Theories of evolution

• Anthropological thinkers, whose theories and

contributions are discussed under
anthropological thought, can be grouped
together under the following schools for the
purpose of analysis.
• Evolutionary school
• Diffusional school
• Functional School
•Culture and Personality school
• Civilisational school
•Neo-anthropological school
• Evolutionary school, on the old and new
doctrines put forth by its followers, can be
divided into two: Classical Evolutionary
school and Neo Evolutionary school.
• Classical evolutionary school again can be
divided, on the basis of nationality, into
three sub-schools: British Classical
evolutionary school, German Classical
evolutionary school and American
Classical evolutionary school.
• Maine, Mc Lennan, Tylor and Frazer are
the followers of British Classical
evolutionary school
• Bachofen and Bastian are Supporters of
German or Continental Classical evolutionary
school
• L.H. Morgan is the only Pioneer of American
Classical evolutionary school.
• These classical evolutionists, from fifties onward
of 19th century, began to publish their findings in
book form, in which they attempted to show
evolutionary stages of culture and cultural
institutions.
• They were convinced that culture and cultural
institutions had undergone progressive and
development-oriented chan
• But always in a sequence from simple to
complex, homogeneity to heterogeneity, and
uncertainty to certainty.
• They explained similarities in culture and cultural
institutions of the world in terms of psychic unity
and parallel evolution or cultural parallelism.
• They evolved historical method to established
stages of development in a sequence.
• They selected tribal societies as representing
the early condition of mankind, and among
them, compared their early stages with
developed ones.
• They took the concept of survival as the
major tool of evolutionary reconstruction.
• With these basic assumptions, they
postulated the theory of evolutionism in
the field of cultural anthropology.
• When evolutionary theory emerged in
anthropology, many schools came into
being, which began to claim themselves
as anti or neo-evolutionary schools.
• The major critics were diffusionists.
• They were not convinced by the progress,
concept of psychic unity, and parallel
development of culture or cultural
institutions.
• They were of view that culture not only
developed, but it also degenerated.
• Again they were convinced that man was
basically uninventive and important
inventions were made only once at a
particular place from where it was diffused,
migrated, barrowed and imitated, to the
other parts of the world.
• Thus according to the assumption of
diffusionists, cultural development and
growth were due to diffusion and were
historically related.
• School of diffusion can be divided into
three sub-schools, on the basis of
nationality of the followers and some minor
variations in their ideas.
• They are: British school of diffusion i.e. by
Smith, W.J. Perry and Rivers
• German school of Diffusiontists are Ratzel,
Graebner and Father Schmidt.
• Whereas Franz Boas, Clark Wissler,
Kroeber etc are the supporters of
American diffusional school.
• British diffusionists are known as
Egyptologist, because according to them,
cultural growth in the world took place
from Egypt.
• It was the only cultural cradle from where
culture diffused in other parts of the
universe.
• German school diffusion is known as
culture historic school or Kulture Kreis
(district) School.
• According to them cultural growth was
product of migration taken place in course of
history.
• They were of view that culture had diffused
in terms of districts or circles, formed in
different periods.
• In a district or circle, there were many layers
of culture, developed in course of time.
• They were again of view that in a circle or
district, there were primary and secondary
cultural diffusions.
• American diffusionists were interested in
the study of a particular area in historical
perspective with a view to understand the
diffusion of culture from one area to
another area, or from a cultural centre to
entire culture area.
• These three schools of diffusion were
historically oriented.
• They possessed some similar ideas of
diffusion of culture.
• However, there were also some
differences among these schools.
• Both schools of evolution and diffusion
were historically- oriented.
• They explained cultural growth which had
taken place in past, but could not explain
why and how development took place.
• Malinowski, a British anthropologist,
criticized both evolutionists and
diffusionists.
• According to him, no cultural traits were
functionless.
• They consist of a body of institutions
related to the current adaptative needs of
man.
