Anthropological

Development
and
Forerunners
 Uniformitarian
Theory
("The Present is the Key to the Past")
 Glossary of Geology
“The fundamental principle or doctrine that
geologic processes and natural laws now
operating to modify the Earth's crust have acted
in the same regular manner and with essentially
the same intensity throughout geologic time,
and that past geologic events can be explained by
phenomena and forces observable today. "
James Hutton
Charles Lyell
Charles Darwin
Unilineal
Evolution
Theory
 All human ways of life pass through a
similar sequence of stages, or grades, as they
evolve. These stages explain why various people
from around the world differ in their cultures:
different people represent different grades of
development. Favored names for the stages
were savagery, barbarism, and civilization.
Lewis Henry Morgan
I. Lower Savagery
II. Middle Savagery
III. Upper Savagery
IV. Lower Barbarism
V. Middle Barbarism
VI. Upper Barbarism
VII. Civilization
Edward Burnett Tylor
"Psychic Unity of Mankind"

Assuming that, despite differences in

the stages of their evolutionary development,
all humans (past and present) shared common
cognitive functions (such as a curiosity to
explain unexpected events in their
environment).
"Primitive Religion"
Animism
Polytheism
Monotheism
 Historical
Particularism
Theory
 Each culture has its own
particular and unique history that is
not governed by universal laws.
 Logical Point
“If every culture is the product of all forces that affected it in
the past, and if no culture’s past is the same as any other
culture’s past, it follows that each culture is unique. And if
every culture is distinctive and different from every other
culture, then the search for general evolutionary laws that
explain cultures and why they change is likely to be futile. It
may turn out to be the case that one people’s beliefs and
behaviors are explained adequately by one set of influences
(economic factors), but another people’s beliefs and behaviors
are explained by something entirely different (religion).”
Franz Uri Boas
 Scientific Racism
Differences in human behavior
were primarily not determined by innate
biological dispositions, but was largely the
result of cultural differences acquired
through social learning.
 Cultural Relativism
Cultures cannot be objectively
ranked as higher or lower, or better or
more correct, but that all humans see the
world through the lens of their own
culture, and judge it according to their
own culturally acquired norms.
 British
Functionalism
Theory
 Describe the different parts of a society and their
relationship through the organic analogy.

Cultural features of the people should be

explained by the functions they perform.
Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski
 Culture and cultural practices fulfilled
an individual’s biological needs; therefore,
concluding that humans can never be
without culture because they would not be
able to survive.
Participant-Observation