change occur.‖ Multilinear evolution dealt with limited parallels of
forms, function and sequence which have empirical validity. This type of evolution show that social
institution does not develop in an upward straight line but along the parabolic curve. In this it starts
with particular form develop into its opposite form and the returns back to its original form but at a
different higher level. Leslie White asserted that ‗Culture evolved as the amount of energy harnessed
per capital, per year is increased‘.
4. Multilinear evolution in relation to Unilinear evolution
11

The two forms of evolution are by no means antithetical or opposed. Indeed they may occur closely
related in the same historic sequence. At certain stages of development, cultures may evolve similarly,
while at other stages they may diverge and follow separate paths.
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/subsistence-systems-food-producing-systems-1198997949397892-2/95/subsistence-
systems-food-producing-systems-41-728.jpg?cb=1225425149
Steward is basically an ecologist and his focus is on the techno-environment and techno- economic
criteria. He classified the societies on the basis of their level of ecological adjustment to the
environment. He took specific cultural similarities and differences. Still after all his effort the theory of
multilinear evolution failed to yield a wide scope .It does not able to explain the comprehensive set of
evolutionary principles to cover the growth of a culture from early historic time to the present time
5. Differential Evolution
The theory of Differential evolution was proposed by the R.L. Carneiro and S.F. Tobias. This term is
same as term used by the Hooton‘s term ‗asymmetrical evolution‘. In this it show that differential rate
of evolution which occurred in various culture. These differences also found in respect to different
spheres of the same culture.
Neo-evolutionism is more likely to be a methodology than a theory due to various reasons:
12

1) Neo-evolutionism based on the assumption that significant regularities in culture change occur
and concerns with cultural laws.
2) Neo- evolutionism deals with forms, function and sequence of culture, which have empirical
validity.
3) A theory has Concreteness and Specificity but Neo-evolutionism is not a theory in true sense
because it lacks the Concreteness and Specificity.
4) Nature of culture is dynamic i.e. culture changes with time and space. Neo-evolutionary did not
able to solve the problems of time and space to deduce a cross-cultural similarity.
For all these drawbacks, the Neo-evolutionism remains far from being a theory. It regarded as an
essential methodology.
SUMMARY
Evolution is a process of change, which is slow, gradual, directional and gradual occurring process. It is
concept of Pre-Darwinian. In 1833 Sir Charles Lyell (1794-1875) published the last volume of
Principles of Geology and gave the principle of uniformitarian, which highly influenced Darwin. The
evolutionism came around century after the publication of Charles Darwin "origin of species" in 1859.
Darwin work was based on the Exploration on "voyage of beagle. 19th-century unilinear evolution
suggested that societies were in primitive state in the beginning and gradually become more civilized
over time.
Herbert Spencer defines evolution as a change from indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite and
coherent homogeneity through continuous differentiation and integration .He thought the process of
evolution is Progressive change, it is not a retrogressive. In 1871, Edward B. Tylor talked about the
Primitive culture and origin of religion. L.H. Morgan talked about Ancient society and origin of the
entire society. Evolutionism is of two types:
1) Classical/19th century evolution/Victorian evolution-The nineteenth century concept of evolution

is known as unilinear evolution as it emphasized one straight – line course of development. It is
ceaseless i.e. always continuing. E.B. Tylor talks about origin of religion and postulated that culture is
evolved from simple to complex societies. Criticism of Unilinear Evolution-High degree of
Ethnocentrism, over ambitious approach, Archeological implements were shattered not everything
available, Based on little ethnographic data.
2) NEO-EVOLUTION- Neo-evolution was brought up mainly by the anthropologist like V.G. Childe,
J.H. Steward and L.A. white. Neo-evolution emerged in the 1940s, L.A White hypothesized that
cultures became advanced as they became more efficient at harnessing energy and technology. Marshall
Sahlins and Elman Service combine their views and form two different kind of evolution, Specific and
13

General. Sahlins found the Parallelism and Convergence. For Steward, ―multilinear evolution is
essentially a methodology based on the assumption that significant regularities in cultural change
occur.‖ Multilinear evolution dealt with limited parallels of forms, function and sequence which have
empirical validity.
14

Paper Name 10 Theories and methods in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Module Name/Title Diffusionism
Module Id 06
Theories and methods in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology
Diffusionism
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. History of Diffusionism Approach
2. Theories of Diffusion and Migration
3. Types of Diffusions
 Contagious diffusion
 Hierarchal contact
 Stimulus diffusion
 Relocation Diffusion
4. Features of Diffusion
5. Schools of Diffusionism
5.1 British School of Diffusionism
 G.E. Smith (1871-1937)

 W. J. Perry (1887-1949)
 W. H. R. Rivers (1864-1922)
5.2 German School of Diffusion
 F. Ratzel (1884-1904)
 F. Graebner (1887-1934)
 F.W. Schmidt (1868-1954)
5.3 American School of Diffusionism
 Franz Boas (1858-1942)

 Clark Wissler (1870-1947)
 Alfred Kroeber (1876-1960)
6. Critics
Summary

Anthropology
Diffusionism
Learning Objective
 To introduce students the history of anthropological thought by tracing its historical

development Diffusion School
 To classify the course of historical development, academic, and Anthropological importance in

terms of its development
 To focus on the founding thinkers and anthropologists, theories and ethnographic researches
that have constructed histories of anthropology (British, American and German) in the
historical process
 To explore the formation and emergence of anthropology as a discipline in the late 19th century
to the late 20th century.
Introduction

Anthropology
Diffusionism
One theoretical orientation will arise and may grow in popularity until another is proposed in opposition to it.
Often, one orientation will capitalize on those aspects of a problem that a previous orientation ignored or played
down. Anthropological thought deals with theories developed and contribution made by different
anthropologists. Literature available suggests that the man, his culture and society, have been subject of study;
the subject was taught under different social sciences, because in the beginning, it was difficult to decide the
subject matter of anthropology. Diffusionism is the term used by anthropologists and sociologists to account for
the spread, through time, of aspects of culture artistic traditions, language, music, myths, religious beliefs, social
organization, and technological ideas from one society or group to another. Also remaining unexplained is the
situation of culture that have had no contact with each other or with any other culture, yet exhibiting similarities
and parallels with each other. Notwithstanding the limitations, the diffusionists‘ school captured the attention of
anthropologists for a long time nurturing their faculty of critical appraisal.
Diffusionism refers to the diffusion or transmission of cultural characteristics or traits from the common society
to all other societies. They criticized the Psychic unity of mankind of evolutionists. They believed that most
inventions happened just once and men being capable of imitation, these inventions were then diffused to other
places. According to them all cultures originated at one point and then spread throughout the world. They
opposed the notion of progress from simple to complex forms held by the evolutionists. They also held that
primitive or modern is also a relative matter and hence comparative method is not applicable. They looked
specifically for variations that gradually occurred while diffusion took place.
History of Diffusionism Approach
The Diffusionism approach, popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was developed by two main
schools—the British and the German-Austrian. In general, diffusionists believed that most aspects of high
civilization had emerged in culture centres from which they then diffused outward. Diffusion, as an
anthropological school of thought, was a viable part of the development of anthropological concepts about how
societies change due to the spread of culture traits and independent inventions. However, it was suffused with
ethnocentric ideas and, as a school of thought, was only a small part of what should be the total analysis of
world cultures.
A more holistic approach, stemming from the play of Diffusionism against evolutionism, has provided a more
adequate understanding of the overall picture. It is difficult to predict what anthropological theory will be like in
the future. Some ideas are likely to be discarded or ignored, and others revised. Scholarly disciplines and
theories are very much the products of their times, and understanding how and why ideas have changed is part of
what we need to understand. But some theoretical approaches and theories lead to greater understanding because
they are more predictive of the world around us. In the next chapter, we examine the logic of explanation and
evidence and how theory can be tested by anthropological research.
Theories of diffusion and Migration
Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural trends across locations. Beliefs, practices, and ideas get shared from
person to person, and sometimes even around the world. Many cultural practices are spread by a type of cultural
diffusion called expansion diffusion. This is when a trend is spread from its originating place, outward.
There are several forms of this type of diffusion: contagious, hierarchical, and stimulus diffusion.
5

Anthropology
Diffusionism
 Contagious Diffusion: when a cultural trend is transmitted from person to person from an original
source to numerous others, similar to a virus. Even the name 'viral videos' speaks to the idea of a
contagion, spreading an idea almost like an illness would spread through contact and interaction. As
cultural trends gain in popularity and draw our attention, profit may become a motive in perpetuating the
trend. Think of how viral videos add advertising or companies pick up on Internet memes to sell more
products as a result.
 Hierarchical Diffusion: Another form of expansion diffusion is hierarchical diffusion, or when a

cultural trend is spread from one segment of society to another, in a pattern. Consider how hip hop
culture emerged from within urban areas, but is now known in all regions of society including suburban
and rural areas, as well.
 Stimulus Diffusion: Finally, stimulus diffusion is when a cultural trend spreads, but is changed by those
adopting the idea.
 Relocation Diffusion: Expansion diffusion and its various forms are not the only way that ideas and
practices are passed along to others. Another way that culture spreads is by relocation diffusion, when a
person migrates from their home and shares their culture with a new location. Relocation diffusion
accounts for much of the folk culture that can be seen in different regions based on migration patterns.
School of Diffusion
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, although the cultural evolutionism of Tylor and Morgan was still
popular and ―race‖ theory was at its height, Diffusionism began to take hold among anthropologists in several
parts of the world. The two main schools with a diffusionists viewpoint were the British and the German-
Austrian.
1. British School of Diffusion
The main spokesmen for the British school of Diffusionism were G. Elliott Smith, William J. Perry, and W. H.
R. Rivers. Smith and Perry stated that most aspects of higher civilization were developed in Egypt (which was
relatively advanced because of its early development of agriculture) and were then diffused throughout the
world as other peoples came into contact with the Egyptians. People, they believed, are inherently uninventive
and invariably prefer to borrow the inventions of another culture rather than develop ideas for themselves.
 G.E. Smith and W.J. Perry were considered ‗extreme diffusionalist‖. G.E. Smith visited Egypt to
understand the anatomy of mummies. He found the complexities of procedures in Mummification.
Hence, it made him think it was their own invention, unique and it was their own. He linked
mummification to other cultural traits construction of pyramids, stone monuments (Megalithic). Back
home in England, he saw stone monuments, hence he assumed it as a prototype of Egypt, hence,
Egyptian were centred around ― The sun worship belief system complex‖. Hence, his aim became
support his hypothesis of sun worship belief culture complex. Hence they are considered as heliocentric
school of thought or pan Egyptian. These traits can be seen in different parts of the world. He found
evidences similar to Egyptians around the world. Ex: Mayan pyramids.
6

Anthropology
Diffusionism
 Smith & Perry‐ The diffusion of culture‐1927 The origin of civilizations.
 The moderate diffusionalist thought was put forth by W.H.R. Rivers‐ Genealogical method. Working
among the Todas of Nilgiri Hills 1906. (The history of Melanesian society‐1914)‐ Especially among
mortuary ritual. Mortuary rituals among the same society (Australian aboriginals), Burial Cremation,
Placement of corps on platform.
2. German School of Diffusion
German school of Diffusionism also called cultural historical school or cultural circle or Kulturkreise.
Methodology of the cultural historical school to distinguish based on functional reason and similarities due to
historical contact. Ex: All arrows must have a sharp point, and all bows must have a sting. Functional
similarities based on Function or Form. Ratzel noted that use of bow and arrow in other places existed, but
Africa and Australia exhibit similarities in terms of material used, feathers of a particular bird, arrangement etc,
these not explained based on functional reasons, but based on historical contact due to migration. This viewpoint
was never widely accepted, and it has now been abandoned completely. Inspired by Friedrich Ratzel, Fritz
Graebner and Father Wilhelm Schmidt led the early 20th-century German Austrian diffusionists school. This
school also held that people borrow from others because they are basically uninventive. In contrast to Smith and
Perry of the British school, who assumed that all cultural traits originated in one place (Egypt) and filtered out to
cultures throughout the world, the German-Austrian school suggested the existence and diffusion of several
different cultural complexes (Kulturkreise, plural in German). Like the British diffusionists, however, the
Kulturkreise (singular) school provided little documentation for the historical relationships it assumed.
3. American School of Diffusion
A separate American Diffusionism school of thought, led by Clark Wissler and Alfred Kroeber, also arose in the
first few decades of the 20th century, but it was more modest in its claims. The American diffusionists
attributed the characteristic features of a culture area to a geographical culture centre, where the traits were first
developed and from which they then diffused outward. This theory led Wissler to formulate his age-area
principle: If a given trait diffuses outward from a single culture centre, it follows that the most widely distributed
traits found to exist around such a centre must be the oldest traits. Although most anthropologists today
acknowledge the spread of traits by diffusion, few try to account for most aspects of cultural development and
variation in terms of diffusion. For one thing, the diffusionists dealt only in a very superficial way with the
question of how cultural traits are transferred from one society to another. The failing was a serious one, because
one of the things we want to explain is why a culture accepts, rejects, or modifies a trait that one of its
neighbours has. Also, even if it could be demonstrated how and why a trait diffused outward from a cultural
centre, we would still be no closer to an explanation of how or why the trait developed within that centre in the
first place.
Franz Boas (1858‐1942): Pattern of cultural organization leads to macro pattern, aim is to reconstruct the
prehistory of American Indians. The reason why people‘s cultures in a particular geography are same because of
particular history doesn‘t relate it to any material evidence. Though no two cultures are alike, but cultures in
close proximity tend to be alike. Thereby focusing on similarities in particular culture and differences in culture
across geographers

Anthropology
Diffusionism
 Culture area: The area in which similar, cultures are found is called culture area, is geographical area/
physical environment occupied by no. of independent groups/ tribes with similar cultures (subsistence
pattern).Species of plants/crops/animals. They survive on or economic pattern. Major criteria of their
way of life
 Culture centre/Core: The circle within each circle area is culture centre associated with most
favourable environment of the culture type. It occur in its peak. Ex: Bison hunting in Great Plains.
 Culture determinism: Culture comes from culture, no external material determining culture. They are
idiographic (particular‐history), not homothetic (Scientific), this is called culture determinism.
 Age area: Used to understand the age of the trait which is seen in the major, wider distribution of the
trait from its centre, the older the trait. Boas critiqued evolutionism to the core three grounds :
Empirical, Theoretical, Methodological. He rejected the homothetic approach and favoured for
idiographic (Inductive) from particular to general theory building. Hence, he plunged into ethnographic
particularism‐ particular geography‐ history (Unique aspect of the culture is highlighted) because
historical accidents. Concept focusing on the particularity of the culture based on its unique geographic
and historical context. This lead to concept of cultural relativism, idea that each culture must be studied
and makes sense in its own context( particular and unique). Cultural relativism is against ethnocentrism,
hence cultural determinism. It was ―culture that shaped human thought and behaviour, its not because of
biology.‖
 Cultural Relativism: The idea that people‘s values and customs must be understood in terms of the
culture of which they are apart.
 Cultural Materialism: According to cultural materialists, technology and economic factors are the
most important ones in moulding a society. They also believe that types of technology and economic
methods that are adopted always determine the type of society that develops. This is known as
determinism.
Alfred Kroeber:
An engaged anthropology is committed to supporting social change efforts that arise from the interaction
between community goals and anthropological research. Because the study of people, past and present, requires
respect for the diversity of individuals, cultures, societies, and knowledge systems, anthropologists are expected
to adhere to a strong code of professional ethics.
Criticism
 The diffusionists approach was slowly being replaced by studies concerning acculturation, patterns of
culture, and the relation between culture and personality. Boas discussed how the "impact of one society
upon another could not be understood merely as the addition or subtraction of discrete culture traits, but
as a potentially major transformation of behaviour, values, and mode of adaptation"
 By World War I, Diffusionism was also being challenged by the newly emerging Functionalist school of
thought lead by Bronislaw Malinowski and A. R. Radcliffe Brown. They argued that even if one could
produce evidence of imported aspects of culture in a society, the original culture trait might be so
changed that it served a completely different function that the society from which it diffused.

Anthropology
Diffusionism
 In the 1920s, Boas and other American anthropologists, such as Robert Lowie and Ralph Linton, argued
that cultural change had been influenced by many different sources. They argued against "the grand
reconstruction of both evolutionists and diffusionists".
 James M. Blaut (1993) believed that extreme Diffusionism was racist. However, he did believe that as a
process, Diffusionism was important. He criticized extreme Diffusionism because he believed that it
contributed to the prevalent belief that "European style societies" were more innovative than non
European societies and that the proper form of development would progress according to whether or not
these culture traits had diffused from European societies.
In short all anthropologists of one kind or another are liable to investigate almost everything about human
beings: our emotions, our behaviours, how people organize their living, our language, our religion, our
behaviours and so forth. A good way to emphasize anthropology‘s broad scope is to say anthropologists are
interested in all human beings – whether living or dead, are interested in many different aspects of humans,
including their technologies, family lives, political systems, religions and languages. According to the rise and
development of different social institution as well as social facts, arts, religion, morals and various other facets
of human behaviour, which are taught under the purview of culture, the interpretations of which form the subject
matter of anthropological thought.
This meagre statistic expanded in the 20th century to comprise anthropology departments in the majority of the
world's higher educational institutions, many thousands in number. Anthropology has diversified from a few
major subdivisions to dozens more. Practical anthropology, the use of anthropological knowledge and technique
to solve specific problems, has arrived; for example, the presence of buried victims might stimulate the use of a
forensic archaeologist to recreate the final scene. Organization has reached global level. During the last three
decades of the 19th century a proliferation of anthropological societies and associations occurred, most
independent, most publishing their own journals, and all international in membership and association. The major
theorists belonged to these organizations. They supported the gradual osmosis of anthropology curricula into the
major institutions of higher learning.
Summary
In above discussion, we will be able to outline major and historical developments in the discipline of
anthropology and have a clear chronological development of anthropological theory by the end of the term.
While diffusion did provide an explanation for spread of culture traits it could not explain the origin of the trait.
In focusing on the spread of culture traits from one area and its acceptance by another area, it minimized the
creativity of human beings. In fact, one of the major debates in anthropological literature of earlier times was on
diffusion vs. invention. It was said that diffusion could not account for independent invention or for culture
change. Diffusionism refers to the diffusion or transmission of cultural characteristics or traits from the common
society to all other societies. They criticized the Psychic unity of mankind of evolutionists. They believed that
most inventions happened just once and men being capable of imitation, these inventions were then diffused to
other places. Situations of prolonged periods of contact between two or more culture in which each adhered to
its own distinctive way of life or those in which culture contact leads to selective borrowing pose a threat to the
validity of the general premise of diffusion.
Also remaining unexplained is the situation of culture that have had no contact with each other or with any other
culture, yet exhibiting similarities and parallels with each other. Notwithstanding the limitations, the
9

Anthropology
Diffusionism
diffusionists‘ school captured the attention of anthropologists for a long time nurturing their faculty of critical
appraisal. More seriously, the diffusionist‘s school represented a modest attempt to explain the presence of
similar culture traits in widely separated cultures through contact between them. It was not easy to discount it as
a principle devoid of any merit. In fact, it provided the foundation for the development of crucial ideas and
concepts that were employed not only by anthropologists but specialists of other disciplines. In doing so it
served as a melting post of inter-disciplinary critical thinking.
10

Anthropology
Diffusionism
Module Name/Title Historical Particularism: Boas School
Module Id 07

Anthropology Historical Particularism: Boas School
Introduction
Historicism or Historical Particularism is an approach to the study of anthropology and culture dating
back to the mid 19th and early 20th century and encompassing two distinct forms of historicism,
diffusion and historical particularism. While socio-cultural evolution offered an explanation of culture
change—what happened and where, it was unable to describe the particular influences on and
processes of cultural change and development. To accomplish this end, an historical approach was
needed for the study of cultural change and the development not only of what happened and where but
also why and how. Boas stressed the apparently enormous complexity of cultural variation, and
perhaps because of this complexity he believed it was premature to formulate universal laws. He felt
that single cultural traits had to be studied in the context of the society in which they appeared. In
1896, Boas published an article entitled “The Limitation of the Comparative Method of
Anthropology,” which dealt with his objections to the evolutionist approach. In it, he stated that
anthropologists should spend less time developing theories based on insufficient data. Rather, they
should devote their energies to collecting as much data as possible, as quickly as possible, before
cultures disappeared (as so many already had, after contact with foreign societies). He asserted that
valid interpretations could be made and theories proposed only after this body of data was gathered.
Boas expected that, if a tremendous quantity of data was collected, the laws governing cultural
variation would emerge from the mass of information by themselves. According to the method he
advocated, the essence of science is to mistrust all expectations and to rely only on facts. But, the
“facts” that are recorded, even by the most diligent observer, will necessarily reflect what that
individual considers important. Collecting done without some preliminary theorizing, without ideas
about what to expect, is meaningless, for the facts that are most important may be ignored whereas
irrelevant ones may be recorded. Although it was appropriate for Boas to criticize previous “armchair
theorizing,” his concern with innumerable local details did not encourage a belief that it might be
possible to explain the major variations in culture that anthropologists observe
(http://catalogue.pearsoned.ca).
Boas produced no definition of culture. Instead he concentrated on first, on refuting the evolutionist
perspective and in doing so developed the characteristics of culture which today anthropologist sill
agree to even though they do not agree on a definition of culture. Boas established that culture is
learned, shared, meaning centred and integrated. Moreover, Boas shifted anthropological thought from
the origin of Culture to the investigation of individual cultures which Boas held to be unique and
diverse. For Boas, cultures were composed of numerous traits, each with a history and situated as a
result of diffusion (Harris, 2010).
Factors Leading to Boas’ Culture Concept
First factor was Boas’ desire to work out the detailed history of delimited regions or what Alfred
Kroeber was to call culture areas. The principal methodological technique he used for this was the
study of the dissemination or diffusion of traits. For example, by an investigation of myths he
concluded that, at least with respect to mythology, the Navaho were more strongly influenced from the
3

northwest of North American than the northeast or the Mississippi Area. In brief, myths are products of
such complex histories that the search for origins is futile. The speculation of men like Tylor—who
held, for example, that “nature myths” originate in the savage’s desire to understand the universe
cannot be proven. An even more fundamental result of Boas’ conclusion regarding the complexity of
history is that he came to regard culture as an emergent system. It is not to be understood as the
product of natural mental operations of individual human beings, but as the result of its own sui
generis, historical principles. In particular, cultural traits are to be explained in terms of the principles
of diffusion and modification, the latter of which is the process whereby a trait is reshaped to fit the
new cultural context in which it is found. Boas insistence that culture is “historically determined”
amounts to saying that it is emergent. Closely associated with the development of Boas’ view that
culture is an emergent system is the growth of his cultural determinism. If culture does not arise from
within the human being, then it must come to him ready-made from without. Boas’ held that human
beings learn rather than create their culture: human behaviour and beliefs reflect not his native
intelligence but the cultural tradition in which they are raised Boas rejection of the racial explanation of
mental differences is famous and this rejection “took place mainly because Boas generally elaborated
the alternative explanation of mental differences in term of cultural determinism.” Boas recognition of
cultural determinism of the “iron hold of culture upon the average individual”, also led him to see how
thoroughly people are modified by tradition. A second important factor contributing to the emergence
of Boas’ culture concept was his fascination for getting behind the veil separating him from foreign
modes of thought. Boas conceived of the problem of subjective understanding in terms radically
different from those envisaged by Tylor (www.udel.edu).
Historical Particularism: Boas School