• It is the study of these institutions-
economic, political, educational, law,
religious, family organisation and
individual relationship to them, that must
take precedence over historical
reconstruction of evolutionists and
diffusionists.
• Malinowski developed the theory of
functionalism to explain social
phenomenon.
• He was more interested in the study of
present and now, than past and then.
• His functional view of culture lays down
the principle that in every type of
civilisation, every customs, material object,
idea and belief fulfills some vital function.
• Each has some task to accomplish and
represents an indispensable part within
the working whole.
• Culture exists to satisfy human needs.
• In other words, the function of culture as a
whole, or different cultural traits within an
institutions, is satisfaction of human needs
• That is –primary, instrumental and
integrative.
• By primary needs, he means biological
needs such as sex and feeding.
• By secondary or instrumental needs, he
means those institutions, such as
economic, legal and educational, which
help to achieve primary needs.
• By integrative or tertiary needs, he means
those that help the society to cohere, such
as religion, magic and play.
• Radcliffe-Brown, another British
anthropologist and contemporary of
Malinowski, developed the concept of social
structure to explain forms.
• According to him, social structure deals with
the study of status and role of person within
an institution.
• In other words, it deals with network of social
relations within and institutional framework.
• As Radcliff-Brown added the concept of
function to structure, he is also known as
structural-functionalist.
• To him, function means the contribution,
which is a partial activity to the total activity,
of which it is part.
• His concept of function was different from
Malinowski’s concept of function, according
to which culture operates to satisfy
universally applicable needs of man.
• Radcliffe-Brown’s concept of function is
based on analogy with an organism.
• Social physiology means how social
structure functions.
• Social evolution means how social
structure changes.
• Social condition refers to the health of
society.
• However, Radcliff-Brown, like Malinowski,
believes in synchronic as well as
diachronic studies of society.
• Other followers of structure-functional
school were Leach, Fortes, Firth, etc.,
about whom appreciations have made
under the structural school.
• Malinowki and Radcliffe-Brown were
influenced to a great extent by French
sociologist; Emile Durkheim.
• Another French anthropologist, Levi-strauss,
developed the concept of structuralism in-
different ways than British structural-
functionalists.
• He took his tool of structural reconstruction
from the linguists like Spair and Troubetzkoy
and attempted to study human thought
process.
• He attempted to know as to how structure
of thought is formed in human mind.
• He made detail study of myth, legend,
kinship terminology and religion to make a
structural analysis of human thought
process.
• According to him, the study of language and
formation of words was essential to know
the social stucture.
• He does not treat social structure as
empirical reality.
• According to him, social relation consists
of raw materials, out of which models,
making up the social structure, are built.
• It is a method applied to the study of social
relations but not a model.
• While British scholars were stressing upon
the structural-functionalism, some pupils of
Franz Boas in America began to study the
influence of culture on personality and vice
versa.
• They ultimately formed a school in
anthropology known as culture and
personality school.
• The pioneers of this school are Ruth
Benedict, Margaret Mead, Linton, Kardiner
and KoraDu-Bois.
• Ruth Benedict is known as patternists.
• She attempts to explain as to how cultural
pattern or cultural design is formed due to the
psychological process of personality
formation.
• She, on the basis of her study, demonstrated
that personality played significant role in
formation of pattern or design of a cultural
group, according to which all members
behave and interact in the same manner.
• Mead, on the basis of her study, attempted
to show the impact of culture on
personality formation.
• She is of opinion that it is culture,
according to which the personality of c
cultural group is shaped.
• The three tribes of Newguinea, namely
Mundugumor, Tschambuli and Arapes,
though living in same geographical region,
represented different personality types,
because their cultures are different.
• In different cultures, their socialization
process differ, and that’s why differences in
their ways of interacting and behaving
come into existence.
• Linton and Kardiner attempted to study the
influence of both culture and personality on
each other.
• They developed the concept of ‘basic
personality type’.
• According to this concept, each culture or
society has a basic personality type,
according to which its members interact
and behave.
• The basic personality type differs from one
group to another.
