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College of Education

School of Continuing and Distance Education2014/2015 – 2016/2017

SOCI 421: SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Session 6 – Founding Fathers II

Lecturer: Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-HonuContact Information: [email protected]

Session Overview

IntroductionEvery discipline thrives on theories. This holds for social anthropology which deals with human behaviour. This session identifies and explains the theories propounded by the founding fathers of social anthropology. It also discusses the basic tenets of the identified theories and the phenomenon/phenomena each explainsObjectivesAt the end of the session, the student will be able to:• Identify the early founding fathers of social anthropology and their theories.• Articulate the basic tenets of social anthropological theories• Explain the observed issue each theory concerns itself with• Subject the theories to critical analysis and point out their strengths and

weaknesses• Be able to demonstrate understanding of the theories by applying them to practical

situations.

Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 2

Session Outline

The key topics to be covered in this session are as follows:

• Topic One: Lewis Henry Morgan - Unilineal Evolution

• Topic Two: Other Unilineal Evolutionists

• Topic Three: Diffusionism


Reading List

• Kottak, C. P. (2004), Cultural Anthropology, Boston, McGraw Hill Corporation.

• Kottak, C. P. (2004), Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity, Boston, McGraw Hill Corporation.

• Mair, L., (1972), Introduction to Social Anthropology, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Ember, C. R. and Ember, M., (1981), Cultural Anthropology, London: Prentice-Hall.

• Peoples, J., and Bailey, G. ( ), Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, New York: West Publishing Company.


Topic One: Unilineal Evolution: Sir Henry Morgan

• This is a theory to account for socio-culturaldevelopment.

• Unilineal evolutionists believe that all human waysof life pass through a similar sequence of stages, orgrades as they evolve.

• The theory also explains the differences hat existamong the various groups of people the worldover.

• The theory explains the similar customs andbeliefs scattered all over the world though thepractitioners never came into contact with oneanother.



The proponent of this theory was Lewis HenryMorgan, an American Lawyer from New York State.

His theory is published in his Ancient Society (1877).

Unilineal evolution has three main stages such assavagery, barbarism and civilization.

The first-two stages have sub-divisions.

In all, Morgan identified seven different stagesthrough which he believed human societies evolved.

The table in the next slide is the presentation of thestages and their peculiar characteristics.



• THE STAGE INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES (TECHNOLOGICAL

AND ECONOMIC)

• I. LOWER SAVAGERY This is the earliest society with no

inventions or discoveries

• II. MIDDLE SAVAGERY Invention of fire

• III. UPPER SAVAGERY Invention of bow and arrow

• IV. LOWER BARBARISM Humans discovered the art of pottery

• V. MIDDLE BARBARISM The period of domestication of animals

and plants (food)

• VI. UPPER BARBARISM Invention and use of metallic tools

• VII. CIVILIZATION Literacy: discovery and use of alphabets.Dr. Kodzovi Akpabli-Honu, Sociology Dept. UG Slide 7


The stages were defined on the basis of relativecomplexity.

The beginning was the simplest life which grew into themost complex.

By this theory the unilineal evolutionists believed they haddiscovered the stages through which socio-cultural systemsdeveloped.

The sources of data used for the stages of developmentwere the reports of explorers, missionaries, traders, fortunehunters, colonial administrators and other untrained andbiased observers.



Although anthropologists were unclear about theengine of growth or progress, Morgan believed itinvolved technological and economic discoveries.

Morgan said the discoveries led to progress inproperty institutions, family and marriage relationsand system of governance.

This means that as new inventions and discoveriesoccur, other aspects of a socio-cultural system are“pulled” together into a new stage of progress aswell.



His theory has a holistic perspective of development.

By this, Morgan realized that socio-cultural systems areintegrated.

Later scholars objected to Morgan’s theory of unilinealevolution by describing it as ethnocentric in nature.

This is because the theory believably ranked the Europeansocieties as civilized and the other non-European societiesas savages and barbarians.



In spite of the ethnocentric criticism levelled against theunilineal evolution theory, evolutionists recognize thathuman ways of life had to be compared if any “laws ofprogress” should be discovered.

Comparative perspective on humanity became thehallmark of anthropological thought.

The theory also helped in establishing two importantanthropological perspectives – holism and ‘comparativism’.



• Unilineal evolutionists by their theory sought to explaincultural similarities between peoples who lived in widelyscattered regions of the earth.

• They believe the peoples who practice similar customs“thought it up” independently on their own due to theassumed “psychic unity of humanity”.

• This means that human minds everywhere work the sameway, and that like minds often encounter similarcircumstances and problems leading to similar customsand solutions occurring among peoples who never hadcontact with one another.



Some scholars in Europe also doubted the ingenuity of‘primitive’ people to be sufficiently innovative to haveindependently invented most of their customs.

They argued that most of the socio-cultural traits ofsocieties originate among only a few societies, from wherethey diffuse outwards to lass innovative peoples.

These scholars agued that similarities between societies isthe result of diffusion rather than from independentinvention.