Boas is the name most often associated with the historicist approach to anthropology. He did not feel
that the grand theories of socio-political evolution or diffusion were provable. To him the notion of
there being one single human culture (emphasized by the term Culture with a capital C) that all
societies were evolving towards were flawed especially those that had a western model of civilization
as that towards which all societies are evolving. His belief was that many cultures (here for the first
time the term cultures with small c meaning a diversity of cultures is used for the first time) developed
independently, each based on its own particular set of circumstances such as geography, climate,
environment, resources and particular cultural borrowing. Based on this belief, reconstructing the
history of individual cultures requires an in depth investigation that compares groups of cultural traits
in specific geographical areas. Then the distribution of these cultural traits is plotted. Once the
distribution of many sets of cultural traits is plotted for a general geographic area, patterns of cultural
borrowing may be determined. This allows the reconstruction of individual histories of specific
cultures by informing the investigator which cultural elements are borrowed and which was developed
individually. Cultures then are diverse and unique and comprised of countless individual traits. For
Boas, cultures were bundles of traits. Boas argued that each cultural trait has a complex past, and
therefore he total cultural assemblage of a people “has its own unique history”. He rejected the notion
4

of more or less uniform evolutionary stages since the presence or absence of pottery, metallurgy, or the
like in a given area “seems due more too geographical location than to general cultural causes.” Boas
successfully brought about the demise of socio-cultural evolutionism primarily first by showing that
there data was speculative and un-provable and second showing that returning to points of origin was
impossible and third shifting the focus from “C”ulture to diverse, unique and integrated cultures
(www.udel.edu).
In a paper published in 1887 on “The Study of Geography”, Boas distinguished between two
fundamentally different scientific pursuits. The first seeks to discover general laws of the universe and
it considers a particular phenomenon of interest only for what it reveals about some natural law. The
second approach consists of “the study of phenomena for their own sake”. This approach seeks to
understand phenomena as they appear to the human observer; interest is directed toward a thorough
understanding of the phenomena themselves rather than toward the laws which they express. Boas
argued that the two forms of science are compatible and equally valid. This division of scientific
interest is reflected in Boas’ early work in anthropology. He was quite explicit that the first form of
science occupies an important place in the discipline. He wrote that, “certain laws exist which govern
the growth of human culture and it is our endeavour to discover these laws.” Boas was critical of the
earlier comparative method employed by the evolutionist however, and argued that a fresh approach
was needed. The earlier method was to construct classificatory schemes with which to organize the
ethnographic data; these schemes were based on the principle that the simpler and more “irrational”
customs are earlier. In other words, the evolutionist assumed that their system of classification
represented history. Boas rejected this assumption and he argued that the laws of evolution can be
derived only from an analysis of actual histories of delimited regions. It was characteristic of the period
in which Boas wrote to regard human institutions as expressions of mental life. Both the positivists and
idealists, in spite of their differences agreed on this point. Consequently, it is not surprising that Boas
believed that evolutionary law were to be found in the “psychical laws of the human mind” Like Tylor
Boas though that culture could be reduced to individual mental processes. The second form of science,
that which is concerned not with the search for universal laws but with an understanding of phenomena
for their own sake, played an even more important role in Boas’ early anthropology. He held that the
primary means for achieving this kind of understanding is the historical approach: it is possible to
attain “an intelligent understanding of culture by discovering how it came to be what it is. In his early
work, Boas returned again and again to the detailed historical accounts of particular regions, especially
in his many articles on folklore. The historical approach tracing diffusion was not the only one which
he used in order to achieve this form of understanding, however, for he also employed the principle of
subjective interpretation. He attended a conference in Berlin where he had the opportunity to interview
some Northwest Coast Indians, who had been brought to Berlin, “and opportunity was thus given to
cast a brief glance behind the veil that covered the life of those people.” He commented that “the
attraction became irascible” and with the financial aid of some friends he set off for research in British
Columbia. What attracted him so strongly was not history but the desire to get “behind the veil” that
stood between him and the thought of the Indians. Boas interest in the subjective side of culture
5

constituted a major theme in his work, and the motivation behind this interest seems to have been the
desire for understanding simply for understanding sake (www.udel.edu).
Cultural relativism is an important aspect of historical particularism. This position holds that there are
no higher or lower forms of culture. Note that this results from the presupposition that all cultures are
unique and essentially disparate. Biblically this presupposition breaks down because all peoples are
descended from the one man Adam and all shared a common culture before Babel. There is certain
validity in treating each culture as having its own distinct nature and history but this must not be
pressed too far. Since all cultures incorporate beliefs, values, customs and institutions which are now,
to a lesser or greater extent at variance from the human culture of the first community, then to the
extent that there are biblical absolutes which have bearing on the acceptability to God of cultural
expressions, it must be conceded that some cultural differences can be regarded as ‘higher’ or ‘lower’.
It is not true that the description of some cultural practices as being ‘savage’ or ‘barbaric’, and
therefore as being inferior, is simply a result of ethnocentrism. Cannibalism is wrong and incest is evil
in any culture. It is savage and barbaric and it is culturally inferior to a vast variety of other cultural
ways of treating enemies. However the school of cultural relativism must not be regarded as entirely
incompatible with a biblical approach to culture. In the first place Boas and his students made an
immense contribution, through the promotion of ethnographic fieldwork, towards the development of a
more accurate knowledge of other cultures and this showed clearly that “the evolutionists had indeed
misrepresented or overlooked the complexities of so‐called primitive cultures and that they had grossly
underestimated the intelligence and ingenuity of the non‐Caucasoid, non‐ European people of the
world.” (Wilson, 2012).
Conclusion
Boas put the idea that while all cultures are different they are nevertheless equal (the concept of
cultural relativism). He argued that using a predetermined evolutionary schema to classify them was
“not only insulting to their separate historical developments, but also bad scholarship.” Boas insisted
on the importance of detailed studies of individual cultures, marshalling “archaeological evidence, the
mapping out of the diffusion of cultural traits amongst neighbouring peoples, and the detailed
examination of language and customs.” The result was the establishment of the “historical school” of
anthropology, promoting the approach known as historical particularism. Boas argued that the attempt
to explain human thought in terms of social organisation ignored the role of people as thinking, acting
beings, and led to a relativisation of all systems of belief (including religion and science) which
undermined the claims of cultural evolutionists (social determinists) themselves. Peter Berger noted:
Relativizing analysis, in being pushed to its final consequences, bends back upon it. The relativizers
are relativized, the debunkers are debunked ‐ indeed, relativization itself is somehow liquidated
(Wilson, 2012).
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. Puts a high
6

value on fieldwork and history as a method of cultural analysis, Franz Boas was the key anthropologist
in this school of thought. He believed all humans are biologically equal; the difference among human
society is the result of culture. This type of thought rejected what was being studied in the late 19 th to
early 20th century. The theories of: Institutionalized Racism & Cultural Evolution Model. Boas’s
claims of historical Particularism had important implications. Important points of historical
Particularism were-
 No umbrella evaluation system for cultures -does not work. So, Cultures must be evaluated
under their own terms.
 Cross cultural comparison can be done but it is not a reliable source of info. So, all elements of
a culture need to be taken into account when comparing cultures, an anthropologist cannot pick
and choose characteristics.
Boas concluded that Ethnographic data collection through fieldwork is a good way to collect reliable
data (Harris, 2010).
Summary
Historicism or Historical Particularism is an approach to the study of anthropology and culture dating
back to the mid 19th and early 20th century and encompassing two distinct forms of historicism,
diffusion and historical Particularism. Boas stressed the apparently enormous complexity of cultural
variation, and perhaps because of this complexity he believed it was premature to formulate universal
laws. He felt that single cultural traits had to be studied in the context of the society in which they
appeared. Boas produced no definition of culture. Instead he concentrated on first, on refuting the
evolutionist perspective and in doing so developed the characteristics of culture which today
anthropologist sill agree to even though they do not agree on a definition of culture. Boas established
that culture is learned, shared, meaning centred and integrated. Moreover, Boas shifted anthropological
thought from the origin of Culture to the investigation of individual cultures which Boas held to be
unique and diverse. For Boas, cultures were composed of numerous traits, each with a history and
situated as a result of diffusion (Harris, 2010). First factor was Boas’ desire to work out the detailed
history of delimited regions or what Alfred Kroeber was to call culture areas. The principal
methodological technique he used for this was the study of the dissemination or diffusion of traits. A
second important factor contributing to the emergence of Boas’ culture concept was his fascination for
getting behind the veil separating him from foreign modes of thought. Boas conceived of the problem
of subjective understanding in terms radically different from those envisaged by Tylor. To him the
notion of there being one single human culture (emphasized by the term Culture with a capital C) that
all societies were evolving towards were flawed especially those that had a western model of
civilization as that towards which all societies are evolving. His belief was that many cultures(here for
the first time the term cultures with small c meaning a diversity of cultures is used for the first time)
developed independently, each based on its own particular set of circumstances such as geography,
7

climate, environment, resources and particular cultural borrowing. Based on this belief, reconstructing
the history of individual cultures requires an in depth investigation that compares groups of cultural
traits in specific geographical areas. Then the distribution of these cultural traits is plotted. Once the
distribution of many sets of cultural traits is plotted for a general geographic area, patterns of cultural
borrowing may be determined. This allows the reconstruction of individual histories of specific
cultures by informing the investigator which cultural elements are borrowed and which was developed
individually. Cultures then are diverse and unique and comprised of countless individual traits. For
Boas, cultures were bundles of traits. Boas argued that each cultural trait has a complex past, and
therefore he total cultural assemblage of a people “has its own unique history”. Cultural relativism is
an important aspect of historical Particularism. This position holds that there are no higher or lower
forms of culture. Note that this results from the presupposition that all cultures are unique and
essentially disparate. Boas put the idea that while all cultures are different they are nevertheless equal
(the concept of cultural relativism). He argued that using a predetermined evolutionary schema to
classify them was “not only insulting to their separate historical developments, but also bad
scholarship.” Boas insisted on the importance of detailed studies of individual cultures, marshalling
“archaeological evidence, the mapping out of the diffusion of cultural traits amongst neighbouring
peoples, and the detailed examination of language and customs.” Boas’s claims of historical
Particularism had important implications. Important points of historical Particularism were one is that
no umbrella evaluation system for cultures -does not work. So, Cultures must be evaluated under their
own terms. While second one is that cross cultural comparison can be done but it is not a reliable
source of info. So, all elements of a culture need to be taken into account when comparing cultures, an
anthropologist cannot pick and choose characteristics. Boas concluded that Ethnographic data
collection through fieldwork is a good way to collect reliable data.

Module Name/Title Functionalism: Malinowski
Module Id 09

Anthropology Functionalism: Malinowski
Content
1. Introduction
2. Prominent Theorists
2.1. August Comte
2.2. Herbert Spencer
2.3. Bronislaw Malinowski
2.4. Emile Durkhiem
2.5. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
2.6. E.E. Evans-Pritchard
2.7. Sir Raymond Firth
2.8. Sir Edmund Leach
2.9. Lucy Mair
2.10. Talcott Parsons
2.11. Robert Merton
3. The Concept Of Social Function
3.1. Emile Durkhiem‟s idea of Function:
3.2: The analogy between social life and organic life
3.3. Modification of Idea of Function
3.4. Different nomenclature for Functionalism
4. Main Schools Of Functionalism
4.1. Malinowski's Functionalism
4.2. Radcliffe-Brown‟s structural-functional Approach
5. Methodologies
3

6. Accomplishments
7. Decline of Functionalism
8. Criticism
9. Neo-Functionalism
Summary
The Learning Outcomes
With the help of following e-text Students will be able
 To build the concepts of functionalism.
 To know about the prominent theorists associated with functionalism.
 To understand various schools of thoughts related to functionalism.
 To know about the causes behind its decline.

1. INTRODUCTION
In Anthropology or in any other discipline, there is always a continuous flow of ideas. One theoretical
orientation arises and grows in popularity but as another comes into action; the popularity of the former
might get either enhanced or hindered. Mostly the new orientation focuses upon those aspects of a
problem which were not considered in the previous one. In social-cultural Anthropology we come
across a historical sequence of theoretical approaches as follows:
a. Evolutionism
b. Diffusionism
c. Historical particularism
d. Functionalism
e. Neoevolutionism
f. Structuralism
But here our main concern is FUNCTIONALISM which has been considered one of the prominent
schools of thoughts in order to understand various aspects of culture and society. Functionalism arose
as a reaction to evolutionism and diffusionism in early twentieth century.
Functionalism looks for the function or part that is played by several aspects of culture in order to
maintain a social system. It is a framework that considers society as a system whose parts work
together to promote solidarity and stability.
This approach of theoretical orientation looks at both social structure and social function. It describes
the inter-relationship between several parts of any society. These parts or the constituent elements of a
society could be named as norms, traditions, customs, institutions like economy, kinship, religion etc.
These parts are interrelated and interdependent.
Functionalism was mainly led by Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe Brown. Both were purely
functionalists but their approach slightly differed as Malinowski is known as functionalist but
Radcliffe-Brown is mainly known as Structural Functionalist. Malinowski suggested that individuals
have physiological needs (reproduction, food, shelter) and these needs are fulfilled by the social
institutions. He talked about four basic "instrumental needs" (economics, social control, education, and
political organization), that require institutional devices to get fulfilled. While Radcliffe-Brown
focused on social structure rather than biological needs. He considered society as a system. He looked

at institutions as orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system.
Radcliffe-Brown was inspired by August Comte who was also a functionalist.
2. PROMINENT THEORISTS:
2.1. August Comte (1798-1857): He was a French philosopher. He said that science relies upon
empirical knowledge. Through his notions of social statistics and social dynamics he established a
direction for social research. Through social static‟s Comte maintained that units of investigation were
the individual, family, society and the species. He is known as father of Positivism.
2.2.Herbert Spencer (1820-1903): He was a British Philosopher. He is well known for applying the
theory of natural selection in society. His work Principles of Sociology is very famous. He used an
analogy between society and organism. According to Spencer as the structural parts of the human body
like digestive system, muscles, and various other organs function independently to maintain the
survival of organism, same way the social structures work together to maintain the society. Spencer‟s
main elements of study included an equilibrium model with respect to the problems of social order and
social change. He also focused upon the functional requirements that are common to all societies.
2.3. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942): He was one of the founding fathers of British social
anthropology. He did his honours in subjects like mathematics, physics and philosophy and in 1910 he
enrolled in the London School of Economics to study anthropology.
With Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski pushed for a paradigm shift in British Anthropology that brought a
change from the historical to the present study of social institutions. This theoretical shift gave rise to
functionalism and established fieldwork as the constitutive experience of social anthropology.
Malinowski's functionalism was greatly influential in the 1920s and 1930s. As applied methodology,
this approach worked, except for situations of social or cultural change. However, Malinowski made
his greatest contribution as an ethnographer. He also considered the importance of studying social
behavior and social relations in their concrete cultural contexts through participant-observation. He
considered it essential to consider the observable differences between what people say they do and
what they actually do. His detailed descriptions of Trobriand social life and thoughts are among the

well known ethnographies of world and his Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) is one of the
most widely read works of anthropology. He was one of the leading Functionalists of 20th century.
Fig1: Malinowski with native, Trobriand Islands 1918
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronis%C5%82aw_Malinowski#/media/File:Wmalinowski_triobriand_isles_1918.jpg)
2.4. Emile Durkhiem(1858-1917): David Émile Durkheim was a French Sociologist and philosopher.
He was famous for his views on structure of society. According to Durkhiem functionalism emphasizes
a societal equilibrium. In case of any disturbance in the social structure, the various interrelated parts of
the system tend to maintain the social structure and solidarity. These parts make up the whole of
society. Emile Durkhiem argues that the functions of a social system should be studied by an
ethnographer and it should be understood how these institutions function together to maintain the
social whole. He defined the Social Function of a social institution as a correspondence between it and
its needs (besoins). This idea of need was later on modified by Radcliffe-Brown who found it more
biological. Radcliffe-Brown replaced „need with the necessary conditions of existence for human
societies’. He was succeeded in establishing an objective basis for a science of social pathology.
2.5. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955): He is known as founding father of functionalism associated

with the branch known as structural-functional approach. He studied moral science, which
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incorporated philosophy, economics and psychology at Cambridge. He earned the nick-name "Anarchy
Brown" during this time because of his political interests and affiliations. After completing his degree
in 1904, he conducted fieldwork in the Andaman Islands and Western Australia. Radcliffe-Brown's
major emphasis was on the contribution of various phenomena to the maintenance of the social
structure. He was mainly focused on the institutions of kinship and descent and argued that these parts
(institutions) of a society determine the character of family organization, politics, economy, and inter-
group relations. He was influenced by Emile Durkhiem but he modified the idea of need given by
Emile Durkhiem. He also pointed out several drawbacks in the analogy drawn between organic life and
social life.
Fig2: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Radcliffe-Brown#/media/File:Alfred_Radcliffe-Brown.jpg)
2.6. E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973): He studied history at Oxford and anthropology at the
University of London. Evans-Pritchard was considered as one of the most notable British
anthropologists after the Second World War. He is best remembered for his work with the Nuer,
Azande, Anuak and Shilluk in Africa. His publication Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the
Azande (1937) was the first ethnography of an African people that was published by a professionally
trained anthropologist. His work among the Nuer is also well known. In opposition to Radcliffe-
Brown, Evans-Pritchard rejected the idea of social anthropology as a science and considered it as a
comparative history. His work among African societies neglects to treat women as a significant part of
the social whole. In the beginning he followed functionalism but later on shifted to humanistic
approach.
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2.7.Sir Raymond Firth (1901-2002): He was a social and economic anthropologist from New Zealand.
He is well known for establishing a form of British Economic Anthropology. Firth conducted research
in most areas of social anthropology, but his intensive fieldwork in Tikopia is well known .Perhaps his
greatest contribution to the functionalist paradigm is the distinction he pointed out between social
structure and social organization. Firth‟s other significant contribution to anthropology includes
development of a theoretical framework emphasizing choice, decision, organization and process in
social and institutional behaviour.
2.8. Sir Edmund Leach (1910-1989) : He was very influential in social anthropology.He was focused
upon the complex interrelationship of ideal models and political action in a historical context. He was
an ethnographer and his most influential ethnographic works were based on fieldwork in Burma,
Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah), and Sri Lanka. His initial theoretical approach was functionalist,
Leach then shifted to processual analysis. Leach was later influenced by Claude Levi-Strass and
adopted a structuralist approach. His 1962 publication Rethinking Anthropology offered a challenge to
structural-functionalism.
2.9. Lucy Mair (1901-1986): Lucy Philip Mair was a British anthropologist. She was involved in the
subject of social organization. She was an advocate of applied anthropology and argued that it should
be a separate discipline. She was more concerned with public affairs.
2.10. Talcott Parsons (1902-1979): He was an American sociologist who contributed to the structural-
functionalist school. He conceptualized the social universe in terms of four types and levels of action
systems i.e. culture, society, personality, and behavioural with each system having to meet four
functional needs i.e. adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and latency). He analyzed the operation
and interchanges of structures and processes within and between systems by taking these points into
consideration. He used the term Structural Functionalism. He valued broad comparative studies.
2.11.Robert Merton (1910-2003): He was an American Sociologist. He always stressed upon the
importance of empirical research. His functionalist theories are “middle-range” variety. Middle range
theories are applicable to limited range of data.
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Merton came to distinguish between two usages for the word function:
 Manifest Functions: Those functions that are expected.

 Latent Functions: These are hidden functions and are not intended.
3. THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL FUNCTION
The term „function‟ has several meanings ranging from Biological, physical sciences to Social
Sciences. In Biological sciences the term acquired a definite meaning in terms of a relationship
between an organism and its parts of the organs. The use of this term in Social cultural Anthropology
came into light in 19th century. The 19th century sociologists August Comte and Herbert Spencer
regarded groups of societies or individual societies as similar to biological organisms.
3.1. Emile Durkhiem’s idea of Function:
He argued that any sociological explanation should consist of two major components i.e. 1.) the cause
of the phenomena and 2.) its function. In Social cultural anthropology the term function is issued in
preference to „end or purpose‟.
Emile Durkhiem (1895) described the function as follows:
 Function refers to the contribution a part makes to the whole. Here the term whole refers to the
social system or society.
 This contribution is for the well being and maintenance of the whole.
 This contribution is to fulfil or satisfy the needs of whole. The French word besoin was used to
denote these needs.
 Once the needs are fulfilled, the whole endures itself.
 Thus function is a positive contribution.
3.2: The analogy between social life and organic life:
10

This idea of function came up from an analogy drawn between an organism and society ( a concept
propounded by Herbert Spencer and Emile Durkhiem. There were mainly three analogy in a society as
follows.
 Society is like an organism
While dealing with the analogy of social life and organic life, one can recognise the Phenomena of
Dysfunction. This phenomena deal with the efficiency of the function performed by an organism. The
Greeks of 5th century B.C. applied the same notion to the society and distinguished between two
conditions i.e. eunomia and dysnomia
 eunomia: This is a condition of good social order and social health.
 dysnomia: This condition refers to ill social health.
In 19th century Durkhiem in his application of notion of function tried to find a basis for social
pathology.
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 Society as a mode of communication or mode of transferring information
 Society as a drammatical metaphor
3.3. Modification of Idea of Function:
The concept of function that was based upon the analogy drawn between an organism and society was
further modified by A.R. Radcliffe Brown. He did not accept the term need as the word is more
biological in sense. He argued that the society has to be conceptualised in terms of its own
characteristics rather than being perpetually dependent upon biological aspects. He accounted for a
difference in society and organism. The major differences that were brought into account between an
organism and a society by Radcliffe Brown are as follows:
 He replaced the idea of need (besoin) with the idea of „necessary conditions of existence’.
These conditions are to be fulfilled in order to maintain the social structure.
 He also accounted for the major differences between an organism and a society. He said that
these differences should be kept into mind lest we become biological in our approach. The main
differences noted down by Radcliffe-Brown are:
 An organism doesn‟t change its form while its life time. For example,‟A pig does not
become a hippopotamus‟, whereas society during its lifetime may change its form. For
example: A totalitarian society may become an egalitarian society.
 An organism can be studied even after its death or it stops functioning via post mortem but
a society can be studied only when its functions.
Radcliffe-Brown considered Structure and Function as inseperable concepts so his approach was
named as Structural Functional Approach.
3.4. Different nomenclature for Functionalism
Different functionalists used different terms for this approach. Some of the nomenclature given by
prominent functionalists is as follows.
12

4. MAIN SCHOOLS OF FUNCTIONALISM:
Two versions of functionalism developed between 1910 and 1930: Malinowski‟s functionalism;
and Radcliffe-Brown‟s structural-functionalism.
13

4.1. Malinowski's Functionalism :
Malinowski was an anthropologist from Poland and is one of the most famous anthropologists of 20th
century. Malinowski at times is also known as father of Ethnography due to his extensive fieldwork in
Trobriand Islands. He was strongly functionalist. This can be understood in following two ways:
 He believed that all customs and institutions in a society are integrated and interrelated so that
if one changes the other would change as well. Each then is a function of the other.
For example: Ethnography could begin from anywhere in a society but eventually get at the rest of the
culture. A study of Trobriand fishing could lead to the ethnographer to study the entire economic
system say role of magic, religion, myths, trade and kinship etc as all these institutions are inter-
connected. A change in any of the part of society would ultimate affect the other. So in order to do a
holistic study the ethnographer might have to consider other parts of the whole also.
 The second strand of Malinowski‟s Functionalism is known as „needs‟ functionalism‟.

