The critique of evolutionism[edit]
Anthropology is concerned with the lives of people in different parts of the world, particularly in
relation to the discourse of beliefs and practices. In addressing this question, ethnologists in the 19th
century divided into two schools of thought. Some, like Grafton Elliot Smith, argued that different
groups must have learned from one another somehow, however indirectly; in other words, they
argued that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or "diffused".
In the unilineal evolution model at left, all cultures progress through set stages, while in the multilineal
evolution model at right, distinctive culture histories are emphasized.
Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of creating similar beliefs and
practices independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention", like Lewis Henry
Morgan, additionally supposed that similarities meant that different groups had passed through the
same stages of cultural evolution (See also classical social evolutionism). Morgan, in particular,
acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others.
For example, industrial farming could not have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy
could not have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple
ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there was
a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized.
20th-century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the
same stages in the same order, on the grounds that such a notion does not fit the empirical facts.
Some 20th-century ethnologists, like Julian Steward, have instead argued that such similarities
reflected similar adaptations to similar environments. Although 19th-century ethnologists saw
"diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually exclusive and competing theories,
most ethnographers quickly reached a consensus that both processes occur, and that both can
plausibly account for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers also pointed out the
superficiality of many such similarities. They noted that even traits that spread through diffusion often
were given different meanings and function from one society to another. Analyses of large human
concentrations in big cities, in multidisciplinary studies by Ronald Daus, show how new methods
may be applied to the understanding of man living in a global world and how it was caused by the
action of extra-European nations, so highlighting the role of Ethics in modern anthropology.
Accordingly, most of these anthropologists showed less interest in comparing cultures, generalizing
about human nature, or discovering universal laws of cultural development, than in understanding
particular cultures in those cultures' own terms. Such ethnographers and their students promoted the
idea of "cultural relativism", the view that one can only understand another person's beliefs and
behaviors in the context of the culture in which he or she lived or lives.
Others, such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (who was influenced both by American cultural anthropology
and by French Durkheimian sociology), have argued that apparently similar patterns of development
reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see structuralism). By the mid-20th
century, the number of examples of people skipping stages, such as going from hunter-gatherers to
post-industrial service occupations in one generation, were so numerous that 19th-century
evolutionism was effectively disproved. [7]
Cultural relativism[edit]
Main article: Cultural relativism
Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in anthropological research
by Franz Boas and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887:
"...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true
only so far as our civilization goes."[8] Although Boas did not coin the term, it became common among
anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas Boas had
developed. Boas believed that the sweep of cultures, to be found in connection with any sub-
species, is so vast and pervasive that there cannot be a relationship between culture and race.
[9]
Cultural relativism involves specific epistemological and methodological claims. Whether or not
these claims require a specific ethical stance is a matter of debate. This principle should not be
confused with moral relativism.