• KoraDu-Bois developed the concept of
‘Modal Personality’, because it was
established after psychological test.
• Another important contribution of culture and
personality school is the use
multidisciplinary approach to study man and
his personality and culture.
• Equally significant contribution of his school
is study of ‘National Character’ on the basis
of study of few respondents.
• This approach was very useful to study
culture at a distance.
• While anthropologist of Columbia
University were interested in the study of
culture, personality and national character
in twenties, some scholars of Chicago
University became interested in the study
of civilization, the leader of which was
Robert Redfield.
• Redfield and Redfieldians coined several
concepts useful for the purpose of
studying civilization and its various
dimensions.
• Redfield developed the concepts of folk-
urban continuum and great and little
traditions, which were very useful concepts
for studying a civilization and its various
dimensions such as, tribal, folk, semi-urban
and urban.
• He also introduced the study of communities
such as folk-communities, having little
traditions, urban communities which have
great traditions, and peasant communities,
having some characteristics of folk and some
urban.
• Thus, village, town and city studies were introduced
with a view to focus attention on interaction among
various dimensions of civilisation.
• Moriss E. Opler, Milton Singer, McKim Marriot,
Mandel Baum, etc all of Chicago School, came to
India and developed several useful concepts for the
study of Indian civilization and her dimensions.
• Opler, with R.D. Singh, developed the concept of
‘Unity and Extention’, which was very much useful
for studying intra-village and inter-village unity and
its extension of other places and regions.
• Marriot developed the concept of ‘Universalization’
and Parochialization’, in order to know the process
of acceptance of great traditions in little traditions,
and little traditions in great traditions.
• Thus, study of simple and complex societies
were initiated by the scholars of civilization
school.
• After World War II, a movement arose
among the scholars of anthropology to
evaluate the methods of its different sub-
fields such as physical anthropology,
archaeology, linguistics and cultural
anthropology.
• This effort led towards co-operation among
four-field approaches.
• Archaeologists began to view their findings
are representative of cultural system.
• Physical anthropologist turned towards the
study of human evolution in the light of
culture and ecology.
• Linguists now began to concern themselves
with culture and psychological elements of
language, while culture anthropologists took
linguistic methodology as a model for their
own studies.
• These attempts were to discover units of
explanation that can be used cross-culturally
in an objective and unbiased manner.
• Interest in cross-culture analysis motivated
scholars to study universals in culture.
• The study of community was first conscious
attempt to extent the insights gained from the
study of homogeneous societies to more
complex ones.
• Searching for a wider framework, one in
which the findings of archaeology, linguistics
and physical anthropology could also be
encompassed/included, anthropologists
rediscovered evolution.
• The evolutionary, anthropologists concern
that had marked the beginning of
anthropology as an independent discipline
were never lost from sight.
• V. Gordon Childe of England, and Lesile
White and Julian Steward of America, kept
this tradition alive.
• They are known as neo-evolutionists. Child
and White are universal evolutionists, Where
Steward is multilinear evolutionist.
• Childe described evolution in terms of three
major events: the intervention of food
production, urbanization and industrialization.
• Analyzing the traditional that took place under
the impact of these revolutions, Childe
presented an over all view of the evolutionary
process and delineated its common factors.
• Leslie White went a step further. Although he
was a student of Boas, he was a greater
admirer of Tylor and Morgan.
• Like them, he believed in progressive course
of evolution, but he tried to explain what
caused progressive itself and how it worked.
• Searching for a universal principle of
explanation, he found it in energy.
• According to him, culture is basically a
survival mechanism and energy is required to
provide man with the necessities for his
continued existence.
• Thus, culture evolves as energy harnessed
per capita and the efficiency of technology
increases.
• Thus, White talks about over-all view of
evolution or general evolution.
• He has dealt with advance, not with
divergence, and with general process, not
with adaption. He has taken the position that
evolution does occur on a planetary scale.
• He regards the amount of energy, available to
human group at a given period in cultural
development, a convenient macrocosmic
framework for the discussion of long-term
evolutionary history.