Malinowski (1944) believed that human beings have a set of universal biological needs and
various customs and institutions are developed to fulfil those needs. The function of any
practice was the role it played in satisfying these biological needs such as need of food, shelter
etc.
Malinowski looked at culture, need of people and thought that the role of culture is to satisfy needs of
people. Malinowski identified seven biological needs of individuals. Due to the emphasis on biological
needs in Malinowski‟s approach,his functionalism is also known as Bio-cultural Functionalism.
14

Malinowski said,’ culture is a need surveying system’. Culture ios a system which satisfies needs
such as food, reproduction, security, health, protection etc. As Malinowski gave importance to
individual needs so his functionalism is also known as „Psychological Functionalism’.
4.2. Radcliffe-Brown’s structural-functional Approach:
Radcliffe-Brown was influenced by the French sociological school and emphasised upon the social
function. This school developed in the 1890s around the work of Emile Durkheim who argued that
"social phenomena constitute a domain, or order, of reality that is independent of psychological and
biological facts. As per this sociological school the social phenomena, must be explained in terms of
other social phenomena, and not by reference to psychobiological needs.
 Radcliffe-Brown focused on the conditions under which social structures are maintained. He
also believed that there are certain laws that regulate the functioning of societies.
 He also modified the idea of need and replaced it with necessary conditions for existence for
human societies and these conditions can be discovered by proper scientific enquiry.
 He argued that the organic analogy should be used carefully. In a biological organism the
functioning of any organ is termed as the activity of that organ. But in a social system the
continuity of structure is maintained by the process of social life.
In Radcliffe-Brown’s concept of function, the notion of structure is involved. This structure involves
several constituent unit entities which maintain the continuity of social structure.
15

The year 1922 is known as „the year of wonders of Functionalism’ (annus mirabilis) as both
Bronislaw Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown published their work as an outcome of intensive fieldwork
in the same year. A.R. Radcliffe-Brown published ‘The Andaman Islanders’ and Bronislaw
Malinowski published ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’ in the same year i.e. 1922.
5. METHODOLOGIES
Functionalism had a great contribution in anthropology. Functionalism gave importance to social

institutions by considering them as active and integrated parts of a social system which function in
order to maintain social solidarity. Though Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown differed in their
approaches to functional interpretation, but both of them led to a "shift in the interpretation of social
life.
Although functionalism had certain limitations but it had a great methodological contribution. It
pronounced fieldwork and in-depth studies of societies which resulted into great literature in the form
of ethnography and monographs. The functional relationship between institutions and social structure
enhanced collection of data.
All the anthropologists who followed functional approach were mainly ethnographers who did
intensive field work among tribal societies and tried to understand their social system with the help of
several institutions associated with those societies.
6. ACCOMPLISHMENTS
 Functionalism had influenced anthropologist to a great extent. The functional approach focuses
upon the institutions and customs not just as mere a part of any society but it looks at the
functions these parts play in order to maintain the social continuity.
 This school of thoughts has contributed to the concept of culture that the culture plays an
important role in fulfilling the needs of individuals.
 The functional approach studies the inter-relationship between parts and the whole. This inter-
related study provides a framework for data collection.
7. DECLINE OF FUNCTIONALISM
 Functionalism was at its peak of influence in 1940s and 1950s but by 1960s there was a rapid
decline in its influence.
16

 The place of functionalism was taken up by more conflict-oriented approaches that were arising
in Europe.
 More recently the place of functionalism was taken up by Structuralism.
 Although the functionalist themes became absent from empirical sociology but certain
functionalist ideas could be still seen in the idea that parts of a society are interdependent, if a
part changes, others also change.
8. CRITICISM
 Functionalism became dominant in the 1950s and 1960s but with time, criticism of this
approach has come up, resulting in its decline in the early 1970s. Interactionists criticised the
functionalism for the complex nature of inter-relatedness.
 Functional theory also has been criticized for its disregard of the historical process and
for assuming that societies are in a state of equilibrium by the means of functioning of its parts.
 Functionalism considers the functions of parts of a whole to fulfil the needs but it did not look
into the matter why and how these needs emerged.
 Functionalism was greatly criticised for neglecting the historical perspective. Its anti historical
approach made it almost impossible to understand the social processes.
 Ecological factors were also ignored in functional approach.
 Functionalism ignored inequalities like race, gender, class which are the main causative agent
of conflict and tension.
9. NEO-FUNCTIONALISM
Neo-functionalism arose as a revision of Structural functionalism during 1960s. Neo-functionalist tried

to analyze phenomena in terms of specific functional requisites. They examined variety of phenomena.
Neo-functionalism shares certain similarities with functionalism as it considers issues of social
differentiation, integration, and social evolution. Some neo-functionalists also examined how cultural
processes (including ritual, ideology, and values) integrate social structures. In neo-functionalism there
is little emphasis on how the needs of whole are fulfilled.
Neo-functionalism differs from structural functionalism by focusing on the modelling of systems-level

interactions. The former deals with environmental systems and took the ecosystem into consideration.
Structural functionalism considers culture as a system while neo-functionalism considers ecosystem.
17

Neo-functionalists are concerned with issues that relate directly to fitness similar to that in evolutionary
biology. Rather than separating humans from other animals, neo-functionalists focus on groups as
biologically constituted populations that live in cooperative social groups.
Some well known neo-functionalists are:
 Niklas Luhmann
 Anthony Giddens
 Jeffrey C. Alexander
SUMMARY
Functionalism arose as the dominant school of thoughts in early 20th century in social cultural
anthropology. It came into consideration with Bronislaw Malinowski‟s ethnographic account the
Argonauts of Western Pacific which was published in 1922, the same year when Radcliffe Brown
published his work that he did on Andaman Islanders. Malinowski focussed upon biological needs that
are fulfilled by various parts of a whole. He recognised several biological needs. He argued that the
function of the culture is to fulfil these needs. Malinowski‟s approach is known as functionalism.
Radcliffe-Brown was influenced by the concept of function given by Emile Durkhiem who also talked
about analogy between organic and social life. He was also focused upon the social structure and how
this structure is maintained by units of whole. His approach got famous by the name of Structural-
functionalism.
Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown are two leading figures of functional analysis that influenced many
other sociologist and philosophers in the light of functionalism. Other prominent functionalists are
Talcott Parsons, Robert Merton, Edmund Leach, Sir Raymond Firth, etc. There are certain ideas there
are common to all functional approaches, these are:
 Society or culture may be conceptualised as a system.
 As a system, society or culture consists of parts. These parts could be groups, associations,
institutions, organisations. These parts are interconnected, interrelated or interdependent. Each
part is equally important.
 Each part has duties which are assigned to it.
18

 A change in one part brings about a subsequent change in other parts.
 Whole is greater than mere summation of parts.
During 1960s-1970s the functionalism was criticised as a result of rise of conflict theory in Europe.
The reason behind the decline of this approach was the lack of several elements into it. It lacks
inequalities. It did not consider historical perspective and ecological factors etc. Neo-functionalism
arose in which the theorists tried to overcome the drawbacks of functionalism. Main neo-functionalists
are Niklas Luhmann, Anthony Giddens, Jeffrey C. Alexander.
19

Module Name/Title Structural- functionalism: Radcliffe Brown
Module Id 10

Anthropology Structural- functionalism: Radcliffe Brown
Contents
Introduction
1. British School of Structural Functionalism
1.1 Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown’s Concept of Social Structure
1.2 S.F. Nadel
1.3 E.R. Leach
1.4 Raymond Firth’s Views on Structure-function
2. American School of Structural Functionalism
2.1 Talcott Parsons
2.2 Robert K. Merton
2.3 Kluckhohn
3. French School of Structural Functionalism:
3.1 Émile Durkheim
3.2 Levi-Strauss
Learning Outcomes
 To develop an understanding about structural functionalism
 To know about different schools of thought of structural functionalism
 To know the contribution of different pioneers to the concept
 To critically analyze to concept

Introduction
Structural Functionalism is a sociological theory that attempts to explain why society functions the way
it does by focusing on the relationships between the various social institutions that makes up society
(e.g., government, law, education, religion etc.)
Structural Functionalism is a theoretical understanding of society that puts social systems as the
collective means to fill society’s needs. In order for social life to survive and develop in society there
are a number of activities that need to be carried out to ensure that certain needs are fulfilled. In the
structural functionalist model, individuals produce necessary goods and services in various institutions
and roles that correlate with the norms of the society. Thus, one of the key ideas in Structural
Functionalism is that society is made-up of groups or institutions, which are cohesive, share common
norms, and have a definitive culture.
Gender inequality offers a good illustration. According to Structural Functionalist thought, a woman
being subordinate to men allows the cogs of society to function smoothly as everyone in the society
knows his or her respective positions in the hierarchy. The implication, of course, is that, because
society is functioning smoothly with gender stratification, such stratification is acceptable and efforts
should not be made to change the arrangement. This example illustrates that Structural Functionalism
is generally seen as being supportive of the status quo.
Malinowski and Radcliffe Brown developed the concept of synchronic functional analysis of culture
which was concerned with present and now. In their view the purpose of comparison was to explore
socio-cultural institutions of present day societies in terms of their socio-cultural similarities.
Radcliffe-Brown who had used the term function earlier than Malinowski was not ready to accept
Malinowski, who claimed himself as the father of functionalism on the basis of theory of need for
which culture, either in past or at present was functional instrument. Radcliffe-Brown put great
emphasis upon distinguishing on the structural function from the function of Malinowski and others.
According to Brown the only acceptable definition of function was, ‘the contribution an institution
makes to the maintenance of social structure”. The gap in opinions of Radcliffe-Brown and
Malinowski become so wider that Brown and his associates established a separate school of thought
known as Structural-Functional School of Anthropological thought. As the concepts of structure
become wedded with function, this school is also known as Structural Functional school. The
Structural Functional Theory also got acceptance in America by the sociologist and anthropologists,
while in French, Emile Durkheim and Levi Strauss developed Structural-Functional theory to a great
extent.

Structural Functional School is divided into three main groups, namely, British School of Structural
Functionalism, American School of Structural Functionalism and French School of Structuralism. The
names of contributors of Structural Functionalism School of Anthropology are given below:
STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL SCHOOL OF ANTHROPOLOGY
British School of Structural American School French School of

Functionalism Structuralism
Structural Functionalism
A.R. Radcliffe Brown, S.F. Talcott Parsons, Merton, Emile- Durkhiem and Levi-
Nadel, E.R. Leach, R. Firth, R.H.Lowie, M. Kluckhohn, Strauss
Mayer Fortes, E. Evans G.P. Murdock, all
Pritchard anthropologists
The concept of structure and function was first given by Herbert Spencer in his book, Principles of
Sociology (1885, Vol.1), where he talked about fundamental similarities between ‘organism’ and
‘society’. He treated society as integrated order of parts like an organism in which parts are interrelated
and integrated in order to provide the structure of that particular society. These different unites of the
society contribute valuable functions as a integrated whole for the existence of society and
maintenance of social order. This view of Spencer had made him structural functionalist.
The concept of structure and function also appeared in the writings of Emile Durkheim, French
anthropologists in his book entitled “Division of Labour” (1893) and in the Roles of Sociological
Method (1895). Durkheim is of the view that structural unites of society such as family, political,
religion, kinship, economic organization contribute valuable functions for maintaining the order of the
society. The term social structure is defined by many anthropologists and sociologists.
According to the sociologist Talcott Parsons, “Social Structure is a term applied to particular
arrangement of interrelated institutions, agencies and social patterns as well as status and roles which
each person assumes in the group” (1951:89).
Anthropologist Radcliffe-Brown the chief pioneer of British School of Structural Functionalism,

opines that “components of social structure are human beings, the structure itself being an
arrangement of persons in relationship institutionally defined and regulated” (1950:82).
1. British School of Structural Functionalism

1.1 Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown’s Concept of Social Structure:
The concept of social structure and its functional features has been described by Radcliffe-Brown in
his book “Structure and Function in Primitive Society” (1952). According to him the concept of
structure refers to an arrangement of parts related to one another in some sort of larger unity. For
instance, the structure of a house reveals the arrangement of walls, roofs, rooms, passage, windows,
etc. In social structure the ultimate components are the arrangements of persons in relation to each
other. For instance, in a village arrangements of persons into families are found, which is again a
structural features. For example, in a family, we find mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt etc.
Structural Features of Social Life: According to A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, the structural features of
social life as follows:
1. Existence of social group: social structure consists of all kinds of social groups like family,
clan, moieties, social sanction, totemic group, social classes, caste group, kinship system etc.
The inter relations among these groups constitute the core of the social structural phenomenon.
2. Internal structure of the group: these groups have specific internal structure. For example, a
family consists with the relations of father, mother and their children.
3. Arrangement into social classes: these groups are arranged into social classes and categories.
For example, the economic classes in the Western societies and the castes in the Indian
societies.
4. Social Distinctions: there is social distinction between different classes which is based on sex,
economic distinctions, and authority and caste distinctions. For example, in India there is social
distinction between the Brahmins and Shudras.
5. Arrangement of persons in dyadic relationship: an example of dyadic relationship is person to
person relationship like master and servant.
6. Interaction between groups and persons: interaction between persons can be seen in social
processes involving co-operation, conflict, accommodations etc. while the interaction between
groups can be seen while nation goes to war with another nation.
Types of Social Structure: According to Radcliffe-Brown the importance of social institution is that
social structure is the arrangement of persons which is controlled and defined by institutions. There are
two types of models of studying social structure i.e. actual social structure and general social structure.
‘Actual social structure’ according to Brown, the relationship between persons and groups change from
time to time. New members come into being through immigration or by birth, while others go out of it
by death and migration. Besides this, there are marriages and divorces whereby the members change in
several times. Thus, actual social structure remains changes in many times. On the other hand, in
general social structure, remain relatively constant for a long time. For instance, if one visits the a
6

village and again visits that particular village after few years i.e. after 10 years later he or she finds that
many members of the village have died and others have been enrolled. Now they are 10 years older
who survive than the previous visit. Their relations to one another may have changed in many respects;
but the general structure remains more or less same and continuing. Thus Radcliffe-Brown held the
view that sometimes the structural form may change gradually or suddenly but even though the sudden
changes occur the continuity of structure is maintained to a considerable extent.
Structure and Function:
Radcliffe-Brown in order to illustrate the relationship between then structures and function he again
turns to biology. The structure of an organism is consists of ordered arrangements of its parts and
functions of the part is to interrelate the structure of an organism. Similarly, social structure is ordered
arrangement of persons and groups. The functions of persons are to the structure of society and social
organism. In fact, social function is the inter-connections between social structure and social life.
Social structure is not to be studied by considering the nature of individual members of group, but by
examining the arrangement of functions that make society persistent. He further points out that the
relationships of parts of an organism to one another are not static. The whole point about an organism
is that if the organism is alive so that study of its structure-the relationship of parts, must be activated
by a study of its functioning of processes by which its structure is maintained. In all types of
organisms, other than the dead ones structure and function are logically lined. Thus, structure and
function are logically linked and structure and function support each other and necessary for each
other’s continuity.
The social life of a community can be defined as the functioning of social structure. For example, the
function of recurrent activity such as punishment of crime or a funeral ceremony is the part it plays in
social life as a whole and therefore makes contributions to the maintenance of structural continuity.
According to Radcliffe-Brown, the importance of differentiation between structure and function is that
it can be applied to the study of both of continuity in forms of social life and of processes of change.
He is of the opinion that similar things may have different meanings in different cultures and also that
different things may have similar functions. Although they have individual meaning and functions,
they have a comparable social function at all.
Radcliffe-Brown’s Structural Functional Law: Radcliffe-Brown is of the opinion that law is a

necessary condition of continued existence. According to Radcliffe-Brown generalization about any
sort of subject matter are of two types:

 Generalizations of common opinion
 Generalizations that have been demonstrated by a systematic examination of evidence afforded
by precise observations systematically made. This particular type of generalization is also
called as scientific law.
Criticism of Radcliffe-Brown’s Structural Functionalism:
The structural and functional approach of Radcliffe-Brown’ has been subjected to a very great
criticism. Some of them are useful and some of them are useless. The major criticisms are discussed
briefly:
1. According to some critics, it is wrong to look at society as a living organism because the
structure of the living organism does not change, but the society does?
2. There is an error arising from the assuming that one’s abstraction of a social situation reflects
social reality in all details.
3. According to this approach, the functions of unites of society are determined. The analysis is
done on the basis of imagination, in the absence of any concrete cases.
4. I this approach the explanations are technological where the function has been used in terms of
purpose.
5. Structural functionalism believes in static in place of dynamic; but it does not deal with the
changes.
6. This approach mainly supports capitalism and the ruling class leading to the exploitation of the
people to be ruled.
7. Structural functionalism creates suspicion between cause and function. It does not reveal any
differentiation between the result of the behavior and their causes.
8. This approach treat social order as an integrated whole; a situation sometimes arises where
society can be seen in state of imbalance and disequilibrium.
9. This structural functionalism is value biased; that often tries to show if the purpose were kept in
arrangement of order.
Although the structural functionalism approach of Radcliffe-Brown has been criticized in many
respects, yet this approach has some significant features from many respects. Some of them are as
follows:
1. This approach provides a foundation of knowledge and law by which the social behavior can be
controlled.
2. Structural functionalism approach of Radcliffe-Brown gives a conceptual frame work through
which the observations and explanations of social events is scientifically possible.

3. This approach builds some theories and principles by which social facts can easily be
explained.
There are also other contributors of British School of Structural Functionalism. The views of this
British Structural Functionalism are as follows:
1.2 S.F. Nadel: Nadel developed the theory of social structure in his book “The Theory of Social
Structure” (1957). According to Nadel “we arrive at the structure of society through abstracting from
the concrete population and its behavior that pattern or network or system of relationships obtaining
between actors in their capacity of playing roles relative to one another” (Nadel, 1957:12)
According to him, there are three elements of society:
 A group of people
 Institutionalized rules according to which the members of the group interact
 An institutionalized pattern or expression of these interaction
The institutionalized rules do not change easily, but determine the status and roles of the individuals.
Among these roles and status, there is an order which provide an ordered arrangement of human
beings.
1.3 E.R. Leach: He was a British Social Anthropologist who dealt with the change without abandoning
the useful notions of structure and function.
Leach, in his book entitled “Political System of Highland Burma” (1954), proposed a creative solution
by considering conflict itself as a form of structure. In social system of Highland Burma area,
individuals are presented with inconsistencies in the schemes of values, by which they ordered their
lives. Thus, they face the alternate mode of actions. For him, the functionalism becomes dynamic and
diachronic.
1.4 Raymond Firth’s Views on Structure-function: Raymond Firth also dealt with the dynamic or
diachronic functionalism like Leach. According to Firth, decisions are not made in terms of
optimization of power, but according to personal evaluations of efficiency towards any given goal.
These goals, are not random, but formulated by the groups and sub groups to which individuals belong.
This sub groups are internally structured and interrelated with one another as well as to structure of
society as a whole. For example, individual belongs to several sub groups which is determined by

certain criteria of marriage, religion, class, caste, kinship, occupation, economic status etc.
Membership in this groups are overlapping, conflicts in the choice of action often arises. This is
because what is efficient within the framework of one individual may be detrimental for the other
members of that particular group.
2. American School of Structural Functionalism:
Besides Britain, functionalism was also accepted in America. Two most influential leaders of
American sociological functionalism are Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. Their views are
discussed below briefly.
2.1 Talcott Parsons: Talcott Parsons used the concept of function uncritically in the early writings, but
he began to scrutinize the writings later on in his book named “The Social System” (1951). In this
book he described four principle type of social structure.
 Universalistic social values