Using clanship practiced by the Crow Indians as example, thescholars who later propounded the theory of ‘diffusionism’, saidthey borrowed the concept from other native Indians ofAmerica.

The Crow Indians were made up of many small clans, and onceinhabited the Yellowstone River Valley covering parts ofWyoming, Montana and North Dakota all of the USA.

Their clans were matrilineal in nature.

The critics of unilineal evolution said the Crow Indians borrowed clanship from other Indian societies through diffusion



Today, there are international organizations whosepractices can be likened to the perspective ofunilineal evolution.

The United Nations Organization, The World Bankand the International Monetary Fund have all usedthe concept of unilineal evolution imperceptibly inclassifying societies according to their level ofdevelopment.

It used to be the first, second and the third worldsbased on their development characteristics orsophistication.


Topic Two: Other Unilineal Evolutionists

Some theories of development bear semblance to theunilineal evolution since the developed countries thinkonce the non-developed societies trace their path ofdevelopment.

For instance W. W. Rostow’s “Stages of Growth”illustrates the process that a society can adopt to enableit develop.

Today, it is the industrialized and the non-industrializedworlds, the developed, the developing and the leastdeveloped worlds etc.

All these are indicative of the fact that unilineal evolutionas a theory exists in disguise.



The perspectives of other evolutionists such as FriederichEngels (1820-1895); Edward B. Tylor (1832-1917) and MaineHenry James Summer are worth considering briefly.

Engels was a close friend of Karl Marx and published severalof his works after the death of Karl Marx.

His work “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and theState” draws on Henry Morgan’s evolutionary paradigm.

In this book he said the family, moral rules, sexual regulationsas innate or differences between man and women wereinterconnected with the political system of society and evenwith the nature and existence of the state.



This implies that as society goes through a number ofstages, as determined by modes of production, theseprivate phenomena interlinked with the political-economic system also experience change with eachstage.

The stages are Primitive Communism, Slave Society,Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism/Communism.

Edward Tylor was also concerned with the evolution ofreligion.

To him religion went through three stages namely;animism, polytheism and monotheism.



Animism is the belief that the world is populated by spiritual beings such as ghosts, souls and demons.

Eventually, early people viewed the world as inhabited by supernatural beings some of which became elevated to higher position than others to become gods – sun, moon, sky, earth etc.

This led to the next stage of religion which was polytheism.

Then emerged the phase of the dominance of one god over all which were regarded as false gods leading to monotheism



This legal system evolved based on contract betweenindividuals.

It then reflected greater social variety andcomplexity giving greater freedom to the individualthan the previous state of the law when it was tied tothe individual’s status.

All these evolutionary theories have been attemptsby early scholars to reconstruct the lost past ofhumanity.



The arguments presented in their proposition oftheory of evolution of society were based more onlogical thought processes than empiricism.

This enabled critics to view these theories as beingintellectualist and speculative other than beingempiricist and evidence based.

However, some of the theories of the nineteenthcentury were based on substantive archaeologicalevidence such as fragments of pottery, and reports ofmissionaries, traders, explorers etc


Topic Three: Diffusionism

• There are three schools with diffusionist perspectives – British the German-Austrian and United States.

• The British school was led by Elliot Smith, WilliamPerry and W. R. Rivers while the German-Austrianschool was led by Fritz Graebner and Father WilhelmSchmidt and the US school led by Clark Wissle andLeslie Spier.

• The English tradition thought socio-cultural elementsoriginated from a more advanced culture and diffuseto all other parts through contact.



• According to them Egypt represented early highercivilization where cultural element moved to all otherplaces.

• This theory has however been abandoned

• The German-Austrian school suggested that peopleborrow socio-cultural elements because they areuninventive.

• They attributed the Egyptian pyramidal structuresamong the Indians in North America to diffusion of thearchitecture to North America



• It was, however, not clear how the pyramidalarchitecture diffused from Egypt to the “lessdeveloped minds” of North American Indians

• Another perspective also emerged from the UnitedStates known as the age-area hypothesis

• This perspective was championed by Clark Wisslerand Leslie Spier in the 1920s and 1930s

• It held that one could know where and when agiven trait first arose by mapping its currentgeographical distribution.



• This hypothesis assume that traits move outwards inall directions from their point of origin (usually fromthe people who live nearest the centre)

• One can tell how long a trait originated by consideringhow widely it is distributed.

• The theory never explain why societies in contact forlong manage to keep their distinctive cultural elements

• This shows that diffusion is not inevitable duringcontact.



• Diffusionists never explained why traits occur in the first place

• Diffusionism is an attempt at cultural prejudice or even racism that it is only higher cultures that could acquire the bulk of cultures from where they diffuse to the less developed cultures


Summary

• This session discussed social anthropological theories.

• Following Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory socialthinkers developed a number of theories to explain theevolution of socio-cultural elements.

• These include unilineal evolution by Lewis Morgan,others evolutionary theories by E. B. Tylor and KarlMarx

• One other theory which emerged after criticizing theunilineal evolution is diffusionism


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