Content & Script of the Programme

Introduction:

The major objective of anthropology is to provide

explanations of human society and behaviour.

Anthropologists cannot predict the outcome of

interactions between two individuals or among small

groups, let alone among large groups at the societal level.

Consequently anthropology as a discipline does not have

any specific theories and laws for anthropologists restrict

their efforts to testing hypothesis and improving their

explanations of human society and behaviour.

In the second half of the

nineteenth century, many

contributions to

anthropological theory were

made by men who cannot

be called true professional

anthropologists. Most of

them were in fact, lawyers with extensive education in

classical Greek and Roman languages and literature. They

were anthropological dilettantes. They were interested in

the customs of other people and read widely about tribal

peoples of the world. Around the turn of the nineteenth

century, anthropologists began to realize that their

dependence upon ethnographic data from nonprofessional

sources severely limited their research. Gradually a

number of men trained in the natural sciences, entered

the discipline of anthropology and recognized the

importance of making their own systematic collection of

data in the field. Thereafter followed various field

expeditions amassing data which showed clearly the value

of doing one’s own research from an anthropological point

of view. Though in every age anthropologists have been

attempting to understand humanity as a whole, yet in

reality they had only partial understandings. Yet each of

these types of explanations has provided some limited

perspectives on human behaviour and culture. Eventually,

the knowledge accumulated from these partial

perspectives has been probed and evaluated by

anthropologists to offer a far more comprehensive picture

of humanity in the present century. In this unit we will be

discussing some of the main theories of social and cultural

anthropology.

Theory of evolution:

Modern anthropology emerged

from the intellectual atmosphere of

the Enlightenment, an eighteenth-

century philosophical movement that

stressed social progress based on

human reason, and Darwin’s theory

of evolution. Two men of the late nineteenth century

stand out above the others. Lewis Henry Morgan, the

American, and Edward Burnett Tylor, the Englishman,

may be considered true professionals, and each has been

called at one time or another, the father of anthropology.

Each took an evolutionary theoretical approach in keeping

with the general emphasis on evolution and developed a

scheme of cultural evolution that described states of

human history from distant beginnings to the

achievements of the Victorian age. Both of them were

influenced by ideas of human progress and perfectability

of the Enlightenment philosophers and social evolutionary

schemes of earlier thinkers like Comte and Spencer.

They used their own data collected in their travels, as

well as information from many other sources and fleshed

out their schemes of human development employing

living tribal people as examples of prehistoric societies.

This practice came to be called the comparative method.

They were also known as unilineal evolutionists. Unilineal

evolution is the view that societies evolve in a single

direction towards complexity, progress and civilization.

Although these nineteenth-century thinkers shared the

view that humanity was progressing through various

stages of development, their views were ethnocentric,

contradictory, and speculative and their evidence

secondhand, based on the accounts of biased Europeans.

Nevertheless, despite their inadequacies and speculations

regarding the evolution of society, these early

anthropologists provided the first systematic methods for

thinking and explaining the similarities and diversity of

human societies.

Theory of diffusionism:

Another school of thought that

used the comparative method to

explain why different societies

are at different levels of development was diffusionism.

According to this school, societal change occurs when

societies borrow cultural traits from one another. This

theory was developed in the early part of the twentieth

century. There were three major schools of diffusionism:

the British version associated with G. Elliot Smith and

William J. Perry, and the German version associated with

Father Wilhelm Schmidt. The American school is

associated with Franz Boas.

The British school derived its theory from research on

ancient Egypt as they concluded that all aspects of

civilizations, from technology to religion, originated in

Egypt and diffused to other cultural areas. To explain that

some cultures no longer had cultural traits from Egypt,

they resorted to an ethnocentric view, maintaining that

some cultures had simply become “degenerate”.

The German school differed somewhat from that of the

British. They argued that several early centers of

civilization had existed, and that from these early centers

cultural traits diffused outward in circles to other regions

and peoples. In German this view is referred to as the

Kulturekreise (culture circles) school of thought. In

explaining why some primitive societies did not have the

characteristics of civilization, the German school, like the

British diffusionists, argued that these peoples had simply

degenerated.

Unilineal evolution:

An early twentieth-century movement

that developed in response to the

unilineal evolutionary theory was led by

the U.S. anthropologist Franz Boas. The

American version is historical in its

approach, stressing field research and restricted

reconstructions of history rather than the comparative

studies, on a world-wide basis, that characterize the two

preceding points of view.