 Particularistic social values
 Achieved social values
 Ascribed social values
Universalistic social values are found almost in every society and which is applicable to everybody. An
example of universalistic social values is an efficient craftsman who is valued by everyone for the
production of cheaper and superior.
Particularistic social values are made on the basis of state, religion, caste and so on, which is varied
from society to society and this particularistic social values are very important for that particular
society.
In achieved social status, the status is achieved on the basis of the efforts. For example, an individual
can become a present of a country by his efforts although he born in a lower caste or lower class
families. Similarly, in ascribed social values the status is achieved through hereditary.
2.2 Robert K. Merton: Robert K. Merton fundamentally agreed with Parsons’ theory. Merton
believed that any social structure probably has many functions; some may be more obvious than the
others. Merton identified three main limitations i.e. functional unity, universal functionalism and
indispensability (Gingrich, 1999). Merton criticized functional unity, saying that not all parts of a
10

modern complex society work for the functional unity of society. Consequently, there is a social
dysfunction referred to as any social pattern that may disrupt the operation of society (Macionis, 2011).
Some institutions and structures may have other functions and some may generally be dysfunctional.
This is because of the reason that not all structures are functional for society as a whole. According to
Merton there are two types of functions as follows:
 In the “manifest functions” a social pattern can trigger a recognized and intended consequence.
 In the “latent functions”, a social pattern results in an unrecognized or unintended consequence.
Defining manifest and latent functions, Merton says that, “Manifest functions are those objective
subsequences controlling to the adjustment or adaptation of the system, which are intended and
recognized by participants in the system. Latent functions being those which are neither intended nor
recognized” (Merton, 1957:63).
2.3 Kluckhohn: According to Kluckhohn function is”…a given bit of culture is functional in so far as
it defines a mode of response, which is adaptive from the stand point of the individual”. Later
Kluckhohn became dissatisfied with his functional theory because it dealt with the structure but not
dealt with the processes.
3. French School of Structural Functionalism:
3.1 Émile Durkheim: He was concerned with the question of how certain societies maintain internal
stability and survive over time. He proposed that such societies tend to be segmented, with equivalent
parts held together by shared values, common symbols or, as his nephew Marcel Mauss held, systems
of exchanges. Durkheim used the term 'mechanical solidarity' to refer to these types of “social bonds
based on common sentiments & shared moral values that are strong among members of pre-industrial
societies” (Macionis, 2011). In modern, complex societies, members perform very different tasks,
resulting in a strong interdependence. Based on the metaphor above of an organism in which many
parts function together to sustain the whole, Durkheim argued that complex societies are held together
by ‘organic solidarity’, i.e. “social bonds, based on specialization and interdependence, that are strong
among members of industrial societies” (Macionis, 2011).
3.2 Levi-Strauss: He applied structuralism more broadly to all forms of communication. Levi-Strauss
notion of communication structure forms a bridge between Radcliffe-Brown’s functioning structure
11

and the notion of transaction. The processes which active social structure can be seen as
communication of people, goods, service, ideas and so on. This communication operates according to
rules. Thus the activities which constitute social communication are structured.
12

Module Name/Title Structuralism: Levi Strauss and Edmund Leach
Module Id 16

Anthropology
Structuralism: Levi Strauss and Edmund Leach
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Historical Context
2. Claude Levi-Strauss
₋ Method of Structuralism
₋ Structuralism in Kinship
₋ Meeting of Myth and Science
₋ Primitive Thinking' and The 'Civilized Mind'
3. Levi-Strauss’s Major Works and Publication
₋ Elementary Structures of Kinship

₋ Totemism
₋ Savage Mind
4. Edmund Leach
₋ Political Systems of Highland Burma

₋ Pul Eliya: A Village in Ceylon
5. Post-Structuralist
Summary
Learning Objective
 To introduce history of anthropological thought of Structuralism by tracing its historical

development

 An attempt to look Methodological approaches to the origin of culture

Anthropology
Introduction
The prevailing theoretical orientation in anthropology during the 19th century was based on a belief
that culture generally evolves in a uniform and progressive manner; that is, most societies were
believed to pass through the same series of stages, to arrive ultimately at a common end. Many
scholars consider modern anthropology as an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment, a period when
Europeans attempted to study human behaviour systematically, the known varieties of which had been
increasing since the fifteenth century as a result of the first European colonization wave. The traditions
of jurisprudence, history, philology, and sociology then evolved into something more closely
resembling the modern views of these disciplines and informed the development of the social sciences,
of which anthropology was a part.
1. Historical Context
Structuralism represents a movement that began in the 1950's and 1960's in France. Emile Durkheim,
a French anthropologist, generated the idea that human thought precedes observation and social and
cultural phenomena derive from universal human cognition. Claude Levi-Strauss, consider the founder
of Structuralism, expanded upon Durkheim's basic concepts to generate the main ideas behind
Structuralism. In his definition, there are 3 fundamental properties of the human mind:
1) People follow rules,
2) Reciprocity is the simplest way to create social relationships, and
3) A gift binds both the giver and recipient in a continuing social relationship.
Such social structures, according to Levi-Strauss, mirrors cognitive structures, the way in which
mankind thinks and understands. Structuralism is the approach which seeks to isolate, and decode,
deep structures of meaning, organised through systems of signs inherent in human behaviour
(language, ritual, dress and so on). According to structuralisms, the mind functions on binary opposite;
humans see things in terms of two forces that are opposite to each other i.e. night and day. Binary
opposites differ from society to society and are defined in a particular culture in a way that is logical to
its members for example shoes are “good” when you wear them outside but “bad” if you put them on
the table; the role of an anthropologist is to understand these rules to interpret the culture.

Anthropology
2. Claude Lévi-Strauss
Strauss was born November 28, 1908 in Brussels, Belgium and lived to see an entire century, passing
on October 30th 2009. He began studying law at the University of Paris in 1927 and after five years
started working as a teacher’s aid. Two years later, in 1934, he served as professor of sociology in
Brazil at the University of Sao Paulo and began field work on the Brazilian Indians. Levi-Strauss
taught almost all his life, moving to New York in 1941 as a visiting professor of The New School for
Social Research till 1945. Levi-Strauss began his career with law and philosophy. In 1935 he left with
his wife for Brazil to be the visiting professor of sociology at the Sao Paulo University while his wife,
Dina, served as visiting professor of Ethnography. It was during this time that his wife was studying
the natives of Mato Grosso and the Amazon Rainforest. More than halfway through the field work
Dina sustained an injury preventing her from concluding the research which Strauss now had to
complete alone. It was this experience that started Claude Levi Strauss’s career as an
anthropologist. As founder of the structuralism school of thought, Claude Lévi-Strauss believed that
certain cultural facts are universal due to physical, or structural, factors. For example, all human
cultures tend to divide larger concepts into binary oppositions such as left and right, black and white,
or hot and cold. Levi Strauss left his legacy to future structural anthropologists such as Edmond Leach,
and post-structuralist philosophers Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida
-Method of Structuralism
Structuralism focuses on the effects of universal patterns in human thought on cultural phenomena.
Although not attempting to explain these cultural patterns, it rather presents them as a result of the
subconscious, of universal human knowledge. This link between societal norms and the mind's thought
process is ingrained so deeply within individual cultures, it becomes logical thought, taking specific
actions, thoughts and activities and conceptualizing them. The process known as psychic unity, states
that the human species, despite differences in race and culture, share the same basic psychological
make-up. Even with this universal knowledge, every culture retains its own specific cultural structure.
Levi-Strauss presented the idea of binary oppositions. This concept coordinates certain ways of
thinking. Examples of binary systems studied could be: "life vs. death," "culture vs. nature," or "self vs.
other." Each individual concept has an opposite concept that it is co-dependent on. This is known
as unity of opposites; no one of these ideas can exist without the other. Every community takes these
concepts and makes them specific to their individual culture. Presenting universal ideas and
oppositions, and uniting them under a unique, cultural stand-point, eventually forming a structured and
organized society. These ideas relate to linguistic anthropology, in that all humans have a common
base for which can create complex sounds and develop different languages. Taking the idea of
"phonemes," pairs of sounds that create meaning, and bringing the same concept into structuralism that
5

Anthropology
human share a common base for thought, leading to the development of different cultures stem from
the same unconscious roots.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1908-2009 (Source: http://neuroanthropology.net)
-Structuralism in Kinship
In the studies of the structure of kinship, the systems derive from deeply rooted patterns of human
cognition based on logical oppositions of contrastive categories. For example, a contrasting category of
kinship could be the relationship within different cultures of immediate family members and marriage.
Universally, studies have shown that in almost all cultures there is an incest taboo, marrying a direct
family member is not allowed. The taboo demonstrates a universal logical opposition within kin versus
non-kin categories. Although every culture has its own ideals and values on the topic of marriage,
some including matrilateral cross-cousin marriage or patrilateral cross-cousin marriages, there are no
cultures that allow direct incest. The universal formation of ideas is the very basis of structuralism,
allowing individual shifts in rules and structures of a society based on cultural history and tradition, yet
still retaining a common base from which the culturally specific idea stems.
-Meeting of Myth and Science
Levi-Strauss discussing the differences between modern science and mythological thought and how
they are connected; using mathematics as an example, he explains that the human mind is able to create
a triangle with perfectly straight lines or a circle even though those things don’t exist in nature, they
were imprinted on the human mind, being an example of mind versus experience. While exploring the
differences of “experience versus mind” he mentions his upbringing. He talks about his various
interests in music and painting and writing and explains how each thing is set in a different code, and
6

Anthropology
that the important thing is to find something common between the different “codes”. Levi-Strauss also
talks about the two different ways of proceeding with science, reductionist or structuralism. When it’s
possible to reduce a very complex phenomena to a simpler level, it’s reductionist. He believes modern
science to be very important, but he also believes that basic ‘mythological thought’ is just as important.
-Primitive Thinking' and 'Civilized Mind'
Levi-Strauss suggests the elimination of stark contrasts between the idea of primitive and civilized
society, that there is a similarity of minds between all kinds of people and that we should treat
primitive cosmologies as rational, coherent and logical.
3. Levi-Strauss’s Major Works and Publication:
-Elementary Structures of Kinship
In his first major theoretical work- The Elementary Structures of Kinship, published in 1949, Levi-
Strauss showed that many marriage rules can be understood on the basis of the principles of reciprocity
and exchange and, thus, can be reduced to variation of few basic marriage types. In Structural
Anthropology, published in 1958, Levi-Strauss explained his structural method, which he applied later
to the study of primitive thought. In this book the author argued that in French terminology there are
two types of realities that is reality and concrete reality. He pointed out that social structure is a
concrete reality. He, however, holds the view that “social structure can be no means be reduced to the
ensemble of social relation to be described in given community”. Thus, he is interested in structure not
from the aspect of interpersonal relationship, but he wants, first and foremost, to discover the structure
of human thought process.
-Totemism
In “Totemism” (1962) Levi-Strauss shows are useful as that animals and natural object are chosen as
symbols of clans or families because they are useful as linguistic and classificatory devices to
conceptualise and organise social relationships and groups. In this book Levi-Strauss discuss the
different aspects of totems as practised by the tribes of central Brazil with special reference to the
Borolo and the Arandi. Writing on the totemic clans of another tribe, named Buganda, Levi-Strauss
said: “there can be no doubt that the totemic clans of the Buganda also function as castes. And the first
sight it seems that nothing could be more different than these two forms of institution. We have
become used to associating totemic groups with the most “primitive” civilization and thinking of castes
as a feature of highly developed sometimes even literate societies”.

Anthropology
Further, while making a comment on the old pattern of studying a totemistic group, Levi-Strauss
pointed out that a strong tradition connects totemic institutions with the strict rule of exogamy while an
anthropologist, when asked to define the concept of caste, would almost certainly begin by mentioning
the rule of endogamy.
-Savage Mind
In the Savage Mind (1962) Levi-Strauss systematically demonstrated that primitives have a logical,
although concrete, mode of thought. He demonstrates in this book how each culture has its own system
of concepts and categories derived from experience and imposed by the surroundings natural world.
Levi-Strauss pointed out through order in the naming of plants and animals, concepts of space and
time, myths and rituals, how primitive societies do engage in a high level of abstract reasoning
different from but not necessarily inferior to that evolved in cultivated systematic thought. Levi-Strauss
seems to be concerned with the flux of the history and with the perpetual struggle between established
social systems and their history. He refuges the idea that there is a dichotomy between “civilized” and
“primitive” non-historic thought. Thus according to Levi-Strauss the role of history in anthropology is
constantly debated.
Levi-Strauss’s four volumes of Mythologies (1964,1966,1968 and 1972) offer and impressive,
although at times controversial, analysis of large body of myths, which are shown to be not
explanations of natural phenomena but resolutions, in concrete language, of basic categorical
paradoxes concerning human existence and the organisation of society.
4. Edmund Leach
Edmund Leach made a name for himself in an area which he had not studied as an undergraduate.
After graduating from Clare College with a first in mechanical science (1932), he spent four years
working with a trading firm in China. It has been suggested that this fuelled his interest in other
cultures. He gained his PhD at the London School of Economics in 1947, where he secured his first
Readership. He left to become a Lecturer in Cambridge in 1953, then a Reader. Leach’s field work
took him to various locations in Asia, including Botel Tobago (an island off Taiwan), Kurdistan (the
part which is now northern Iraq), Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). His interest in
mechanical science is evident in his detailed field notes and sketches. Leach spent a great deal of time
in Burma, including a period serving as a soldier in the Burmese jungle. It is his book ‘Political
Systems of Highland Burma: a Study in Kachin Social Structure’ (1954) for which he is best known.
The book’s impact was largely due to his use of innovative methods of addressing social and political
change, by studying large and varied areas, rather than studying a single society or tribe. Over the
8

Anthropology
course of his career, Leach’s attention shifted from the study of tribal kinship to structuralism. This led
to significant discussion of the methodology of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Leach’s structuralist analysis
of ‘biblical myth’.
Edmund Leach
Source: http://www.britac.ac.uk
A social anthropologist regarded as structuralist he is known for his technical studies in the fields of
kinship, marriage, ritual and myth, moving rapidly from one topic to another. In his book Political
Systems of Highland Burma he elaborates the notion of verbal categories. A contextual structuralist by
approach his form of structuralism is more empirically based than the intellectual versions of it offered
in Europe. He examined the ways in which humans use categories to distinguish between self and
other, we and say, culture and nature. He criticized Radcliffe Brown and his successors who claim to
construct typologies and infer social laws directly from ethnographic data.
-Political Systems of Highland Burma
Leach is perhaps best known for Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social
Structure (1954). Like Malinowski's unforeseen internship in the Trobriand Islands during World War
I, Leach's military service in Burma during World War II inadvertently facilitated his breaking loose
from the anthropological model of intensive fieldwork in a single community, with limited
generalization to larger social units. During the war, Leach travelled widely throughout Kachin
country, obtaining a unique overview of the range of intracultural variation, particularly in relation to
the Shan valley peoples. Furthermore, his notes were lost twice and the resulting ethnography was
written from memory and subsequent archival research. Leach was thus forced to write a more

Anthropology
sociological, historical and theoretical book than he doubtless envisioned at the start of his research.
Leach identified two contrasting ideal types of political organization (gumlao/gumsa) which alternated
historically between egalitarian and hierarchical modes (rather like the swing of a pendulum). This
approach, combined with more traditional participant-observation fieldwork in a single community,
demonstrated that anthropologists could move beyond ethnography.
-Pul Eliya: A Village in Ceylon (1961)
Pul Eliya: A Village in Ceylon (1961) provided a meticulous cataloguing of land tenure holdings in
relation to kinship systems. Leach approached the ideal system on which individual and kin group
strategies were based through interpretation of exhaustive statistical information on particular local
arrangements. He helped move social theory from descent group to alliance theory. The socio-religious
feudal structure of the Kandyan kingdom and its hierarchy of castes emerged from the social order
implicit in these quantitative patterns. This is the most empirical and detailed of Leach's major works
but does not entirely omit his characteristic concern with how members of the culture construct their
thought-worlds (clarified through case studies).
Leach was perhaps the most important British interpreter of the structuralism of Claude Levi-Strauss.
Leach's version of structuralism critiqued the French anthropologist's analysis of Burmese kinship data.
More importantly, however, Leach insisted on an empirical basis for structuralist generalizations,
rejecting Levi-Strauss's emphasis on universal properties of the human mind and insisting that
similarities of pattern across cultures be understood in ethnographic context as well as through species
biology.
5. Post-Structuralist
While Structuralism was very popular during the 1960's and 70's, it eventually fell to much criticism in
the late 1970's and 80's, giving way to Post-Structuralism and other anthropological theories. To
understand an object, it is necessary to study both the object itself, and the systems of knowledge
which were coordinated to produce the object. Structuralism looks at society in the present without any
regard for the past, completely ignoring the historical context of the development of ideas.
Structuralism, therefore, does not account for social change which gives a weakness to structuralist
claims. Levi-Strauss' assumptions that the structures of human thought are universal gives room for
criticism in that there is no scientific research demonstrating his contentions. Because of this, there is
no empirical evidence showing the development of the human brain. History, like economies and
societies, were completely irrelevant to Claude Levi-Strauss.
10

Anthropology
In this way, post-structuralism positioned itself as a study of how knowledge is produced." Another
popular distinction between the two anthropological theories is that Structuralism utilized a descriptive
view while Post-Structuralism utilized a Historical view in accordance with their theories and claims.
In response to Structuralism, Post-Structuralists imagined it would be more effective to "emphasize
history to analyze descriptive concepts" and support their claims. Post-Structuralism seems to have
been built on Structuralist critiques, and while many Post-Structuralists don't label themselves as such,
Claude Lev-Strauss is often viewed as a prominent figure in this anthropoligal theory as well as in
Structuralism. Post-Structuralism was built out of the Structuralist framework and is viewed as the new
and improved version of Structuralism.
Summary
Structuralism is the approach which seeks to isolate, and decode, deep structures of meaning, organised
through systems of signs inherent in human behaviour (language, ritual, dress and so on). According to
structuralisms, the mind functions on binary opposite; humans see things in terms of two forces that are
opposite to each other i.e. night and day. Binary opposites differ from society to society and are
defined in a particular culture in a way that is logical to its members for example shoes are “good”
when you wear them outside but “bad” if you put them on the table; the role of an anthropologist is to
understand these rules to interpret the culture. Claude Levi-Strauss helped to formulate the principles
of structuralism by stressing the interdependence of cultural systems and the way they relate to each
other, maintaining that social and cultural life can be explained by a postulated unconscious reality
concealed behind the reality by which people believe their lives to be ordered. Claude Lévi-Strauss
developed the idea that totemism resulted from a universal mode of human classification that created
homologies between the natural and cultural spheres. The important factor was not the way an
individual totem related to an individual clan, but how relationships between totems reflected relations
between social groups.
11

Anthropology
Module Name/Title Culture and Personality studies: Mead, Benedict, Kardiner, Linton, Cora-du-Bois
Module Id 11

Anthropology Culture and Personality studies: Mead, Benedict, Kardiner, Linton, Cora-du-Bois
Contents
Introduction
1. Culture and Personality School
2. Abram Kardiner
3. Ralph Linton
4. Ruth Fulton Benedict
5. Cora-du-Bois
6. Margaret Mead
Learning Outcomes
 To develop an understanding about the concept of culture and personality
 To gain knowledge about the beliefs and views of the schools of thought associated with the
topic
 To know about the contributions made by different scholars
 To know about the theories and concepts propounded by the scholars related to the topic

Introduction
‘Culture and personality’ is the earliest name of the school or thoughts of school. It is important study
in psychological anthropology, thus culture and personality studies, also called psychological
anthropology. Its beginnings are associated especially with the great American linguist and
anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884—1939). Sapir was influenced by German Gestalt psychologists,
who had argued that perception could be understood only when the thing perceived was viewed not as
an assemblage of separate elements, but as an organized pattern (Gestalt). So when one looks, for
example, at a landscape painting, one sees it not as flat planes of colour laid against one another, but as
a whole — ‘a landscape’. This example shows us too why a whole may be more than the sum of its
parts and have its own essential properties. In this Gestalt view, meaning was a function of organized
patterns, and Sapir applied this idea to his analyses of language and of culture and personality. Sapir
was suspicious of the contemporary concept of culture, which he described as ‘tidy tables of contents’
attached to particular groups of people. In an influential 1934 essay he argued that ‘the more fully one
tries to understand a culture, the more it seems to take on the characteristics of a personality
organization’ (1985 [1949]: 594). The study of the development of personality was Sapir’s solution to
the problems posed by the way that, in anthropological accounts, culture ‘can be made to assume the
appearance of a closed system of behaviour’ (p. 594). But in fact, ‘vast reaches of culture … are
discoverable only as the peculiar property of certain individuals’ (p. 594). He recommended that to
understand ‘the complicating patterns and symbolisms of culture’, anthropologists should study child
development. It is branch of cultural anthropology that seeks to determine the range of personality
types extant in a given culture and to discern where, on a continuum from ideal to perverse, the culture
places each types. Culture and personality studies apply the methods of psychology to the field of
anthropology.

Culture and Personality theory explained relationships between childrearing customs and human
behaviours in different societies. Through examination of individual personalities, we can gain an
understanding of a culture.
The relationship between culture and human nature.
Two main themes of theoretical school
The correlation between culture and individual personality.
Development in the study of socialization arose principally in the United States in the 1930s. There are
many theories that combined elements of psychology, anthropology, and sociology. The elements
principally involved the application of psychoanalytic principles to ethnographic material. According
to Freudian theory, it emphasized the cultural moulding of the personality and focused on the
development of the individual.
Culture-and-personality
Personality types were created in socialization,
Places child-rearing practices such as feeding, weaning, and toilet training.
1. Culture and Personality School: 1920 – 1950
The history of culture and personality studies to 1920s is beginning and noticed in the writings of
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He proposed what is known as `critical-periods hypothesis’ according to

which human infants went through a time or stage in which they learnt what they exhibited later in
adulthood.
Oral learning
Early learning- later behaviour anal learning
Sexual learning
Dependency learning
Aggression learning
This Freudian hypothesis influenced early anthropological research on culture and personality giving
birth to what is known as Psychoanalytic Anthropology, and continues to draw the interest of
contemporary anthropologists as well. The perspective is best demonstrated in the work of
anthropologists such as Gregory Bateson, Ruth Benedict, Geoffrey Gorer, and Margaret Mead.
Margaret Mead has become the main tenet of the School: that different cultures (or societies) produce
different personality types as a result of different socialization practices.
Dependence Training Independence Training

Emphasizes on compliance with group norms, Encourages independence, self-reliance and
and associated with extended or joint families. personal achievements.
The children get extended care in the family and Display aggression and sexually are tolerated
also get to learn many households’ chores early in under such training if not encouraged actively.
their lives under the watchful gaze of the senior
members.
Negatively certain behaviour that may not be Oral gratification of the children is subject to
liked by the adults will be discouraged under such routine and not demand or need of the children
training. receive inadequate attention of the adults and
elders, they do not get to learn households tasks,
etc.
2. Abram kardiner (1891-1981)
American- born physician and psychiatrist Abram Kardiner went to Vienna on 1920’s in order to
undertake year psychoanalysis with Freud. In 1939, kardiner and Linton published ‘the individual and
society’. In The Psychological Frontiers of Society (1945), Abram Kardiner looked at the way in which
personality types are present in cultural patterns. Kardiner and his colleagues argued that religion and
politics are screens on to which the basic personality-orientation of a society is projected. In
6

‘Anthropology and the Abnormal’ (Journal of General Psychology, 1934), Kardiner also influence the
culture and personality school. He introduced the idea of “basic personality structure”, in this members
of a certain culture share several fundamental personality traits. Thus this idea called as culture’s basic
personality structure. He was inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud. Kardiner concept was based on
primary institutions (like child rearing practices). After developing the basic personality structure
approach, Kardiner argued, along with Ralph Linton, that while culture and personality were similarly
integrated, a specific causal relationship existed between them. He and Linton criticized the
configurationalist approach as being too broad and vague. Instead, he put forth his own theory- the
basic personality structure. After his approach, he distinguished between primary institutions (those
which produce the basic personality structure) and secondary institutions (those which are the product
of basic personality itself).
Examples of primary institutions are those things which are a product of adaptation within an
environment, such as housing, family types, descent types, etc. Secondary institutions, on the other
hand, include social organization technology, and child training practices; these are manifested through
religion and other social practices.
Primary institutions
Social organization, technology and human personality
Primary institution Secondary institutions

It shapes the basic personality Secondary institutions are produced
structure of society. in the process of shaping the basic
personality structure.
It can be conflict with one another, It helps the members of a society to
leading to shared, unconscious deal with the conflicts and anxieties.
conflicts and anxieties.
Child rearing practices, toilet Ritual or folk tales conflicts
training etc.
Drawbacks of Kardiner theory: He could not explain the variations in personalities which found in
every society regardless in size.