• White’s views of overall evolution, which
obscure/difficult to understand particular events,
were subjected to a great deal of criticism,
because of its inability to account for short-time
development.
• Julian Steward pleased/satisfied for mutilinear
evolutionism, which establishes sequences of
parallel developments that could be investigated
in empirical reality.
• It was Steward’s thesis that societies, with
similar technology existing in similar
environment, would parallel one another in
their forms of social and political
organizations, Steward’s multilinear approach
differ from earlier one, but does not
necessarily discredit them.
• White stressed up on general evolution ,
While Steward upon particular evolution , and
the debate between the evolutionists, with
different predictions, were nothing more than
semantic squabbles.
•
• White’s follower’s tend to stress material
factors and technology as determinants of
social organizations, but their is often a
functional rather than an evolutionary
approach.
• Multilinear evolutionists have generally
acknowledged the interrelationships between
environment and technology, so that the latter
became viewed as variable, rather than
ultimate, cause of evolution.
• Various new approaches to the study of
evolution called attention to the question, how
to combine particulars with generals, or how
the study of individuals cultures could yield
meaningful information about culture writ
large.
• The issue became sharpened by the writings
of Marvin Harris, who emphasized upon
Radcliffe-Brown’s earlier distinction between
nomothetic and Ideographic approaches to
the study of culture.
• Nomothetic researches attempt to discover in
particular terms and are not necessarily
analytic.
• Harris favors homothetic researches over the
ideographic ones.
• Harris has dealt with contrast between ‘etic’
and ‘emic ‘approaches in his book, Rise of
Anthropological Theory (1968).
• These terms were coined by the linguist
Kenneth Pike, utilizing the last part of the
words ‘Phonetic’ and Phonemic’.
• In linguistics, phonetics is description of all
speech sounds as produced by human
speech organs, while phonemics is the sorting
out of these sounds in order to arrive at their
distinctive differences.
• Phonetic systems can be universally applied
because the human organ of speech are
similar everywhere, but phonemic systems
differ from language to language, because
sound combination and distinctive differences
are unique for every linguistic group.
• In terms of cultural behavior, etics provide a
set of criteria capable of classifying all data
into a single system, while emics attempts to
discover the meaningful structure of specific
cultures.
• Etics is classificatory and non-structural,
emics reflects the internal structural
relationship found in specific culture system.
• Harris favours etics over emics.
• Now-a-days several anthropological sub-
fields have developed, stressing a separate
and specific cultural aspects, and all using
the prefix ‘ethno’ to indicate their alliance
with culture, such as ethno-science, ethno-
musicology ethno-botany, ethno-zoology,
ethno-medicine, ethno-psychology,ethno-
ecology, ethno-folklore and so forth.
• Ethno-science, thus account for cultural
relationship in terms of the information used
by members of a culture in their linguistic
categories.
• Deferent scholars, belonging to deferent
schools, on the topic concerned developed
Research Methodology to collect primary and
secondary data.
• Methods of social anthropology are: Historical
method, Comparative method, Structural-
functional method and archaeological
method.
• Techniques of data collection are:
observation, interview, questionnaire, case
study, life history, sampling etc.
• The origin and use of these techniques can
be seen clearly while going through the
contribution of different anthropologists.
• For instance, questionnaire and interview
technique of data collection was introduced by
the evolutionist, Morgan and Tylor.
• Tylor introduced use of statistical method in
anthropology.
• G.T. Method was introduced by Morgan and
elaborated by W.H.R. Rivers.
• Malinowski introduced the use of participant
observation method of data collection.
• Scholars of culture personality school used
life history and case study technique of data
collection.
• Redfield used a methodology of folk-urban
continuum and of ‘Great and little tradition’ to
study dimensions of civilization.
• The following are the eminent Indian
anthropologists; namely, S. C. Roy, N.K.
Bose, D.N. Majumdar, M.N. Srinivas, S.C.
Dube and L.P. Vidyarthi.