Boas became a vigorous opponent of the unilineal

evolutionists. Boas’s fieldwork experience and his

intellectual training in Germany led him to conclude that

each society has its own unique historical development.

This theory is known as historical particularism. It

maintains that each society must be understood as a

product of its own history. This view led Boas to adopt

the notion of cultural relativism, the belief that each

society should be understood in terms of its own cultural

practices and values. One aspect of this view is that no

society evolved higher or lower than another. Thus, no

particular society can be ranked above another in terms

of degree of savagery, barbarity or civility.

Culture-and-personality theory:

A direct outgrowth of the Boasian approach was the

emergence of culture-and-personality theory in

American anthropology. Boas

trained two particular

noteworthy students, Ruth

Benedict and Margaret Mead.

Both Mead and Benedict

maintained that each society

and culture has a unique

history. After studying processes such as child rearing

and enculturation, they proposed that every culture is

characterized by a dominant personality type. One classic

example of the application of culture and personality

theory is Benedict’s analysis of the Plains and Pueblo

Native American Societies. In her

classic book, Patterns of Culture

(1934), Benedict classified Pueblo

societies as having an Apollonian

(Greek god Apollo) culture. The

Pueblo cultural ethos stressed

gentleness, cooperation, harmony,

tranquility, and peacefulness.

According to Benedict, these values explain why

members of Pueblo societies were moderate. In sharp

contrast, Benedict characterized the Plains societies as

Dionysian (Greek god Dionysius). According to her, the

values and ethos of the Plain groups were almost the

direct opposite of those of the Pueblo. The Plain Indians

were involved in warfare and violence, and their ritual

behaviour included the use of drugs, alcohol, fasting, and

bodily self-tortures to induce religious ecstasy. Benedict

indicated that the culture of a particular society can be

studied by studying the personality of its bearers.

Margaret Mead, other influential

contributors to this theory, went to

the Pacific Islands of Samoa to

study adolescent development.

Mead came to the conclusion that in

contrast to U.S. society,

adolescence in Samoa was not

characterized by problems between

the young and the old. In her book, Coming of Age in

Samoa (1928), she argued that Samoan society

emphasized group harmony and cooperation, as the

children were raised in family units. Samoan children

were not exposed to conflicting values and political and

religious beliefs, as were U.S. adolescents. Therefore,

Mead summarized that Samoan children experienced a

much easier transition from adolescence into adulthood

than did their counterparts in the United States. Though

this theory was criticized for the practice of characterizing

an entire society in terms of one dominant personality, or

for focusing entirely on the non-material aspects of

culture or for attributing human behaviour entirely to

cultural factors, yet it has a positive side also. This school

led by Mead and Benedict led to the development of more

careful research regarding personality and culture. Now

there is better understanding of enculturation and

personality formation in human societies. Boas’s efforts

set the stage for a sound scientific approach in

anthropology that led to definite progress in our

comprehension of race and other issues in explaining

human behaviour and culture.

The term ‘acculturation’ refers to the

processes of accommodation and change

in culture contact. During the 1930s, the

American anthropologists had begun

working in Oceania and Africa and

Herskovits established the first African

Studies Program in the U.S. at

Northwestern University. But the Boasians were

interested in change and cultural dynamics, whether in

one area of the world or another. The concept of

acculturation was first developed by Redfield, Linton and

Herskovits in their joint paper entitled, “Memorandum on

The Study of Acculturation”, in Journal of American

Anthropologist, (Vol. XXXVIII, 1936:149). According to

them, acculturation comprehends those phenomena,

which result when groups of individuals having different

cultures come into first hand contact, with subsequent

changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both

groups. Acculturation studies attempted to be studies of

change in process. Methodologically, they required a

base-line condition from which change was measured.

The base-line situation could be reconstructed through

techniques of ethnohistory, using any written materials,

folklore, and interviews, followed by description and

analysis of change. Though theoretically the studies could

be made on contact situations between two non-Western

societies, in fact, virtually all were between a native

group and an industrial, Western group and only rarely

did they actually deal with the two-way nature of change,

usually examining change only as it affected the non-

European society.