3. Ralph Linton (1893-1953)
Ralph Linton began his career as an archaeologist, but later turn to cultural anthropology. His
ethnographic fieldwork took him to Polynesia and Madagascar, as well as on archaeological
expeditions in Latin America and the United states. He was a co-founder of the basic personality
structure theory. He sought to establish a basic personality for each culture. . Ralph Linton was born in
Philadelphia on February 27, 1893 was one of the best known American anthropologists of the time.
He was an international renowned anthropologist of America. He belonged to culture and personality
of anthropological thought Linton devoted the majority of his studies to collecting ethnographies of
Melanesians and Amerindians. He developed the concepts of status and role in his classic book The
Study of Man (1936). In this book, he has clearly shown the adaptation of culture traits in American
culture. Linton’s most famous book is, Cultural Background of Personality (1945). In this, he has
attempted to define cultures and to classify culture on the basis of behaviour. He emphasized also as to
how personality influences cultural behaviour. Linton was a leading figure in the development of the
subfield of psychological anthropology in the 1930s and 1940s, and published widely on the topic of
culture and personality. He also was instrumental in promoting the study of culture change, and
published several studies on the acculturation of Native Americans.
Linton is often identified with “culture and personality school”. Linton do not believed in relationship
between culture and personality was unproblematic in terms of culture exerted its influence more or
less uniformly across the personalities that it shaped. In 20 th century, his writing tells about the modern
skills. Kardiner and Linton argued that while culture and personality were similarly integrated, there
was a specific causal relationship between them. Both of them were agree with primary institution
deals with basic personality structure, while secondary institution is product of basic personality
structure.
4. Ruth Fulton Benedict (1887-1948)
She was originator of the configurational approach to culture. She entered anthropology as mature
women. With her background in the humanities, she approached a body of cultural materials as a
whole, in the sense in which the productive output of a writer or a painter forms a whole, and she
conceived of a group of human beings and their culture as forming a total intellectual, religious, and
aesthetic construct (Benedict 1922). Ruth Benedict is famous anthropologist and culture and
personality theorists. He wrote influential book on patterns of culture. She was leading figure for
culture and personality school. Her book patterns of culture (1934), one of the seminal works of the
culture and personality school, had an immense impact on both anthropologists and lay readers alike
(Bernard and spencer, 2002). She suggested that there is a high degree of consistency between cultural
8

type and patterns of emotions. Culture promotes a personality type: benedict suggested that there is a
consistency between the culture you grow up in and the emotions you feel. In her patterns of culture,
she explained culture in unique pattern which can be later configured.
According to cultural configuration, this not only deal with the fundamental personality characteristics
of people grow up in this culture but also the expression of underlying ideas, value and more that
characterize a certain society or culture.
Drawbacks of benedict theory: She failed to provide an explanation of why a culture that the people
that grow up in culture personality traits or of how these personality traits are passed on from one
generation to the next.
5. Cora-du-Bois (1903- 1991)
Cora Dubois was born in New York City. She earned her M.A. degree in Columbia University and
attended the University of Berkeley for her Ph. D degree. She was influenced collaborator Abram
Kardiner in cross-cultural diagnosis and the psychoanalytic study of culture. She wrote the book
entitled The People of Alor (1944). In this social-psychological study, she advanced the concept of
modal personality structure. Cora Dubois stated that individual variation within a culture exists, and
each culture shares the development of a particular type which might not exist in its individuals. In
1945, Cora Dubois, Abram Kardiner and Ralph Linton co-authored the book, the Psychological
Frontiers of Society which consisted of careful descriptions and interpretations of three cultures (the
Comanche culture, the Alorese culture, and the culture of an American rural community). It explained
the basic personality formed by the diversity of subject matter in each culture. Bois went to Alor Island

in the Dutch East Indies where she collected variety of ethnographic and psychological data. When she
returned in 1939 she along with kardiner analyzed the data and arrived at the same conclusion about
basic characteristics of Alorese personality on the basis of which she proposed “modal personality”.
Du bois is one of the anthropologists who collaborated with Kardiner and introduced the “modal
personality”. The model personality according to bois is the type of personality that is statistically the
most certain in a society. She argued with the concept of primary institutions lead to formation of a
basic characteristic. She did recognize that each person’s own personality is developed and expressed
in a unique way leading to variation in personalities within a society. She modified the idea with her
concept of the “modal personality”, which, while based on an assumption of a “physic unity of
mankind” (1944) allowed for individual variations within a culture. She understood the infant as a
blank slate on which the effects of aspects of childcare would have observable effects.
6. Margaret mead (1901-1978)
American anthropologists’ work emphasized the relationship between culture and personality
formation. Margaret Mead (1901-1978) also contributed immensely to this field of research by
focusing her attention on childhood and adolescence in the Pacific islands. Mead did extensive field
work throughout the 1920s and 1930s. She was always joined by a collaborator. Mead and Bateson
conducted two years of intensive field work together in Bali, pursuing their different research interests.
They pioneered the use of film as a resource for anthropological research, shooting some 22,000 feet of
film as well as thousands of still photographs. She also studied groups included the Manus people of
the Admiralty Islands, and the Arapesh, Mundugumor, Tchambuli, and Iatmul of New Guinea. Mead
became convinced of the importance of culture as a determinant of personality, following in the
footsteps of Alfred Adler in the field of psychology and Ruth Benedict in anthropology. Mead detailed
her theories of character formation and culture in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive
Societies (1935) and expanded further on the role of culture in gender formation in her 1949
work, Male and Female: Study of the Sexes in a Changing World.
Her book on Coming of Age in Samoa (1929/1961) is based on nine months fieldwork, compares
Samoan with American adolescent girls.
10

Coming of age in Samoa
Compares Samoan with American adolescent girls
Stress related puberty in girls were culturally and not biologically determined
Her study showed such stresses mainly associated with American adolescents whereas the Samoan
adolescents had relatively an easy transition into sexual maturation. In her book on Samoas, she claims
that they are taught early in their life that if they behave well or are quiet and obedient they can have
their own way. Arrogance, flippancy and courage are not the qualities emphasized either for boy or
girl. The children are expected to get up early, be obedient and cheerful, play with children of their
own sex, etc. and the adults are expected to be industrious, skilful, loyal to their relatives, wise,
peaceful, serene, gentle, generous, altruistic, etc. According to her fieldwork observation, little girls
move about together and have antagonistic and avoidance relationship with boys. However, as they
grow up boy and girls begin to interact during parties and fishing expeditions. As long as a boy and a
girl are not committing incest any amorous activities between them, including slipping into the bush
together, are considered natural and adults pay little attention to such relationships.
Samoan the transition from adolescence to adulthood is smooth and stress-free.
American the transition showed stress
Samoan American
No stress associated with the adolescent Stress associated with the adolescent
Transition is easy in sexual maturation Transition is stressful in sexual maturation
She concluded that cultural conditioning, not biological changes associated with adolescence, makes it
stressful or not. Criticisms notwithstanding, subsequent studies have lent support to her basic theory
that childhood upbringing influences formation of adult personality. Mead further writes that among
11

the Arapesh of northeast New Guinea personality attributes like gentleness and mildness are valued.
But among the Munfugumor of the same area men are expected to behave in harsh and violent ways.
Mead's also interested in psychiatry and turned her attention to the problem of the cultural context of
schizophrenia (a mental disorder whose symptoms are a detachment to one's environment and a
breakdown of one's personality—thoughts, feelings, and actions). She went to Bali, a society where
going into a trance (the state of complete unconscious) and other forms of dissociation (an escape from
the outer world into an inner one) are culturally approved and encouraged. The extensive use of film
made it possible to record and analyze significant details of behaviour that had escaped the pencil-and-
paper recordings. Of the 38,000 photographs which Mead and Bateson brought back, seven hundred
fifty–nine were selected for Balinese Character (1942), a joint study with Bateson. This publication
marks a major change in the recording and presentation of ethnological data and may prove in the long
run to be one of her most significant contributions to the science of anthropology.
She also conducted a nationwide study of American food habits prior to the introduction of rationing
(process in war time of conserving goods for soldiers by portioning them out sparingly to citizens).
She studied psychology especially in terms of learning theory and psychoanalysis. The psychoanalysis
basically a type of treatment for emotional disorders in which a patient talks through childhood
experiences and looks at the significance of dreams. She highlighted on the development of
psychoanalytic theory by emphasizing the importance of culture in personality development. She
served on many national and international committees for mental health and was instrumental in
introducing the study of culture into training programs for physicians and social workers. She was
mead who dominant in developing the field of culture and personality and the related field of national
character research.
Theoretical position takes assumption cultural context
Ideological system (idea) techniques socialization
Inner mental structure
Mead was criticized by certain other social scientists for neglecting quantitative (measuring) methods
and for what has been called "anecdotal" (relying on short stories of interesting incidents for proof)
handling of data. She was also accused of applying concepts of individual psychology to the analysis
12

of social process while ignoring historical and economic factors. She was also a role model for
American women, encouraging them to pursue professional careers previously closed to women while
at the same time championing their roles as mothers. She died in 1978, in New York City and was later
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
13

Module Name/Title Neo-Evolutionism
Module Id 05

Anthropology Neo-Evolutionism
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Early anthropological theory
2. History of nineteenth-century classical evolutionists
3. Neo-evolutionist
4. Neo-evolutionists Scholars
 V. Gordon Childe (England)
 Julian Steward (U.S.A)
 Leslie White (U.S.A)
Summary
Learning Objective
 To introduce history of anthropological thought by tracing its historical development

 An attempt to look Methodological approaches to the origin of culture

Introduction
A theoretical orientation is usually a general attitude about how cultural phenomena are to be
explained. A number of thinkers during this period began to discuss evolution and how it might occur.
The prevailing theoretical orientation in anthropology during the 19th century was based on a belief
that culture generally evolves in a uniform and progressive manner; that is, most societies were
believed to pass through the same series of stages, to arrive ultimately at a common end. Neo-
evolutionism, school of anthropology concerned with long-term culture change and with the similar
patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. It arose in the mid-
20th century, and it addresses the relation between the long-term changes that are characteristic of
human culture in general and the short-term, localized social and ecological adjustments that cause
specific cultures to differ from one another as they adapt to their own unique environments.
1. Early anthropological theory
In anthropology, as in any discipline, there is a continual ebb and flow of ideas. One theoretical
orientation will arise and may grow in popularity until another is proposed in opposition to it. Often,
one orientation will capitalize on those aspects of a problem that a previous orientation ignored or
played down. Evolutionism was a common 19th century belief that organisms inherently improve
themselves through progressive inherited change over time, and increase in complexity
through evolution. The belief went on to include cultural evolution and social evolution. In the 1970s
the term Neo-Evolutionism was used to describe the idea "that human beings sought to preserve a
familiar style of life unless change was forced on them by factors that were beyond their control". It
refers to theories of change in which development is seen to go through stages of increasing
complexity and diversification. It is closely related to the idea of progress and technology, which is
most prevalent in capitalist society. In the 1940s, Leslie A. White revived the evolutionary approach to
cultural development. White believed that technological development, or the amount of energy
harnessed per capita, was the main driving force creating cultural evolution; Anthropologists such as
Julian H. Steward, Marshall Sahlins, and Elman Service have also presented evolutionary viewpoints.
2. History of Nineteenth-Century Classical Evolutionists
Neo-evolutionism is a social theory that tries to explain the evolution of societies by drawing
on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and discarding some dogmas of the previous social
evolutionism. Neo-evolutionism is concerned with long-term, directional, evolutionary social

change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated
cultures. Neo-evolutionism emerged in the 1930s. It developed extensively in the period after
the Second World War and was incorporated into anthropology as well as sociology in the 1960s. Its
theories are based on empirical evidence from fields such as archaeology, palaeontology,
and historiography. Proponents say neo-evolutionism is objective and simply descriptive, eliminating
any references to a moral or cultural system of values. While the 19th century evolutionism explained
how culture develops by giving general principles of its evolutionary process, it was dismissed
by Historical Particularism as unscientific in the early 20th century. It was the neo-evolutionary
thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to contemporary
anthropology. The neo-evolutionism discards many ideas of classical social evolutionism, namely that
of social progress, so dominant in previous sociology evolution-related theories. The neo-evolutionism
stresses the importance of empirical evidence. While 19th century evolutionism used value judgment
and assumptions for interpreting data, the neo-evolutionism relied on measurable information for
analyzing the process of cultural evolution
3. Neo-evolutionist
Neo-evolutionary anthropological thought emerged in the 1940s, in the work of the American
anthropologists Leslie A. White and Julian H. Steward and others. White hypothesized that cultures
became more advanced as they became more efficient at harnessing energy and that technology and
social organization were both influential in instigating such efficiencies. Steward, inspired by
classifying the native cultures of North and South America, focused on the parallel developments of
unrelated groups in similar environments; he discussed evolutionary change in terms of what he called
―levels of sociocultural integration‖ and ―Multilinear evolution,‖ terms he used to distinguish neo-
evolution from earlier, Unilinear theories of cultural evolution; In the years since White’s and
Steward’s seminal work, neo-evolutionary approaches have been variously accepted, challenged,
rejected, and revised, and they continue to generate a lively controversy among those interested in
long-term cultural and social change.
The theory of Neo-evolutionism 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 Neo-evolutionism emerged in the 1930s. In other words, it was the Neo-
evolutionary thinkers who brought back evolutionary thought and developed it to be acceptable to
contemporary anthropology. The main difference between Neo-evolutionism and Nineteenth-century
5

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 Neo-evolutionary 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.
4. Neo-evolutionists Scholars
The nineteenth-century classical evolutionists mainly talked about the cultural evolution with a view to
find out cultural regularities or laws, but their findings and approaches were modified by the
evolutionists of the twentieth-century in the light of their new researches and methodological
approaches to the origin of culture and, hence they are known as neo-evolutionists.
 V. Gordon Childe (England)
V. Gorden Childe described evolution in terms of three major events viz. the invention of food
production, urbanisation and industrialisation. Thus, analysing the transitions that took place under the
impact of these ―revolution‖, Childe presented an overall view of the evolutionary process of
delineated its common factors.
V. Gorden Childe classified the stages of cultural developments in terms of, thus, archaeological
findings, which are as follows:
Sr. Archaeological Cultural Development

No. Period
1 Palaeolithic Savagery
2 Neolithic Barbarism
3 Copper Age Higher Barbarism
4 Early Bronze Age Civilization
Thus, on the basis of the excavation of tools, pottery, invention of agriculture etc., Childe established
his theory of neo-evolution. He was of opinion that even during the pre-historic period, migration took
place and cultural traits diffused from one place to another. Thus, to some extent Childe also believed
in the principle of diffusion.
Culture was of opinion that human societies have passed through different stages and therefore, he
argued that the nineteenth-century unilinear evolutionists were very much dogmatic in their approach.
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Elaborating his concept of unilinear development of culture, Childe writes ―all societies have lived in
different historical environments and have passed through different vicissitude, their traditions have
diverged, and so ethnography reveals a multiplicity of cultures, just as does archaeology‖. Childe finds
that consideration of the particular is a ―serious handicaps of our objective is to establish general stages
in the evolution of culture‖, and therefore, in order to ―discover general laws descriptive of the
evolution of all societies, abstract the peculiarities due to difference of habitat‖.
It is important to note that the evolutionism of childe yields substantive results of a very different order
from those of nineteenth century evolutionists. For instance, no one disputes that hunting and food-
gathering, which is Childe’s diagnostic of ―Savagery‖, preceded plant and animal domestication, which
is his criterion of ― Barbarism‖ and that the latter was a pre-condition of large population, cities,
internal social differentiation and specialisation, as well as the development of writing and
mathematics, which are characteristics of ―Civilization‖.
V. Gorden Childe attempted to apply the Darwinian formula to cultural evolution and said ―variation is
seen as invention, hereditary as learning and diffusion, and adaptation and selection as cultural
adaptation and choice‖. It was certainly a worthy objective to seek universal laws of culture change,
and it must be stressed, however that all universal laws do change in course of history.
In addition to his significant contributions in the field of neoevolution, V. Gorden Childe has also been
criticised for his weekness, which are reflected in his scheme of neo-evolution.
 Firstly, he did not differentiate between the old hunters and the hunters and food gatherers of
today, although there is significant difference between them at least in the possession and
application of hunting tools and implements.
 Scondly, he relied upon too much on the archaeological data to explain the cultural evolution.
 Thirdly, he categorically rejected the idea of universal precedence of matriarcy, sexual
communism etc., as argued by the classical evolutionists, without giving much details.
However, instead of these weaknesses, it was Childe who for the first time talked about the
technological determinism in the study of cultural evolution.
 Julian Steward (U.S.A)
Julian Steward’s contribution to the study of cultural evolution is unique, for it was he, who for the first
time gave a broad typology of evolutionists on the basis of his methodological study of different
culture areas of the world. Steward said that cultural evolution may be defined broadly as a quest for

cutural regularities or laws and futher pointed out that there are three distinctive ways in which
evolutionary data may be handled.
Firstly, the Unilinear Evolution:
The classical evolutionists of the nineteenth – century developed a formulaton, which dealt with
particular culture rather than with cultures.
Secondly, the Universal Evolution:
An arbitrary label to designate the modern revamping of the Unilinear evolution, where universal
evolutionists are concerned with culture rather than with cultures.
Thirdly, Multilinear Evolution:
Those who believed in multiple developmental sequences, a somewhat less ambitious approach than
the other two.
Julian Steward elaborated his theory of neo-evolution in his famous book ―Theory of Cuture Change‖,
published in 1955 from the university of Illinois, Urbana. Julian H. Steward (1902–1972), another later
evolutionist, divided evolutionary thought into three schools: unilinear, universal, and multilinear.
Steward believed that Morgan and Tylor’s theories exemplified the unilinear approach to cultural
evolution, the classical 19thcentury orientation that attempted to place particular cultures on the rungs
of a sort of evolutionary ladder. Julian Steward is Neo-evolutionist who focused on relationships
between cultures and the natural environment. 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.
Unilinear Evolution
According to steward, those evolutionists, who talked about the cultural evolution in terms of three
stages viz. savagery, barbarism and civilization, may be designated as Unilinear evolutionists. Among
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these Unilinear evolutionists, special mention may be made of Tylor, Morgan etc., who were really the
champions of this scheme of cultural evolution. Steward further argues that, although no effort has
been made to revive these schemes in the light of new empirical ethnographic and archeological data
concerning the history of individual culture which it self is a some remarkable fact it does not
necessarily follow that the Unilinear evolutionists failed completely to recognise significant patterns
and processes of change in particular cases. However, the inadequacy of Unilinear evolution lies
largely in the postulated priority of matriarchal effort to force the data of all precivilized groups of
mankind in to the categories of ―savagery‖ and ―barbarism‖.
Universal Evolution
Julian steward has pointed out (1955) that universal evolution is presentaly represented by V. Gordon
Childe and Leslie White. He argues that universal evolution is the heritage of the nineteenth century
evolution. White and Childe, according to Steward, endeavour to keep the evolutionary concept of
cutural stages alive by relating these stages to the culture of mankind as a whole. The distinctive
cutural traditions and the local variations the culture areas and sub areas which have developed as the
result of special environments are excluded as irrelevant.
Multilinear Evolution
The theory of "Multilinear" evolution which examined the way in which societies adapted to their
environment; this approach was more nuanced than White's theory of "Unilinear evolution." Steward
questioned the possibility of creation of a social theory encompassing the entire evolution of humanity,
however argued that anthropologists are not limited to descriptions of specific, existing cultures.
Steward believed it is possible to create theories analysing typical, common culture, representative of
specific eras or regions. As the decisive factors determining the development of given culture Steward
pointed to technology and economics, and noted there are secondary factors, like political systems,
ideologies and religion. All those factors push the evolution of a given society in several directions at
the same time, thus this is the multilinearity of his theory of evolution.
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 behaviour patterns involved in a particular subsistence strategy must be analyzed.
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 The third step is to determine how these behaviour patterns affect other aspects of the society.
This strategy showed that environment determines the forms of labour 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.
 Leslie White (U.S.A)
Theory of Cultural Evolution
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. According to his ―basic law‖ of cultural evolution, ―other factors remaining constant,
culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased or as the efficiency
of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased.‖ In other words, a more advanced
technology gives humans control over more energy (human, animal, solar, and so on), and cultures
expand and change as a result. White’s orientation has been criticized for the same reasons that the
ideas of Tylor and Morgan were. In describing what has happened in the evolution of human culture,
he assumed that cultural evolution is determined strictly by conditions (pre eminently technological
ones) inside the culture. That is, he explicitly denied the possibility of environmental, historical, or
psychological influences on cultural evolution. The main problem with such an orientation is that it
cannot explain why some cultures evolve whereas others either do not evolve or become extinct.
White’s theory of energy capture sidesteps the question of why only some cultures are able to increase
their energy capture.
First, White divided culture into three components:

10

 Technological,
 Sociological and
 Ideological,
White argued that the technological aspect is the basis of cultural evolution; 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.
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.
White attempted to create a theory explaining the entire history of humanity. The most important factor
in his theory is technology: Social systems are determined by technological systems, wrote White in
his book, echoing the earlier theory of Lewis Henry Morgan. As a measure of society advancement he
proposed the measure energy consumption of given society (thus his theory is known as the energy
theory of cultural evolution). The evolutionary approach to cultural variation did not die with the 19th
century. Beginning in the 1940s, Leslie A. White attacked the Boasian emphasis on historical
particularism and championed the evolutionist orientation. Though quickly labelled a neoevolutionist,
White rejected the term, insisting that his approach did not depart significantly from the theories
adopted in the 19th century.
He differentiates between five stages of human development.
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 In the first, people use energy of their own muscles.
 In the second, they use energy of domesticated animals.
 In the third, they use the energy of plants (so White refers to agricultural revolution here).
 In the fourth, they learn to use the energy of natural resources: coal, oil, gas.
 In the fifth, they harness the nuclear energy.
White introduced a formula C=E*T, where E is a measure of energy consumed, and T is the measure
of efficiency of technical factors utilising the energy. Universal evolutionists such as Leslie White
were concerned with culture in the broad sense, rather than with individual cultures. Steward classified
himself as a multilinear evolutionist: one who deals with the evolution of particular cultures and only
with demonstrated sequences of parallel culture change in different areas. Steward was concerned with
explaining specific cultural differences and similarities. Consequently, he was critical of White’s vague
generalities and his disregard of environmental influences. White, on the other hand, asserted that
Steward fell into the historical-particularist trap of paying too much attention to particular cases.
Marshall Sahlins (born 1930) and Elman Service (1915–1996), who were students and colleagues of
both White and Steward, combined the views of those two individuals by recognizing two kinds of
evolution— specific and general. Specific evolution refers to the particular sequence of change and
adaptation of a particular society in a given environment. General evolution refers to a general progress
of human society, in which higher forms (having higher-energy capture) arise from and surpass lower
forms.
Thus, specific evolution is similar to Steward’s multilinear evolution, and general evolution resembles
White’s universal evolution. Although this synthesis does serve to integrate the two points of view, it
does not give us a way of explaining why general evolutionary progress has occurred. But, unlike the
early evolutionists, some of the later evolutionists did suggest a mechanism to account for the
evolution of particular cultures—namely, adaptation to particular environments.
Summary
Ideas about evolution took a long time to take hold because they contradicted the biblical view of
events; species were viewed as fixed in their form by the creator. But in the 18th and early 19th
centuries, increasing evidence suggested that evolution was a viable theory. Neo-evolutionism, school
of anthropology concerned with long-term culture change and with the similar patterns of development
that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. It arose in the mid-20th century, and it
addresses the relation between the long-term changes that are characteristic of human culture in general
and the short-term, localized social and ecological adjustments that cause specific cultures to differ
from one another as they adapt to their own unique environments. Further, neo-evolutionists
12

investigate the ways in which different cultures adapt to similar environments and examine the
similarities and differences in the long-term historical trajectories of such groups. Because most neo-
evolutionists are interested in the environmental and technological adjustments of the groups they
study, many are identified with the cultural ecological approach to ethnography, with the culture
process approach to archaeology, and with the study of early and proto-humans in biological
anthropology.
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Module Name/Title Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology
Module Id 18

Anthropology Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology
Contents
Introduction
1. History Of The Interpretive Research Tradition
2. Interpretive Anthropology
2.1 Geertzian Anthropology
2.2 Turner’s Anthropology
3. A Critical Perspective on Interpretative Anthropology
3.1 Objectification of researcher
3.2 Causality and Interpretation of culture
3.3 Validation in the interpretive anthropology
4. Recent trends in Cognitive anthropology
Summary
Learning Outcomes
 To develop an understanding about the concept of interpretive and symbolic Anthropology
 To know about the contribution of various scholars to the concept
 To be able to critically analyze the topic
 To know about the recent trends in Cognitive Anthropology

Introduction
The anthropological studies seeks aspects of social structure & the analogy involved, which has been
taken to the area of understanding of people’s action and how the structure has been placed with the
help of symbols and decoding their meaning understood by a shared understanding of the people. It has
been quoted in anthropological language “reading between lines”, mean interpreting underlying
‘meaning or message’ (understanding the social code underlying those actions). The interpretive
theorists believed that, reality is not ‘out there’ but in people’s mind and the reality is experienced
internally, constructed in social realm through interaction and interpreted by the actors, and is based on
the definition people attach to it.
The primary desire of present Ethnographic approach is to outline the ‘native point of view’ and to
explain how different ‘cultural design of reality’ affects ‘social action’. It emphasizes on the peoples’
shared understanding of their own culture, how they locate their own self in it and their experiences.
The culture is attributed to the agglomeration of symbols having particular meaning and which is
interpreted via actors and therefore interpretive can be understood as study of actor-centred action.
In anthropological literature Geertz was the leading figure in Interpretive Anthropology, he considered
the concept of culture essentially, ‘Semiotic’ one, i.e. symbolic. Interpretive anthropology is referred as
Symbolic Anthropology as well. It has two lines running parallel to each other headed by two different
leaders inheriting ideas from different ideals. Symbolic anthropology is led by both, Clifford Geertz
and Victor Turner, Geertz was influenced by Max Weber and Turner was influenced by Durkheim.
1. HISTORY OF THE INTERPRETIVE RESEARCH TRADITION
It grew out of convergence of disciplines such as philosophy, phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethno-

methodology and sociology. The interpretive social science can be related to the work of Giovanni
Batista Vico (1668-1744), Dilthey (1833-1911) and most of all of Weber (1864-1920). In his work
Vico consciously developed his idea of scienza (science or knowledge) in opposition to Descartes’
philosophy, the most basic idea from which all knowledge could be derived by way of deductive rules.
Vico criticized it in a way that it renders phenomena which cannot be expressed logically or
mathematically as illusions of one sort or another. He argued that, complete knowledge of any thing
involves ‘how it came to be’, ‘what it is’ as a ‘result of human action’ and the principle attribute of
human beings. He is relatively unrecognized for his ideas but, cannot be denied credit for developing
vision of human centred phenomena and explanation of these. He emphasized on the cause of
phenomena which is a step towards producing a theory. His ideas penetrated in social sciences directly
or indirectly in one or the other way.
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Interpretive drew ideas from hermeneutics too; a prominent figure who made contribution towards the
present context was Dilthey who was a historian cum sociologist cum hermeneutic philosopher.
Dilthey proposed that the human being live in a web having meanings and that they make these webs
them self and to study human we need to comprehend those webs. He is the one who distinguished
between human science (Geisteswissenschaften) and natural science (Naturwissenschaften) and also
suggested for implementation of hermeneutic methodology to social sciences. Hermeneutics is a
subject directed study, drawn from word “Hermes “, a Greek god who was given the job of delivering
and interpreting the messages of the other gods for humans. From this came the word ‘Hermeneus’ or
‘interpreter’. The hermeneutic as an ideology came into the social sciences with the close and careful
study of all free flowing texts. The hermeneutic approach stress (1) on myths or narrative having
meaning in a collective consciousness of the society in sense or knowledge of culture (2) it is the job of
social researcher to discover those meaning (3) an acknowledgment to that, the meaning can change
with time and can also be different for groups or sub-groups with in a society.
In sociology as well Ethno methodology emerged as a critique methodology of conventional sociology

which was founded by Harold Garfinkel, a sociologist. Garfinkel wrote ‘Studies in Ethno
methodology’ in 1967 in which he showed concern for the methodological problems in understanding
of social order. He cited Ethno methodology as the investigation of logical properties of indexical
expressions and other practical actions as cause of on -going achievement of organized practices of
everyday life. The indirect influence from Durkheim can be traced when, Garfinkel, talks of expression
and actions in a relation to the collectively of people. He explained the concept of ‘common culture’ as
socially approved ground of inference and action that people use in their everyday affairs and which
are assumed by actors as in common or used by others in the same way and these approved facts
consists of explanations from the point of view of the members in collective manner.
Garfinkel was majorly influenced by Alfred Schutz, whose worked to bridged traditions, sociology and
phenomenology but, Garfinkel never denied of ideas brought from sociologists like Talcott Parsons
(action theory), who in turn was admirer of sociologist like Max Weber and Durkheim (collective
consciousness) and phenomenologist’s like Edmund Husserl (1859-1938). Although interpretivism
differed from phenomenology but, phenomenology has contribution in developing this theoretical
perspective.
In sociological tradition, it was Max Weber whose approach of ‘Verstehen’, was taken up even in
Hermeneutics and other sciences, which is deciphered as ‘understanding’. He held a prominent figure
in relation to interpretivism as developed interpretive sociology. It was Weber and his followers who
gradually took forth the idea of understanding texts to understanding actors and their social life in
general. Weber’s idea was that, man is an animal suspended in the webs of significance, which was
adopted by Geertz therefore only he was the one taking culture as webs and he propounded use of
5

interpretive analysis instead of experimental science for examining such webs of significance. Weber
in 1978 said that, ‘sociology is a science concerning itself with the interpretative understanding of
social action and thereby with a causal explanation of its course and consequences… speak of action
insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behaviour (Keyes, 2002).
2. Interpretive Anthropology:
Interpretivism in anthropological historical discourse was used by Evans Pritchard when he wrote
literature on Nuer Religion but, the flagship went to Geertz as this tradition is best reflected in his work
and is pursued in his every piece of work. In the anthropological writing a paradigm shift could be
observed with Pritchard but, became very much visible with Geertzian ideas and work. His work ‘The
Interpretation of Culture’ came in 19th year when Pritchard passed and became a landmark in the
interpretive anthropology. Geertz’s work is often seen as a reaction to the disappointment with Levi
Strauss’s work on meaning, where contrast between characters of culture was covered and not on the
meaning.
2.1 Geertzian Anthropology
Clifford Geertz proposed interpretative analysis in order to study culture and the webs of significance.
He utilized Gilbert Ryle’s’ notion of “Thick Description” to define the original aim of anthropology. In
actual sense, Ryle’s example of “Twitching and Winking” has made the understanding or study of
cultural phenomena more explicit with this example. Geertz explained the aim of interpretative studies
as, to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts; to support broad assertions
about the role of culture in the construction of collective life by engaging them exactly with complex
specifics. The approach is not visible in his paper on puppets show in java only but, in all other
writings. The most popular of his works is the one that of Balinese cockfight, where he linked it with
the status hierarchy, tension inside the society and between societies and kinship bonding. Geertz
found that, ‘Sabung’, the word used for a cock is having several meanings in the society, which
metaphorically meant ‘a hero’, ‘warrior’, ‘tough guy’, ‘lady killer’, etc. He also noted in his chapter
‘Deep play’, that, both a type of man like, a man who make irrational effort ‘extracting’ himself is
compared to a roster with a dying cock, etc.
He has talked extensively on the owner and their cocks, how they take care of their cocks and they start
reflecting their own image in their rosters, the money involved (the primary bet and the secondary one
along with their characteristics), the fight and how these fights vary on the basis of money and the
prestige involved. He showed that even the status in society is connected with rosters and a hierarchy
based on participation and a link to the status oriented fights. In Balinese society where, participants
6

taking part in larger bet have the highest social status, the kind of status gamble involved make them
important in other affairs of society whereas poor, women, children are the one, lowest in hierarchy,
who either are starting or do not play or gamble in pennies. It is reported in the account that, the
hierarchy is felt so strongly that, none of the men would like to a around the one lowest in the social
hierarchy. He also talked of function of these fights in resolving inter and intra group tension via
defeating the other person but, at the same time brought out that for the people who bet often it is not a
matter of prestige in fact a mode of economic gain. Geertz drew from Balinese cockfight that, the
themes of gambling, status hierarchy involved, aesthetic evoking excitement, etc. are all connected to
rage and its fear, bound by rules they have a symbolic structure in which the inner social ties can be
felt where one is having close friends and kin in their centre bet while when it is between two villages,
allies is the one from the same village and the roster of Home is supported.
After Geertz, the doctrine became popular in Anthropology and many other scholars pursued this
method. Along with Geertz, the interpretivism in anthropology is best reflected in Victor Turner’s
work with Ndembu’s. Later, Turner (Ndembu), Mary Douglas (Natural Symbols) and David Schneider
also became popular for practicing interpretative anthropology.
2.2 Turner’s Anthropology
Interpretative anthropology becomes visible in Turner’s work on Ndembu’s of Northern Rhodesia,

titled ‘Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A study of Ndembu Village Life’, 1957. Turner
focused on the link between rites of passage and social drama along with the idea of liminality, which
is understood as in the Nkang’a, the puberty ritual of a girl. In his account narration of neophyte
wrapped in a cloak is laid at the foot of a ‘mudyi’ sapling is given focusing on the event and
phenomena occurring. The broader aspects of processual phases of these rite de passage rituals
constructed by Turner were 1) separation, where ritual subject is made sacred, 2) margin involving full
or partial separation from everyday life and new names have been given to these ritual subjects
symbolizing their transitional phase and liminality of the status and 3) re-aggregation known as Ku-
tumbuka involving, treatment and celebration dance for the end of isolation. In his approach to ritual
Turner constructed some elemental aspect of it where, first remained the ritual as a process of ongoing
social drama, the second being centrality of symbols as smallest unit in ritual activity. Third, revolves
around meaning of these symbols which can be multiple, concerned with the social order and need of
individual in transition.
The tree, Diplorrhyncus condylocarpon is known for its white latex in the community, giving milky
beads when bark is scraped. The tree is called as ‘milk tree’ by the author, which is explored by him
among the community women for its meaning to them emerging as being ‘senior’ (mukulumpi) tree of
the ritual which Turner categorised under the head of ‘Dominant Symbol’ known for their axiomatic
7

values i.e. not only fulfilling the motive of a ritual but at the same time referring the values regarded as
ends in themselves. The other perspective which marked the emic perspective of ritual and its symbolic
characters was tree resembling the human breast milk and the breast as well which is giving it. This
corresponded the facts of Nkang’a performed near the mudyi sapling symbolising girl’s breast
maturing. Turner calls it the ritual showing connection with the mother and child, more importantly the
nurturing ties of it involving biological act of breast feeding to social linkage in domestic relations and
in the structure of the society which is matrilineal. In the third notion which emerged in the study
pointed out it being ‘the tree of a mother and her child’.
The discussion on puberty ritual of a girl is taken forwards to the concepts of nourishment and learning
which are equated in the content of the milk tree. The child narrated to be swallowing instructions as a
baby swallows milk, here the milk tree undertaking of directives in Ndembu culture followed by
inititation rituals in both the genders (circumcisions in boys and long trial of lying without moving in
girls). In the Nkang’a the focal element of the ritual is the integration of Ndembu women, Mudyi itself
more specifically, is the flag of Ndembu women. In certain situations, girl’s particular tree symbolizes
her shift in social personality as a grown woman filled with maturity.
Turner interpreted ‘milk tree’ endowing order and structure on Ndembu social life as both locally
operating system, matrilineal descent and virilocality, counteracting and preventing stronger group
formation larger than village and at the same time hindering the growth of deep lineages and increasing
probability of individual movement and village fission. Within village quiet unstable marriages
allowed Turner to exhibit social drama as a tool to look beneath the layer of social regularities, hidden
contradictions and eruption of conflict in the social structure. The social drama in Ndembu society in
its processual form is interpreted to following four stage, 1) a violation of regular norm governed social
ties between individuals or groups of a social unit, 2) crisis stage due to extension of violation, unless
conflict is sealed, 3) measures brought into operation by leading members of the unit; and 4)
reintegration of the upset social unit or social recognition of an irreparable violation or schism. The
redressive mechanism are the rituals performed at community level which were performed by cult-
associations cross cutting the boundaries of lineages and villages, creating wider networks of
association, which is treated by turner as a social glue holding the Ndembu society together. The
principle of matriliny as element in semantic structure of the milk tree, itself symbolizes the total
system of interrelations between groups and persons that makes up Ndembu society. At its highest
level of abstraction, therefore, the milk tree stands for the unity and continuity of Ndembu society.
These thoughts were supported by perceptions of educated Ndembu’s explaining the milk tree as
british flag above the political spaces stating Mudyi being their flag.
It is important to not only include the emic perspective but at the same time the processual aspects of
the ritual adhering to the meanings associated with symbols and in totality symbolizing their solidarity.
8

Turner collected properties of these symbols through observation and data collection process. Through
his processual approach towards ritual he made a distinction between life cycle ritual and rituals of
affliction which are more of cult associated, i.e. when a person is caught by spirits or shades as used by
Turner.
3 A Critical Perspective on Interpretative Anthropology
3.1 Objectification of researcher
In anthropological tradition, when a move from scientific to humanistic came, Interpretative

Anthropology grew as a dominant tradition making anthropological study more people and their
perspective centric.
Geertz in his paper on ‘the interpretation of culture’ said that anthropological work is like a text which
was criticised later by scholar of post – modern thoughts considering that researcher is not detached
from the work and argued for a reflexivity in the work. It argue the research is not only about people’s
centric account only but, the observations or action of observers in the social system affecting the very
situation as well and should be acknowledged, understood and reported in the text also incorporating
preconception of researcher as a part of the text.
The concept Objectivity, which marked the researcher’s detachment from the research, was
contradicted by postmodern anthropological tradition. The postmodern scholars argued for reflexivity
in approach, which pointed towards that, a hundred percent of objectivity or detachment cannot be
achieved.
3.2 Causality and Interpretation of culture
Earlier, Michael Martin criticised Geertz for undermining the causal laws in his study in turn rejected
the causality being the focal point in the natural science. On this basis, as argued that, he repressed the
use of language in specific to incorporate cause relation to the human actions. Although, later he adds
that, subjugation of causality in his account is not full but, Geertz did focus on psychology of people
participating, the practice of cock fight and association of it with these fights.
Geertz acknowledged that, social sciences does attend cause and only that we rather focus on the
collecting expressions and analysing them and less by formulating forces and measuring them. The
notion of causality is well tackled in Tuner’s paper where causality is explained in terms of Ndembu
social structure and function of such practice. Ndembu social life as both, locally operating system,
matrilineal descent and virilocality where stronger group formation could not be achieved in groups
9

larger than village and at the same time hindering the growth of deep lineages and increasing
probability of individual’s movement and village fission.
3.3 Validation in the interpretive anthropology
Another criticism to the approach of interpretative work is Reliability on the interpretation where,
Geertz himself argued that, validation of interpretation is problematic where subjectivity was added to
the meaning asserted by individuals. He himself has explained the levels of interpretation first
involving insider, second researcher and third reader or any other which actually justified the notion of
subjectivity and various minds involved. He talked of interpretation of interpretation of a person, which
forming the second level of argument where understanding of researcher, insider’s projection and how
much the researcher could capture can be argued.
Although, Geertz himself argued that, the two interpretation done on a culture is difficult be compared
while an ethnographic account’s attention is not connected with the scholar’s ability to caricature facts
but is on the extent to which he can clarify the local phenomena and puzzles. The postmodern thoughts
also questioned about researcher’s eye and conceptions built on it. These problems were finding their
solution in the postmodern methodologies, which are coming up more in practice in the current trends.
4 Recent trends in Cognitive anthropology
The recent studies were the endeavours to redirect interest of Symbolic Anthropology majorly to
Metaphor and Metonymy, and also to the Synecdoche and Irony and take away from symbols.
Saussarian approach of syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis and dramatistic approach of Kenneth
Burke gave directions to these recent trends. Burke’s approach was centred around the interaction with
situation, actions, agents, agencies and reasons, power of language based conception to construct
situations, yielding actions, undermining agents, recognise and entitle agencies, and conceiving and
following the reason. The Saussurian concept are best reflected in the work of Jakobson who focused
on the similarity and closer associations in cultural productions. It became a model and had a influence
on the Lévi Strauss where in The Savage Mind a contrast berween the metaphorical and metonymical
order of social and cultural relations and alterations take place between the two orders – the similarity
and contiguity, i.e. closer association.
The Saussure-jakobson are distinguished by Tambiah when he discussed about the word’s magical
power in Trobriander garden spells and pregnancy rites where attributes are conveyed via spells to the
subjects, like garden by connecting them metonymically and metaphorically to the qualities in these
other object. His contribution was more clearer than Malinowski’s account and showed how these
10

spells were so effective in handing down these and confirming these characters. Some other works
were of I. A. Richards and William Empson.
Summary
Symbolic or Interpretive Anthropology is concerned with the process through which actors are giving
meaning to their world and these meaning finding a place in system or systems of cultural symbols.
The study conducted by Geertz is basically guessing about the meanings and enveloped it in his
account by analysing them and caricaturing the explanatory conclusions. Along with criticisms and
arguments involved something which is important to observe that via his study, where the humanistic
approach kind of lost ground was brought back by his work while in addition, Turner’s work and his
became the gems in anthropological tradition. Although symbolic anthropologists have never outlined
the methodology for this sort of work but characterised the kind of work needed in anthropological
tradition by leading a paradigm shift where actor centric approach was further refined by post
modernists as a critique to this modernist tradition. Along with the emergence of post modern tradition
certain development were made in modern which reshaped it with some other attributes taking it to the
next level and recording a continuous development with the basic ideology of people
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Module Name/Title Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography
Module Id 17

Anthropology Cognitive Anthropology, Ethno Science, Etic Emic, New Ethnography
Contents
1. Introduction
2. History of Cognitive Anthropology
3. Cognitive anthropology
3.1 Colour categorisation
3.2 Kinship relation and terminology
4. Critical comment on Cognitive Anthropology
5. Recent Developments in Cognitive Anthropology
Summary
Learning Objectives
 To understand the concept of cognitive Anthropology
 To understand the sub branches of the topic
 To appreciate the concept critically

1. Introduction
Cognitive anthropology focuses on the cultural understanding, which is encased in words, narrative
and material culture, and is grasped and shared with others. Cognitive anthropology is the study of the
relation between society and human thought (Andrade). The scholars of cognitive anthropology studies
social groups’ cognition about the objects and phenomena which built their world, ranging from
physical to abstract things.
2. History of Cognitive Anthropology
In the beginning of mid 1950’s scholars constructed a new methodology ‘Cognitive’ or ‘Ethnoscience’
or ‘New ethnography’, which emerged as a critic to the then existing traditional ethnography,
questioning basically the methods of it. These scholars argued on the basis that there is no one method
which is followed by anthropologists and every one studied and wrote in his or her own way. As a
result ethnographies varied in their information and could not be compared. In order to make it more
scientific and the descriptions in these ethnographies more accurate they argued for some new
methodology, which is outlined with emic perspective. However, its intellectual roots go back to
enlightment period, where foundation of human studies was led down. The enlightment thinkers
contributing in the makeup of this intellectual interest were Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke, focusing on
the interaction of society and mind. Among these Locke, put forth an important point where he argued
that, humans at birth unwritten sheet, and with cultural exposure and experience a person gets a shape.
He took forwards this idea in empiricism and propounded conceived knowledge shaping person, as
conceived because of sensory experiences, experienced throughout life. Cognition of individuals rests
on sensation and experience, in contrast his empiricism rationalist orientation emerged arguing role of
mind alone in achieving knowledge. Some other whose work were dealt with human studies, society
and mind were Turgot, Condorcet and Auguste Comte, put forth a philosophy of positivism, arguing
evolvement of intellectual complexity and a need to move towards empirical observation to achieve an
understanding of it.
Post the modern phase in anthropological research i.e. of Geertz, Turner and Schenider, a move from
finding a more scientific form of inquiry in anthropological research anthropologists turned for
inspiration to Linguistic theory. Linguistics was in a stage of shift from Bloomfieldian and structural
linguistics to transformational generative linguistics. In 1954, a major breakthrough happened when,
Kenneth L. Pike published an essay, Language in relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of
Human Behaviour. He acquired idea from relation between sounds (phonetic) and meaningful units of
sound (phenomic). Phenotics is the study of sounds that humans can produce while phenomics
(phonology) focuses on the sounds differentiated on the basis of contrasts with other sounds. Through
4

his study he proposed that, at universal level, the things which could be observed by an outsider
formed the etic category. The emic formed the level of meaningful contrast within a specific language
known to insiders.
After his work anthropologist tried to built the concepts of emic and ‘etic’. The emic which was
subjected to a long debate was seen factually as informant’s expression by Marvin Harris. In 1960’s,
scholars of Cognitive anthropology thought of Benjamin L. Whorf’s perspective, which emerged in
1930’s, on the link between modern, western science, and worldviews of natives’. Along with Whorf,
Edward Sapir was also interested in the relation of language and human thoughts, they both formulated
the Sapir-Whorf’ hypotheses in which they explained that, language is not just way of communicating
but also fabricated people’s thinking of the world. This link between language and perception was
borrowed to connection between culture and language. Later Ward Goodenough and Charles Frake
explained the methods to conduct fieldwork and analyzing the data. A highly structured interview,
aiming at the understanding of indigenous conceptual categories, called as Domain by Ethnoscientists
was proposed. Later, methodology, componential analysis emerged, to understanding definitive
chararcteristics through which artefacts and ideas were sorted in each domain by the natives. These
scholars believed that, components of the domains when organized under one of the several logical
possibilities, covering pattern or model, classification, the collection and the type-token can make the
study more accurate and systematic. The data collection following this way could be more systematic
and replicable claiming the more scientific study which could conceptualize native categories. Some
ethnoscience argued that, this will permit ethnographers to think like indigenous members.
This move towards Cognitive anthropological study remained an active field of research. By mid
1970’s, advances in anthropology, psychology and field of artificial intelligence underlined the human
cognition being more complex than frames derived from indigenous understandings derived from
cognitive methodology. An elemental conception of ethnoscience and early cognitive anthropology
was that, the categorised objects in their world by looking at the mental list of essential characters
which was later developed that, people categorise by referring common mental prototypes which were
called Schemas or Schemata, resulted from the prior experiences with a particular kind of phenomena
which is not identical but similar to that phenomena. Mandler, in schema theory gives an example of a
child identifies something that has characteristics green, round and is without stem as an apple only
because it induces apple-ish schema, rather than because it matches a list of characters. In contrast to
Tyler’s view, it is now understood that intellect is non-linguistic and is not governed by language. Now
a days, cognitive anthropologists and psychologists have chosen the idea of Connectionism, where
intellect is connected, nexus built and distributed by elements such as neurons involved in processing
and through these information can be collected and analysed.