Some important points of research were:

The means of introducing change

The degree of resistance to change

The mechanisms of selection

Changes in roles and statuses and

Final products of change like assimilation,

reinterpretation, syncretism and revitalization.

All this interest in cultural processes gave a new

impulse among Boasians to generalize about cause and

effect and to make cross-cultural comparisons about the

mechanisms or common properties of changing cultural

systems.

Functionalism:

At about the same time, functionalism developed in

British anthropology. Functionalism is the view that

society consists of institutions that serve vital purposes

for people. The school of functionalism is divided into two

camps, each associated with a prominent figure in British

anthropology. They were A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and

Bronislaw Malinowski.

Structural Functionalism: Radcliffe-Brown

The type of functionalism

associated with Radcliffe-Brown is

referred to as structural

functionalism. He focused on the

structure of society as reflected in

the differing institutions that

function to perpetuate the survival

of society. According to Radcliffe-

Brown, a society’s economic, social,

political, and religious institutions

serve to integrate the society as a whole. He studied

small-scale societies and found how the social institutions

function to enhance group solidarity. In some of his

studies he emphasized how males had to marry outside

their particular group and once they marry, they establish

an important relationship with the wife’s kin. According to

Radcliffe-Brown, all norms for specific behaviors and

obligations among different people in kinship

relationships promote order and stability. Thus, Radcliffe-

Brown believes that these social institutions serve

society’s needs.

Psychological Functionalism: Malinowski

Malinowski’s functionalism

focused on how society functions to

serve the individual’s interests or

needs. This view is known as

psychological functionalism.

Malinowski’s analysis of magic

among the Trobriand Islanders (off

the coast of Papua New Guinea)

illustrates his psychological

functionalism. According to him,

the islanders depended on their technical knowledge and

skills only when they went for fishing in enclosed lagoons

where fishing was reliable and safe. But they employed

extensive magical beliefs and techniques when they went

for fishing on the open sea, as it was believed to be more

dangerous and highly unpredictable. So, Malinowski

proved that the use of magic arises in situations in which

human beings have no control over circumstances. In

addition to magic, the Trobrianders have an elaborate

system of beliefs concerning death, the afterlife, sickness,

and health. These beliefs help to serve the needs of

individuals as they adapt to the circumstances and

exigencies of life.

The functionalists were not concerned with the

historical development of differing institutions but rather

focused exclusively on how these institutions serve

society and the individual. So they fail to explain why

societies are different or similar. As they tended to view

societies as static and unchanging, they were also unable

to explain social and cultural change very well. But

functionalism as a school of thought has influenced a

great deal of research in anthropology and encouraged

the collection of valuable ethnographic data.

Structuralism:

French structuralism is another approach and is

pioneered by Claude Levi-Strauss. According to Levi-

Strauss, structuralism is not confined to anthropology

alone but there are examples of

scholars from other disciplines

who are classified as

structuralists. Among them,

smention may be made of

Freud, Marx, and Piaget.

According to Levi-Strauss,

structuralism is a search for

deep, unapparent, innate structures of a psycho-

biological nature universal to all human beings. The

primary goal of structuralism is to investigate the thought

processes of the human mind in a universal context.

Structuralists are interested in the unconscious and

conscious patterns of human thinking. In his book, The

Savage Mind (1966) he discussed how people living in

small-scale societies use the same unconscious thinking

and reasoning processes that people in large-scale,

complex societies do. According to him, there is a

universal logical form in human thought and cognition

around the world. Levi-Strauss, drawing on the field of

linguistics, argued that thinking is based on binary

oppositions. That means, humans classify the natural and

social world into polar types (binary oppositions) as a

stage of reasoning. For example, day, night; black, white;

life, death; spirit, body and so on. Moreover, Levi Strauss

suggests that the fundamental binary structural

distinctions between “nature” and “culture” are found in

all societies. He demonstrated how religious mythologies

universally invoke symbols that have a dualistic aspect

between that of nature and culture. He focused on such

diverse phenomena as kinship, mythology, cuisine, and

table manners to discover the hidden structural logic

underlying these diverse cultural ideas and practices.

Within all of these practices and beliefs, Levi-Strauss

asserts that there are important logical and deep

structural distinctions between nature and culture. Levi-

Strauss believed that even though the rules and norms

that structure these ideas and practices may appear

arbitrary, this deep universal structure underlies these

cultural phenomena. Thus, this universal structure of the

mind produces similar thinking and cognition throughout

the world.