D’ Andrade sketched an example to explain schema and connectionism where, a car driving is taught
based on rule learning via a particular language and in other case where driver is told that pedal for
brake is on left, for gas, it is on right side and in a culture specific way where, car is driven in US on
the right side of the route. Here, the practice will be different from the verbal instructions, where
schema nexuses are built and where practice is foundational in building experience allowing one’s
expressions according to situations. For 1950’s and 1960’s Ethnoscientists, culture was ideally
construct in minds of people and that, could be charted out and reproduced using accurate interviewing
methods. However, Mandler’s theory argued that, what goes in cognition of a person is definitely
cultural, but non-verbal, and cannot be obtained through questioning. Hutchins, who explained culture
as a process, where it is not only construct in mind rather involving process perceiving and
communicating in and with physical world, which build schemas and link in the mind founding
cognition.
Several other studies pointed out the problems in the methods of modern system, where, different areas
of inquiry were given relevance with the focus on reliability on these. The various problems in the
areas of cultural thoughts, value system and beliefs studies were highlighted in the cognitive research.
3. Cognitive anthropology
This field of anthropology details with the culture and human perceptions. It aims to understand how
people understand their surrounding artefacts and environment. Although Ethnoscientists focused more
on the making ethnographies more scientific and replicable, but the natives’ point of view was not a
new addition to approach. In the anthropological studies, Bronislaw Malinowski, in the introduction of
Argonauts of the Western Pacific, called it being the final aim of ethnographers, which was published
in the 1920’s. Boasian historical particularism pointing towards uniqueness of each culture, ‘cultural
relativism’ somehow pointed towards what Ethnoscientists argued to follow. Although the extreme
cultural relativism followed by Ethnoscientists made cross cultural comparisons unattainable.
The four major phases observed in cognitive anthropology were focusing on various arenas. The first,
where aims of cognitive anthropology were set involving studies on symbolism which were combined
with the linguistic understanding leading into Ward Goodenough’s work. The second, was inititated by
an indepth study of cultural wisdom by utilising methods that have been already in existence. The
componential analysis for kinship terminology was utilised by Lonsbury and Goodenough, where
language was taken as central idea. Later, techniques were borrowed from psychology which kept
adding in the methods utilized in cognitive anthropology. There were studies which focused on
psychological theorizing, Wallace did work on the link between the shortcomings of short term
memory and the size terminologies used in kinship system. This period extended from the late 1950’s
6

to the early 1970’s oriented towards methods utilised, construction as a subject and quantification,
which mostly occurred in five universities majorly Yale, Stanford, Irvin, Pennsylvania and Berkeley.
The third phase started with the beginning of the mid 1970’s developed by Eleanor Rosch, the link
between language based units and of prototypes which were pure psychological units was formulated.
By early 1980’s a shift from prototype theory to schema theory was observed and by mid it is
relevance was realised through connectionist nexus. With a divorced strong hold on semantic ways of
analysis an enhanced interest in metaphor and meaning became the focus. The fourth phase which is
comparatively new, have centrality of schema in connection with the actions. Emotion, socialization
and concerns on cognitive structure with physical construct.
3.1 Colour categorisation
Harold C. Conklin, is an anthropologist who worked in the area of ethnoecology and linguistics. He
worked on Hanunoo folkbotany, where he soon after one year of fieldwork became familiar with the
problem in native system of colour classification. The identification of flora relies majorly on colour
differentiation in the look of flowers or other structures- both in classification botany and in the
popular systems of categorisation. In his account, he initiated with some biological adjectives of
Colour in botanical classification and added that in lab environment, colour distinction being same for
all humans groups probably. He says that, irrespective of linguistic difference, the way in which
languages do classification of millions of colours, which every normal person can distinguish differ
from one to another.
‘Domains’ remain the point of departure for the cognition and cognitive categorisation of objects in a
culture, eg. bed, tables and chairs fall under the domain of furniture. Conklin’s work in the area of
ethnobotany is one of the perfect studies to reflect on the ideas of Cognitive Anthropology. He
hypothesized that, colour classification influencing the perception of colour where he showed cultural
based terms by which the Hanunoo categorised colour and the need of it may vary considerably from
one to another culture. The classification of colour names in English account more than 3000
categories. It showed some other possibilities too where, some non-categorised units for colour
classification can be found. The terms used in cultural vocabulary for colours can help in analysis
within the culture of word bank and unit can help in their understanding and array of application.
Conklin explored colour classification among Hanunoo where he included answers in linguistic form
after showing some of the painted cards and other coloured materials through other sources natural
environment some more was explored. All this resulted in cognition of native in terms of colour
categories where large number of overlappings was found which could not be remedified with control
7

specimens. Though work based on flora in-congruity resulted in two contrast results 1) larger and more
common understanding had four colours of the colour system, and 2) many sub-panels included
hundreds of colours which were having overlapping.
The Level 1 terms which Conklin identified basing the classification of colours among Hanunoo were
 (ma) biru, linked to the relatively darker shade of colour i.e. blackness.
 (ma) lagti, linked to lighter shades of colours, like white.
 (ma) rara, marking redness or shades of red colour.
 (ma) latuy, appearance of green.
(ma) biru (ma) rara
Black
Blue Red
Dark green
Dark grey Yellow, etc.
Dark violet
(ma) latuy
Light brown
Green
Yellow
Based on this level some outside environment related aspects were delineated by Conklin which are
not based on colour categorization. Some of these were simple contrast, like broader colour category
set in the community and is explained previously, the light and the dark, while the other contrast was

that of, dryness and wetness, which is related to the life available in surrounding environment, where
Conklin focused on the flora available. Accordingly, the world of Nanunoo’s is categorised where,
food and raw products both are named with the extensions of terms used in level 1, such as uncooked,
fresh vegetables and fruits are called as pag-laty-un, etc. In the community where social relevance of
artefacts is also based on the colour categories in the Level 1 and the third, contrast based on colours is
of manufactured goods, desired are from the darker categories relegating the lighter ones. In pointed
out being interesting by Conklin that, the surroundings of these people majorly forest, has shades of
green, which is invaluable for people in decorative artefacts where Green bead are considered
unattractive.
3.2 Kinship relation and terminology
Kinship terminology which has been studied by various anthropologist in kinship studies was studied
by Lounsbury and Goodenough where they put forth a method to locate ‘idea units’ and analysing the
formation or structure of these units. Although their method was drawn from the ideas borrowed from
1920’s linguistic scholars like Roman Jakobson and N. Trubetzkoy, who offered Thèse introducing the
concept of ‘structure’. The studies conducted in the non literate societies were found to be having a
different kinship system and terminologies than the modern societies in west. The parent-child relation
and marriage were found in all societies studied but the various categories in kinship system were
found to be different from the other, where kin terms also differed.
Bellah conducted a study on Chiricahua kin terms, were living in New and Northern Mexico, along
with Texas. Among them the centrality of local group as functional unit is cherished with a system of
band above it which acted as a unit in the warfare. Within the local unit, there are matrilocal kins with
their nuclear families, functioning as a primary unit in terms of economy where hunting and other
economic activities are organised by them. The kinship system which is presented through a
hypothetical geneaology drawn can help in understanding the method of componential analysis of
cognitive anthropology giving it a shade different from the modern’ methods.

A A A B B B C C C D D D
F F F F F F F F F F I I I I I I I I
F F E H
K L L K L K Ego L L K L L K L
I I F F F F M N I I I I F F I I I I F F I I
F F I I I I
C C A A D D D D B B D D A A A A B B D D C C A A A A C C B B D D D D B B D D A A C C B B D D D D B B A A C C D D B B
These terms are that of term of reference and not that of term of address, where the term used for a
person can be his first name or may be a special term out of affection. In most of the anthropological
studies term of reference is given emphasis, which can vary and often does not remain unaffected from
the situation and concerned components. This problem was sorted by componential analysis
propounded by Lounsbury and Goodenough which is developed by A. K. Romney as well. Their
componential analysis involved steps where first covered commonalities in each term. The term
labelled as F, were looked for commonalities, for example gender of these persons, where Ego’s
father’s brother and his sister both were referred by the same term irrespective of Ego’s gender. Here
the gendered expressions are not making any difference and it is proposed as a rule by Romney as rule
of ‘minimum difference’. He coined another rule, rule of reciprocals in which X calls Z with a term F,
then Z calls X by the term F and which is common in this community in comparison to English society.
Later, a list of kin type in a particular kin term was separated to look at the commonalities coming out.
The features distinguishing F from I are the type of link between them, kin on first generation and of
generation above.
10

f f
f
f f
f
In this figure where there is an additional link in genealogy, which are different but are not making any
difference, which is called as the ‘rule of sequence difference’. In it person’s calling each other by F
are the siblings of ego’s father, and also true for the persons where, one is the child of a man of ego’s
generation. Here it is important to note that, if F is replaced by I then the rule followed remain the same
but the only difference is that, ‘F’ is used consanguineal relation through male while ‘I’ through
female, separated by one generation in collateral manner.
Term used in The native terms

used for various Kinship Link Trace of link
account categories
One generation from Used for the father’s side
F cìdèèdèè
ego (male links)
One generation from
I cì¥o¥e Used for the mother’s side
ego (Female links)
One generation from
E cìtàà Term for father
ego
One generation from
H cìmáá’ Term for mother
ego
One generation from
M cì¥è’ Term for son
ego
One generation from
N cìyát’cé’ Term for daughter
ego
K cìkìs Same generation Used for male siblings or cousins
Used for females siblings or
L cílà’ Same generation cousins
Two generation from Term for grandparent/
A cìnálé ego’s line grandchildren
11


Father’s father (ascending
terms) where direct and
collateral both relatives
are in this category.
 Ego’s male sibling or
cousin followed directly
by another male in the
generation immediate to it.
Term for grandparent/
grandchildren
 Father’s mother, where no
distinction is there
Two generation from between direct and
B cìt’cìné ego’s line collateral.
 Ego’s male sibling or
by a female in the
grandchildren
 Mother’s father
(ascending terms) where
direct and collateral both
Two generation from
C cìtsóyé relatives are in this
ego’s line category.
 Ego’s female sibling or
by a male in the
grandchildren through female
links of the same generation
 Mother’s mother
(ascending terms) where
Two generation from direct and collateral both
D cìtcó ego’s line relatives are in this
category.
 Ego’s female sibling or
by another female in the
In Chiricahua kinship terminology where a contrast between father’s line and of mother’s made
distinguished there no distinction in the same generation is non-existing even when gender is situated
12

in it. Here direct and collateral are merged and a gender distinction in the terminology at some levels
was observed. This was contrasted by Bellah with English kinship terminology
4. Critical comment on Cognitive Anthropology
With an attempt of Cognitive anthropologist to move beyond the modernist methods and to develop
something more scientific lead them to formulate certain methods and methodology. Certain criticisms
have come up for ethnoscience even from within of the tradition. Keesing, criticised the inability of
new ethnography or ethnoscience to move ahead their analysis of various domains. It has been unable
to describe the generative grammar of any culture along with a failure in discovering the internal
cultural workings that could be compared. In other words studies in new ethnography were not having
any scope for cross cultural analysis where there is no generalization is built for comparative analysis.
Cognitive science deals with very static and synchronic analysis as their cosmology do not change and
so is the case of cultural logic. So there is no scope for studying change through new ethnographic
works. This has been defended by the practitioners arguing by taking up the concept of change studies
through ecological, environmental and natural phenomena have a direct effect on the system of finding.
The new ethnography which was criticised for following a single logico-methodological model where,
plurality of these models argued to cover the culture studies while, it was suggested by ethno scientists
that, there is a possibility of emergence of alternate can emerge when an umbrella structure is studied
with the traditional logic.
The role of actor in the ethnographic studies was noted by Malinowski who said that, the actual
meaning of people’s behaviour can only be studied from the opinion and ideologies they hold and have
himself written a rich account. On this basis cognitive anthropologists were criticised to be not having
knowledge of past when any phenomena is studied.
5. Recent Developments in Cognitive Anthropology
In cognitive anthropology, the new trends were in response to the critique from within, that purely
descriptive accounts are not anymore logical in anthropology. A rigorous description is required to
reflect on theory talking about the reason and how the material studied came to be. So, one of the
modern trend which emerged in cognitive anthropology was to get away with the descriptive forms of
ethnographic works, where description was an end in itself. Later, a higher form of descriptive work
was done by Charles Frake who published an article on Subanun religious behaviour.
13

The critique of having no generalization to do a cross cultural comparison was base of other
developments happening in the cognitive anthropological works. The responses aimed for theoretical
generalizations where structure or process of specific semantic structures was developed. They were
based on cross cultural comparisons of cognitive science driven structures of specific domains. The
general concerns centred on the character of work and social and communicative use of domains with
their basic or core characters of these which were the major concern of traditional cognitive science.
The classificatory works were done by Berlin and Berlin, Breedlove and Raven (1974) on native
botanical classifications, other works are recognised in the areas like colour classifications and
ethnozoology.
Later, works concerned with the study of Metaphors were done by anthropologists in Cognitive field
such as Basso, Lonunsbury, Kronenfeld on metaphors in Kinship systems while Quinn treated
metaphor as organizer of thinking among actors.
Summary
As a tradition Cognitive anthropology focused on people’s understanding of their world covering a

wider range of elements of study. As tradition grew from traditional or very initial phase to the recent
where more things and approaches have been added by current scholars. A continuous attempt to mark
more scientific approach towards ethnographic studies aimed cognitive science to keep upgrading their
methodology with the help of critiques from outside and within.
The traces of development in cognitive anthropology somewhere take us to the domains studied not
only by ethnoscientists but symbolic anthropology as well. Metaphor and Metonymy are the
converging points where both the subjects meet but, following their own traditions. Apart from all the
criticisms cognitive anthropology is an important attempt to move more closer to actual native world
and perceptions.
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Module Name/Title Post Modernism
Module Id 28

Anthropology Post Modernism
Contents
Introduction
1. Modernism – A background to Understand Post-Modernism
2. What is Post Modernism?
2.1 Postmodernism – Attempting a Definition.
2.2 The Main Thinkers of the Post Modernism.
2.4 Principal Tenets of Postmodernism
2.5 Post Modernism in relation to Post Structuralism
2.5 The Postmodern Condition, Replacing Grand with the Local
2.6 Post modernism and Deconstruction
3. Critique of Post Modernism
4. Conclusion
Learning Objectives
This module will introduce the reader to
 the theory of Postmodernism in anthropological thought. through a background of modernism

which is indispensible in understanding the postmodern. After understanding modernism, the
work will further
 discuss ‘postmodernism’ and will try attempting a definition of postmodernism
 the principle tenets of post modernism, important perspectives by postmodernists
 the critique of the theory of Postmodernism

Introduction
Postmodernism in Anthropology is one of the exceedingly debated theories in contemporary times. It

is seen as a kind of intellectual movement with the main purpose of challenging, its immediate passing
stage of modernism prevalent in 19th century. Postmodern or postmodernity is a culture in the
contemporary time frame of history, While postmodernism is a set of critiques who are inspired by
this postmodern culture.
1. Modernism – A background to Understand Post-Modernism
To understand ‘Post-Modernism’ it becomes essential and important to first understand theory of

Modernism. Understanding Post Modernism is only possible with contextual placement of Post
Modernism as a stage that comes after Modernism.
At the time of enlightenment (a movement in Europe during 17 th and 18th century), the supremacy from
the traditional institutions, supernatural, and the blind faith, shifted to the human reason and its since
then, one could see the advent of modernity. Modernity came with renaissance. Over the centuries,
science, technology and human reason became most important with extreme authority.
Modernism is a movement that is philosophical and artistic in nature. The very term finds its origin in
the western context that relates with the cultural and social changes due to revolutions and alterations
in the western civilization. Modernism came around end of 19th century (period around 1890’s) to the
starting of 20th century, the period around 1945 as ending phase of modernism by its proponents.
Modernism was related to the industrial growth and decline in the beliefs regarding religion,
superstitions, backwardness of all kinds that made the society ‘less modern’ or traditional in approach .
Modernists intentionally wanted to break the ideologies that were pertinent to the Victorian era.
Modernism was like a philosophy that stressed on a particular ‘way of thinking’, a new and progressive
outlook towards society that was made by breaking shackles of orthodoxy and traditions that were
irrational in nature. ‘Self-consciousness’ was considered the main characteristic of this movement.
Modernism led to a new form of art, philosophy, architecture, lifestyle, economy and Politics
replacing the old systems of social, economic, political organizations.
The main aim of modernism was ‘progress. It facilitated a new attitude towards life that was more
rational. Industrial revolution and capitalistic values from the west promoted the philosophy of
4

modernism to a great extent. Modernism started a new form of social and cultural life , thinking , art
and literature . The modernism artists were innovative and believed in new forms of experimentation
that was never attempted or practiced before by artists of the previous centuries.
Some of the major thinkers and protagonists of this movement were like Sigmund Freud with his work
on theories of psychoanalysis and dreams, Friedrich Nietzsche and his work on the role of ‘will’ in
psychological motivations, important literary works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry James and August
Stringberg. All the works of the Modernist era, be it artistic or literary, represented and displayed
rationality, culture and freedom from the ‘Past’.
With all this above context of Modernism, it becomes easy for one to situate and understand the
advent of Post Modernism as a stage, a philosophy, a movement that followed Modernism.
2. What is Post Modernism?
The word ‘post’ is a prefix which means ‘after’ or “later”, so the word Post Modernism refers to a
philosophical movement that came after ‘Modernism’. The movement started in the late decades of
20th century .
Post Modernism was a term for a philosophy that was applicable to all facets of society like economic ,
political , social , cultural , art, literature , music , fiction and history. Post modernism was a reaction to
modernism.
Postmodern school of thought has nothing to do with the historical developments. In post modernism,
the nature becomes secondary and prime importance is given to a more human world . It meant
breaking barriers with everything that existed before in the human civilization.
Post modernism thus inspired and grew from post-structuralism and its ideas. Postmodern thought
reappraised the entire system of western civilization.
If modernism is understood with the advent of capitalism , post modernism deals with what comes
after capitalism.
2.1 Postmodernism – Attempting a Definition.
One of the very important facet of post modernism is that, the post modernists do not believe in fixed ,
identifiable definitions . They do not have strict boundaries of defining anything as everything is based
on one’s personal subjectivity and interpretation. More or less, it’s like a belief system that is indefinite
and confusing in nature.
5

For post-modernist theorists, reality is always incomprehensible, truth is something that is socially
constructed, and its ever dynamic in nature.
Sometimes, the main problem in studying post modernism is distinguishing it from what we call as
‘modernity’ as , postmodern exponents still investigate the areas that were studied by the modernist
like parody, ambiguity , self-consciousness and irony.
So we can say that post modernism is an extension of modernism in terms of investigation. The term
postmodern was coined by an historian named Arnold Toynbee in the forties.
2.2 The Main Thinkers of the Post Modernism.
Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976), Michel Foucault (1926- 1984), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Jean
Francois Lyotard (1924-1998), Richard Rorty (1931-2007), Fredric Jameson (1934) were important
thinkers/philosophers of the post modernism discourse.
2.3 Principal Tenets of Postmodernism
One of the very important features of Postmodernism is its disenchantment with Modernism. It
developed in reaction to the Modernist perspective on social life.
The philosophy of post modernism supports globalization. Like globalization , post modernism feels
that any form of borders be it social , political , economic are hindrance in development of human
society and its communication within it. Post Modernists believe in breaking down all sorts of walls
that restrict humans in any way . They promote a free world
Post-Modernist feel that ethics is a subject matter of the individual and it is not something that is
collective. Every individual has his or her set of moral rules which can be different from one another.
Therefore morality is a private affair.
Post modernism is considered a very liberal philosophical movement, where all religions are
considered effective and important. It does not lays stress importance on any one religion and is quite
liberal and secular in approach. No one religion is important. It believes in plurality of religions.
Postmodernism says No one way of life is correct. Everyone has equal rights to live the way one wants
to, without any restriction This movement also supports the cause of homosexuals and the feminists.
For them, every person has different social, intellectual and biological preferences..
Post modernists believe that there is no absolute truth , everything is relative and in accordance to how
one wants to interpret the reality . For instance , there can be hundred interpretations of a single
painting and still all hundred interpretations would be right and valid. It values human subjectivity and
6

thus for in Post Modernism everything relative and nothing is absolute. Truth is ever changing and has
no one explanation. There are multiple truths and not one ultimate truth.
Post modernism supports rationality and self-subjectivity. It considers individual’s opinion supreme
and believes that everything is ever changing. For Post Modernists traditional knowledge is of no use
in a postmodern world. It should be completely discarded. for them age old traditions bounds , imposes
constraints on humans decelerating their development.
The nature of this philosophy is atheist in nature. All its major exponents of post modernism are
atheists like Guattari , Foucault , Bataille, and Derrida. For many, the future of religion was atheism.
The Post Modernists believe that every individual constructs his or her reality according to it culture,
environment and experience. Nothing appears real to the post modernists, for them there are billions
and billions of subjective realities and there is no single objective reality. A Post Modern is not
convinced with the objectivity of the science as promoted in the modernist era. Science studies facts
and according to the post-modernist view, facts can be understood and interpreted in more than one
way depending upon the nature and subjectivity of the scientist.
Post modernism is against traditional historical approach. For them past is something that is blur and
does not help in any understanding of the present. History is rendered as an undefined past which is
more like a fiction. Thinker like Foucault challenged history and the norm where study of past is
considered unavoidable and important but at the same time, he said that history should be written as
part of some philosophy and not merely as historical account.
Everything is considered as a social construction in term of post modernism. There is no unified and
permanent self. There is no fixed human nature and all humans keep trying to receive acceptance and
acknowledgment in society.
Political values in post modernism comes from the Marxist ideology. For instance. Foucault was under
the influence of Marxist understanding relations based on economic inequality. Foucault along with
Porty used the leftist thought in their works.
Post-modernist were supportive of the concept of ‘’free love’’. They considered Christian marriages to
be root cause of evils in the society. They had utopian view of sexual relations that knew no burden of
society or tradition.
Post modernists do not get stuck in the categories of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, as they are against the notion
of absolute truth in post modernism.
2.4 Post Modernism in relation to Post Structuralism

7

Structuralism was a movement that started in 1950’s in reaction to French existentialism.
If structuralism dealt with finding logic in the language, post structuralism was about the poetic or the
expressive sub-conscious of that logic .
If Post structuralists did not belived in stringent and authoritarian interpretations. For many, post
structuralism was a movement that was considered to be a part of a broader philosophical and
intellectual movement of Post Modernism.
Post structuralists like Jacquas Derrida, Jean Francious Lyotard, and pierre Bourdieu were considerednt
post modernist too. Post modernists and post structuralists belong to two different schools of thought,
and cannot be seen as one. Post structuralists can be understood as a product of an offshoot from the
philosophy of post structuralism that was born under the philosophical movement of the post modern.
2.5 The Postmodern Condition, Replacing Grand with the Local
Jean Francious Lyotard in 1979, wrote an important book “ The Post Modern Condition : A Report on
Knowledge” this book introduced the term ‘post modern’ which was previously discussed and used
only by the art critics. Lyotard discussed the notion of knowledge in an postmodern world. He
discussed what type of knowledge and what meaning of knowledge exists in a postmodern set up.
The notion of knowledge in post modern condition meant to terminate the ‘grand’ theories and the
metanarratives that were prevalent in the modern condition. Post modernism outrighly rejected the use
of Metanarratives which included narrative historical accounts , meanings derived out of experience or
one’s knowledge .
Lyotard proposed that Post Modernism should break the shackles of metanarratives and grand
universal theories and should start understanding the local narratives, which are specific and non-
universal in nature and deal with single events. Local narratives would result in understanding varied
forms of human experiences.
2.6 Post modernism and Deconstruction
One of the highlighting and very unique feature of post modernism is the style of writing the literature.
Post modernists have a very specific kind of language. They believe in deconstruction. For instance ,
according to Jacques Derrida deconstruction is a literary method in which the latent meanings of the
text are exposed. Deconstruction forms the very significant aspect of post modernism. This was found
in the work of Jacquas Derrida. It is a kind of analysis based on philosophical and literary features.
Deconstruction doesn’t belive or support: “pure existence” or pure presence of anything. According to

deconstruction, nothing in the world has one and a constant meaning. Every meaning changes in
different contexts.
Deconstruction means to pursue a meaning of a particular text to a level that all its inherent
contradictions and oppositions are exposed to show that every form of text has not just one meaning ,
but every text is a potential piece of understand multiple truths hidden within it , which can be revealed
by the used of the deconstruction analysis. Language is considered a system of signs, which is decoded
with help of deconstruction.
Deconstruction is used in different areas of humanities and social sciences like in anthropology, law,
psychoanalysis, linguistics, feminism, histography, political theory, and homo sexual studies. It is
interesting for one to know that, one can experience or use the analysis of deconstruction in art,
architecture and music .deconstruction forms the crux of the textual approach of Derrida.
One of the most important concerns of Derrida’s deconstruction was to contribute, assert and re-
evaluate all the western values. Another important concern or rather apprehension of Derrida was not
to mix deconstruction with the dialectics by Hegel, as finding contradictions can lead to a a stage
where synthesis of contradictions take place in the later stage , so it’s important to differentiate
between deconstruction and the dialectics.
The term deconstruction according to Derrida was first used in the context of structuralism. Derrida
was against deconstruction being called as method, as method is more like a mechanical action . for
Derrida , deconstruction is neither a critique nor an analysis Literary criticism of postmodern rejects
that objective meanings and true interpretations of the texts. All the meanings have to be
deconstructed, to understand them in a better way
3. Critique of Post Modernism
Like any other school of thought, Post Modern is also not free of criticism. The impact of post
modernism in western context is highly debatable. There are different opinions on post modernism for
some is a new temporary fashion and for others it’s a new influential paradigm that will stay for long
and for rest, the theory of post modernism is highly confusing and detrimental to use. Few of the very
important criticism of this philosophy are as follows.
Starting with the contribution of post modernism , it replaced modernism which was a very strong
paradigm based on empirical investigation to look for absolute truths.post modernism helped in
bridging the dichotomy between faith and ultimate rationality , which was helpful to the Christian

beliefs. For many, Post Modern school of thought is vague and worthless. It adds nothing analytical to
the present system of knowledge.
According to Felix Guattari a post-modernist himself, the theory of post structuralism and post
modernism were not flexible to explain the social, environmental and psychological aspects of life.
For Danniel Dennett, (a philosopher) post modernism leads to multiple interpretations of a single
phenomenon contributing to the confusion and absurdities, which disrespect the historical evidences.
Post modernists do not give any regard to historical developments of civilizations of the past. For
many, post modernism promotes a philosophy that is unreliable and erratic in nature, depending upon
such a free philosophy does not guarantee concrete knowledge of any phenomenon.
Art and literature of Modernism movement was considered ‘high art’, it was sophisticated and
ceremonial whereas in post modernism, it was more like a popular art, which was neither sophisticated
nor well-wrought. It was fragmented, confusing to many, giving value to the subjective aesthetics.
Keith Jenkins did epistemological critique of post modernism. He critiqued post modernism and
asserted the role of history, along with the aesthetic. According to him, epistemological grounding is
important to ground any philosophy .According to Jenkins, there was a problem in ‘deconstruction’ as,
it lead to a radical ambiguity. If there are multiple truths or no absolute truth then there is just cynicism
and disbeliefs in the ideology of post modernism.
Post modernism rejected everything that was modern and instead gave new form and understanding of
politics and culture which was unstable and informal in approach. For the post-modernist, the world
outside him is an error, for them truth of anyone except themselves is an error. This leads to a situation
of chaos, as no one has the authority to define standards of the right or wrong in a postmodern society.
Post modernists do not support a unified, influential all-inclusive worldview. They believe in local and
multiple stories and they are against classical, formal, big narrations. During modernity , importance
was given to rational thought and reason , that helped in progress of society , technology , medicine etc
whereas , post modernism has added more skepticism in understanding society by avoiding the use of
human reason .
For post modernism science is also based on prejudices and specific motives so, it was not ‘objective’
in pure sense of the term. Post modernism highlights the role of language and culture as powerful
weapons. The power of language and culture was suppressed in modernity and importance was given
to science and technology. Many scholars feel that post modernism was all about the fall of objectivity
and conviction rather Post modernism only led to skepticism, never ending interpretations leading to
chaos.
10

British Anthropologist, Ernest Geller attacked Post Modernism by saying the post modernism was self-
absorbed and was highly subjective in Nature. For Gellner, Post Modernism was nothing but form of
relativism. Post modernism was considered as a form of romanticist, which believed in replacing the
classical set up of enlightened Europe.
Post modernism includes all the critiques that attempts that try to define the ‘modern’. For post
modernists grand, abstract and universal theories are vague and not to be trusted, they misguide and
there is nothing which can be called as an comprehensive ethnographic study.
Post modernists believe in individual reflexivity and the notion of embodiment. Post modernism
therefore is so much derived and influenced from relativism and interpretivism that post modernism
looks like a logical development from the two, it is yet very difficult to demarcate post modernism
from relativism and interpretivism by any means of timeline , style of writing or the literary jargons.
As the enlightenment promised a whole new world, post modernism too believes in the same. Post
moderns are liberals in accepting all forms of interpretations, truths and forms culture equally. Every
subjective understanding seems legitimate for post modernism.
4. Conclusion
Though one cannot define the term post modernism, it’s something that is a way of looking at things
around us, it’s a perspective or more of an intellectual movement that sees there is no absolute truth
and every text has many meanings in it. This is a philosophy that is famous for its playfulness. For
Post moderns, there is no truth, no fact, so one right way to understand nature or a text, and ultimately
objectivity is a myth for a post-modernist. It is liberal in nature and believes in breaking all the
shackles of science and a system of authoritative truth. It believes in subjectivities and not objectivity
and empiricism. Despite post modernism being absurd to many, confusing to others, it’s a very
significant paradigm in the theories of development. Therefore , influence of the Post Modern theory is
so influential that even those who are anti-post modernism have fallen prey to or have been captivated
to what is called as the “postmodern”.
Summary
This lecture will introduce you to the theory of Postmodernism in anthropological thought through a
background of modernism which is indispensible in understanding the postmodern.
After understanding the theory of modernism, we will further discuss ‘postmodernism’ and will try
attempting a definition of postmodernism, following that we will then discuss the principle tenets of
post modernism, important perspectives by postmodernists and in the end of the lecture we will discuss
11

over the critique of the theory of Postmodernism, so let me start , by introducing you to the concept of
postmodernism.
Postmodernism in Anthropology is one of the exceedingly debated theories in contemporary times. It

is seen as a kind of intellectual movement with the main purpose of challenging, its immediate passing
stage of modernism prevalent in 19th century. Postmodern or postmodernity is a culture in the
contemporary time frame of history, While postmodernism is a set of critiques who are inspired by this
postmodern culture.
To understand ‘Post-Modernism’ it becomes essential and important to first understand theory of

Modernism. Understanding Post Modernism is only possible with contextual placement of Post
Modernism as a stage that comes after Modernism. At the time of enlightenment (a movement in
Europe during 17th and 18th century), the supremacy from the traditional institutions, supernatural,
and the blind faith, shifted to the human reason and its since then, one could see the advent of
modernity. Modernity came with renaissance. Over the centuries, science, technology and human
reason became most important with extreme authority. Modernism is a movement that is philosophical
and artistic in nature. The very term finds its origin in the western context that relates with the cultural
and social changes due to revolutions and alterations in the western civilization. Modernism came
around end of 19th century ( period around 1890’s) to the starting of 20th century. The period around
1945 as ending phase of modernism by its proponents).
Modernism was related to the industrial growth and decline in the beliefs regarding religion ,
superstitions, backwardness of all kinds that made the society ‘less modern’ or traditional in approach
Modernism was like a philosophy that stressed on a particular ‘way of thinking’, a new and progressive
outlook towards society that was made by breaking shackles of orthodoxy and traditions that were
irrational in nature. ‘Self-consciousness’ was considered the main characteristic of this movement.
Modernism led to a new form of art, philosophy, architecture, lifestyle, economy and Politics replacing
the old systems of social , economic , political organizations. Thus The main aim of modernism was
‘progress’. Some of the major thinkers and protagonists of this movement were like Sigmund Freud
with his work on theories of psychoanalysis and dreams, Friedrich Nietzsche and his work on the role
of ‘will’ in psychological motivations, important literary works by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry James
and August Stringberg. All the works of the Modernist era, be it artistic or literary, represented and
displayed rationality, culture and freedom from the ‘Past’.
With all this above context of Modernism, it becomes easy for one to situate and understand the
advent of Post Modernism as a stage, a philosophy, a movement that followed Modernism.
After Modernism, lets come to Postmodernism.The word ‘post’ is a prefix which means ‘after’ or
“later”, so the word Post Modernism refers to a philosophical movement that came after ‘Modernism’.
12

The movement started in the late decades of 20th century . Post Modernism was a term for a
philosophy that was applicable to all facets of society like economic , political , social , cultural , art,
literature , music , fiction and history. Post modernism was a reaction to modernism. Postmodern
school of thought has nothing to do with the historical developments. In post modernism, the nature
becomes secondary and prime importance is given to a more human world . It meant breaking barriers
with everything that existed before in the human civilization. Post modernism thus inspired and grew
from post-structuralism and its ideas. Postmodern thought reappraised the entire system of western
civilization.If modernism is understood with the advent of capitalism , post modernism deals with what
comes after capitalism.
It is difficult to define postmodernism. One of the very important facet of post modernism is that, the
post modernists do not believe in fixed , identifiable definitions . They do not have strict boundaries of
defining anything as everything is based on one’s personal subjectivity and interpretation. More or less,
it’s like a belief system that is indefinite and confusing in nature. For post-modernist theorists, reality
is always incomprehensible, truth is something that is socially constructed, and its ever dynamic in
nature. we can still say that post modernism is an extension of modernism in terms of investigation.
The term postmodern was coined by an historian named Arnold Toynbee in the forties.The Main
Thinkers of the Post Modernism are Martin Heidegger (1889 – 1976), Michel Foucault (1926- 1984),
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Jean Francois Lyotard (1924-1998), Richard Rorty (1931-2007), Fredric
Jameson (1934
Let us now discuss the Principal Tenets of Postmodernism
One of the very important features of Postmodernism is its disenchantment with Modernism. It
developed in reaction to the Modernist perspective on social life.The philosophy of post modernism
supports globalization. Post Modernists believe in breaking down all sorts of walls that restrict humans
in any way . They promote a free world. In post modernism, morality is a private affair.
Postmodernism says No one way of life is correct. Everyone has equal rights to live the way one wants
to, without any restriction for instance , This movement also supports the cause of homosexuals and the
feminists. For them, every person has different social, intellectual and biological preferences.Post
modernists believe that there is no absolute truth , everything is relative and in accordance to how one
wants to interpret the reality . For instance , there can be hundred interpretations of a single painting
and still all hundred interpretations would be right and valid for a Postmodern there are multiple truths
and not one ultimate truth. Post modernism supports rationality and self-subjectivity. It considers
individual’s opinion supreme and believes that everything is ever changing. The nature of this
philosophy is atheist in nature . All its major exponents of post modernism are atheists like Guattari ,
Foucault , Bataille, and Derrida. For many , the future of religion was atheism .The Post Modernists
believe that every individual constructs his or her reality according to it culture, environment and
13

experience. Nothing appears real to the post modernists, for them there are billions and billions of
subjective realities and there is no single objective reality. A Post Modern is not convinced with the
objectivity of the science as promoted in the modernist era. Science studies facts and according to the
post-modernist view, facts can be understood and interpreted in more than one way depending upon the
nature and subjectivity of the scientist.Post modernism is against traditional historical approach. For
them past is something that is blur and does not help in any understanding of the present. Everything is
considered as a social construction in term of post modernism. There is no unified and permanent self.
There is no fixed human nature and all humans keep trying to receive acceptance and acknowledgment
in society.
For many , post structuralism was a movement that was considered to be a part of a broader
philosophical and intellectual movement of Post Modernism as Post structuralists did not believed in
stringent and authoritarian interpretations.
Jean Francious Lyotard in 1979, wrote an important book “ The Post Modern Condition : A Report on
Knowledge” this book introduced the term ‘post modern’. According to him,Post modernism outrighly
rejected the use of Metanarratives which included narrative historical accounts , meanings derived out
of experience or one’s knowledge . Lyotard proposed that Post Modernism should break the shackles
of metanarratives and grand universal theories and should start understanding the local narratives,
which are specific and non-universal in nature and deal with single events. Local narratives would
result in understanding varied forms of human experiences.
One of the highlighting and very unique feature of post modernism is the style of writing the literature .
Post modernists have a very specific kind of language They believe in deconstruction. for instance ,
according to Jacques Derrida deconstruction is a literary method in which the latent meanings of the
text are exposed. Deconstruction forms the very significant aspect of post modernism. This was found
in the work of Jacquas Derrida. It is a kind of analysis based on philosophical and literary features.
Deconstruction doesn’t belive or support: “pure existence” or pure presence“of anything. According to
deconstruction, nothing in the world has one and a constant meaning. every meaning changes in
different contexts.
Deconstruction means to pursue a meaning of a particular text to a level that all its inherent
contradictions and oppositions are exposed to show that every form of text has not just one meaning ,
but every text is a potential piece of understand multiple truths hidden within it , which can be revealed
by the used of the deconstruction analysis. Language is considered a system of signs , which is
decoded with help of deconstruction. Deconstruction forms the crux of the textual approach of Derrida.
The term deconstruction according to Derrida was first used in the context of structuralism. Derrida
was against deconstruction being called as method, as method is more like a mechanical action . for
14

Derrida , deconstruction is neither a critique nor an analysis Literary criticism of postmodern rejects
that objective meanings and true interpretations of the texts. All the meanings have to be
deconstructed, to understand them in a better way.
Now lets come to the Critique of Post Modernism
Like any other school of thought, Post Modern is also not free of criticism. The impact of post
modernism in western context is highly debatable. There are different opinions on post modernism for
some is a new temporary fashion and for others it’s a new influential paradigm that will stay for long
and for rest, the theory of post modernism is highly confusing and detrimental to use. Few of the very
important criticism of this philosophy are as follows. Starting with the contribution of post modernism
, it replaced modernism which was a very strong paradignm based on empirical investigation to look
for absolute truths. For Danniel Dennett, (a philosopher) post modernism leads to multiple
interpretations of a single phenomenon contributing to the confusion and absurdities, which disrespect
the historical evidences. Post modernists do not give any regard to historical developments of
civilizations of the past. For many, post modernism promotes a philosophy that is unreliable and erratic
in nature, depending upon such a free philosophy does not guarantee concrete knowledge of any
phenomenon.Keith Jenkins did epistemological critique of post modernism. He critiqued post
modernism and asserted the role of history, along with the aesthetics . according to him ,
epistemological grounding is important to ground any philosophy .According to Jenkins , there was a
problem in ‘deconstruction’ as , it lead to a radical ambiguity. If there are multiple truths or no absolute
truth then there is just cynicism and disbeliefs in the ideology of post modernism.
Post modernists do not support a unified, influential all-inclusive worldview. They believe in local and
multiple stories and they are against classical, formal , big narrations. For post modernism science is
also based on prejudices and specific motives so, it was not ‘objective’ in pure sense of the term . Post
modernism highlights the role of language and culture as powerful weapons. The power of language
and culture was suppressed in modernity and importance was given to science and technology. Many
scholars feel that post modernism was all about the fall of objectivity and conviction rather Post
modernism only led to skepticism, never ending interpretations leading to chaos.
British Anthropologist, Ernest Geller attacked Post Modernism by saying the post modernism was self-
absorbed and was highly subjective in Nature. For Gellner , Post Modernism was nothing but form of
relativism. Post modernism was considered as a form of romanticist, which believed in replacing the
classical set up of enlightened Europe. . For post modernists grand , abstract and universal theories are
vague and not to be trusted, they misguide and there is nothing which can be called as an
comprehensive ethnographic study. Post modernists believe in individual reflexivity and the notion of
embodiment. Every subjective understanding seems legitimate for post modernism.
15

So I here conclude our understanding of Postmodernism, by sayin that Though one cannot define the
term post modernism, it’s something that is a way of looking at things around us, it’s a perspective or
more of an intellectual movement that sees there is no absolute truth and every text has many meanings
in it. This is a philosophy that is famous for its playfulness and liberal nature. objectivity is a myth for
a post-modernist. Therefore , influence of the Post Modern theory is so influential that even those who
are anti-post modernism have fallen prey to or have been captivated to what is called as the
“postmodern”.
16


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(a) Classical evolutionism (Tylor, Morgan and Frazer)

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Theory, Facts and Concepts

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Anthropology before theory

Major Theoretical Traditions

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Theories with in national tradition of India

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Theories and Methods in Social Cultural Anthropology

Subject Name Anthropology

Paper Name 10 Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

Module Name/Title Evolutionism

Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

1.1 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

1.2 Edward .B .Tylor

1.3 L.H. Morgan

2. Evolution is of two types:

2.1 Classical/19th century evolution/Victorian evolution

3. Universal and multilinear evolution

4. Multilinear evolution in relation to Unilinear evolution

1. To know the concept of Culture.

2. Able to write short note on contributions of Evolutionary thinkers.

3. Understand the term Evolution and its types.

4. Able to write about the Spencer‘s evolution.

5. Able to write about Evolutionism.

Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

Evolutionism is a set of ideas or doctrine concept of Evolution. It is a sequential, directional and

Charles Lyell (1794-1875) Charles Darwin (1809-1892)

Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

1.1 Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

He is an English philosopher and Contemporary of Darwin. He is author of book "Principles of

Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

3) Change from Homogeneous (part look alike) to the Heterogeneous.

Idea of Evolution in terms of:

Evolution is a process, within it there are 2 processes:

Out of Africa –origin

 Evolution involves ―dissipation of Motion and more integration of matter‖.

 Two kinds of societies:

1) Military society and

Struggle for food

Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

Our study comprises of two things:

 Origin of society and

In 1871, two prominent works were published and these are:

Edward .B .Tylor L.H.Morgan (1818-1881)

Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

2. Evolution is of two types:

 Classical/19th century evolution/Victorian evolution

2.1 Classical/19th century evolution/Victorian evolution

Theories and methods in social and cultural Anthropology

2) Polytheism-Worship of God and Goddess.

3) Monotheism-Worship of single God.

Criticism of Unilinear Evolution