But his work also faced criticisms. Many scholars

questioned whether he has discovered universal

structures or invented them. Another criticism leveled

against him is that he has created a closed, mentally

deterministic model but this is not substantially true. He

is not attempting to explain diversity, though he

recognizes its existence.

Neo-evolutionism:

Some anthropologists renewed their interest in

evolutionary explanations of social and cultural

phenomena after World War II. Most of them earlier were

busy criticizing the unilineal evolutionists. Anthropologists

like Leslie White, University of Michigan, suggested a new

20th century perspective on the

evolution of society, which is referred

to as neoevolutionism. According to

White, culture evolves as the amount

of energy harnessed per capita per

year is increased, or as the efficiency

of the instrumental means of putting

energy to work is increased. White

perceived three cultural subsystems:

technological, sociological and ideological. The way

society uses its technology to sustain life influences the

sociological and ideological systems. Technology and

therefore culture evolve as more energy is harnessed.

However, in his search for regularities and causation,

White was not alone in mid 20th century America but he

was also joined by Julian Steward. Steward focused on

how specific socio-cultural systems adapt to

environmental conditions. According to Steward, human

societies must react to

environment and in the course of

adapting to environment, humans

introduce a superorganic element.

Steward proposed the study of

cultural ecology—the relationships

among environment, the human

organisms present, and the

superorganic element—culture. In

the early 60s, Marshall Sahlins,

Elman Service, and other followers of White and Steward,

tried to reconcile the two viewpoints. They suggested that

evolution has two facets. One is general evolution, a

grand movement from simple to complex, and the other,

specific evolution, change as an adaptive response to an

ecological niche. Steward’s multilinear evolution is

specific. White was talking about general evolution which

can be evaluated or measured by the amount of energy

harnessed. Though both Steward and White used

concepts of evolution, the idea of evolution is less

important than their turn to some type of techno-

environmental causation where priority is given to the

material basis of social life. The materialist approach tries

to see why things happen and what causes them and

conflicts over the issues of evolutionism are simply not

their concern.

Cultural Materialism:

As an outgrowth of neoevolutionism, a school of

thought known as cultural materialism developed through

the writings of Marvin Harris. It is a research strategy

that focuses on technology, environment and economic

factors as key determinants in socio-cultural evolution.

Cultural materialists divide all socio-cultural systems into

infrastructure, structure and superstructure. The

infrastructure includes the

technology and practices used for

expanding or limiting the production

of basic resources such as food,

clothing, and shelter. The structure

consists of the domestic economy

(family structure, domestic division

of labour, age and gender roles) and

the political economy (political

organization, class, castes and police, military). The

superstructure includes philosophy, art, music, religion,

ideas, literature, advertising, sports, games, science and

values. The cultural materialists stress the point that

technology, energy and environmental factors are crucial

to the development of all aspects of society. This

theoretical approach is an extension of the foundations

laid down by White and Steward.

However, Harris was criticized for focusing too much

on environmental factors and neglecting social, political,

and religious values and beliefs. In addition, cultural

materialism tends to emphasize the infrastructural

mechanisms that determine the structure and

superstructure of the society. This leads to a form of

technological determinism which is too mechanistic to

analyze the socio-cultural conditions in a society.

Conclusion:

After World War II, American anthropological research

expanded into new regions geographically, into Oceania

and Africa, and theoretically into psychological,

acculturation studies, and peasant studies. At about the

same time, the British anthropologists developed an

interest in environment and economics. Most

anthropologists would agree today that no one theoretical

stance holds all the answers. British, American, and

French anthropologists have enriched one another’s

thinking. Until after World War II, most anthropologists

were Europeans investigating non-Western societies. But

today many non-Europeans with new, fresh ideas are

entering the profession. Among the other notable

anthropologists who contributed towards the theories of

social and cultural anthropology mention may be made of

Redfield, Marx, Leach, Durkheim, Kroeber, Mauss, van

Gennep and others. Here, only the major anthropological

explanations have been sketched. However, after more

than a century of anthropological research, there exist an

improved and more comprehensive understanding of

culture, society and the role of individual behaviour than

it was in the nineteenth century.