ANTHROOPOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

Reported by:
Marifer V. Dinero
Josette O. Bonador
BSEd II-Social Studies
____________________________________________________________________________________
Objectives:
1. Define and understand anthropology and anthropological schools of thought
2. Identify the different anthropological frameworks.
3. Understand how anthropological perspectives help us understand the society and how it shape our lives.

What is ANTHROPOLOGY?
The study of humans as a group, from its evolution to the present age and to how technology will change
human interaction in the future

What is a SCHOOL OF THOUGHT?

A perspective, a viewpoint, or a certain way of interpreting a discipline's subject matter that has become
widely credible.

3 MAJOR ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT:

1. FUNCTIONALISM
- the idea that every belief, action, or relationship in a culture functions to meet the needs of
individuals
- Answer the questions:
*How does the institution or practice serve individual or societal needs?
* Does it work?
* Why does it work?
- Form of functionalism focusing more on satisfying the individual basic needs: nutrition,
reproduction, bodily comforts, safety, movement, health and growth
Ex. “ which food is grown and prepared, when the food was consumed, the economic or
social distribution of goods, the rules that ensure the steady production and authority that
enforces those rules.”
-stresses the importance of interdependence
-empirical fieldwork is essential.
Emic- retrieving of data usually by first-hand observation in the socio-
cultural context which is being studied.
Ethnography- future branch of his idea of fieldwork, the account of
culture or community
 Bronislaw Malinowski

the founder of functionalism coined the

basic strand of functionalism opposing
evolutionism and historical
particularism

4. STRUCTURALISM
• The mind functions on binary opposites, the contrast between two opposite things
• Humans act as we do solely because of the underlying structure of our minds.
• Argued that the mind of a “savage” has the same structure of those also
consider themselves civilized
- There are certain universals that can apply to all human culturals

Claude Levi-Strauss

consider the founder of Structuralism, expanded

upon Durkheim's basic concepts to generate the main
ideas behind Structuralism

• Humans see things in terms of two forces that are opposite to each other. For
example night and day, good and bad, hot and cold
• Binary opposites differ from society to society

Marriage and Kinship

- Most of his work focusing on family relationships
• Moreover, other structuralists also argue that different cultures need to intermarry
for cooperation among groups of people ; the cooperation will lead to human life
continuing
5. CULTURAL MATERIALISM
• Humans have basic needs and it depends on
• If something’s not of value to a
Marvin Harris
with his 1968 book ”The Rise of
Anthropological Theory”, cultural
materialism was first introduced and
popularized within the field of
anthropology
COMPARISON between each SOT:
Functionalism
Similarities -attempts to understand
cultures from individual
to a whole
Differences Investigates the social
functions of institutions
Criticisms -presents societies as
being more stable than
they are and downplays
the negative results of
some practices
how humans choose to organize those needs that
yield to a specific culture
society’s ability to produce or
reproduce, then it will disappear from
society altogether.
Structuralism Cultural Materialism
-attempts to understand -attempts to understand
cultures based on common cultures though
properties of the human mind technology and economy
-seeks out and explains -explores members’
rules that are based on decisions regarding
binary opposites (ie. Day / human reproduction and
night; male; females) economic production
-overemphasizes logic and -tries to establish laws
stability in human societies; that apply to all cultures
societies wouldn't die out if and their development;
they always met the needs observes cultures
of their members through biased eyes
OTHER SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT:

1. DIFFUSION
• Fundamental to anthropological inquiry in the late nineteenth century was the task of
explaining similarities observed in the habits and beliefs of so-called primitives all over the
world.
• It refers to the diffusion or transmission of cultural characteristics or traits from the common
society to all other societies.
• Societies change as a result of cultural borrowing from one another.
• They believed that most inventions happened just once and men being capable of imitation,
these inventions were then diffused to other places.

6 Structural Ways Diffusion Can Happen:

1. War
2. Trade
3. Travel and Exploration
4. Immigration
5. Media
6. Communication

Fritz Graebner

German ethnologist who advanced the theory

of the Kulturkreise, or culture complex, which
postulated diffusions of primitive culture
spheres derived from a single archaic type.

Grafton Elliot Smith

He was best known publicly for his challenging

theory of cultural diffusion, crossing the
boundaries of anthropology, archaeology and
history, stemming from his expert knowledge
of evolution.
2. RELATIVISM
• "Cultural relativism," to most western anthropologists, is a combination of two
notions:
first, that behavioral differences between various populations of people are the
result of cultural (sometimes societal) variation rather than anything else; and,
second, that such differences are deserving of respect and understanding in their
own terms.

Franz Boas
a pioneer of modern anthropology in the
early twentieth century, promoted the idea of
cultural relativism, stating that an
anthropologist cannot compare two cultures
because each culture has its own internal rules
that must be accepted.

3. EVOLUTIONSIM
• All cultures pass through the same developmental stages in the same order.
• Evolution is unidirectional and leads to higher levels of culture.
• Ethnocentric because evolutionists put their own societies at the top.

Lower savagery: From the earliest forms of humanity subsisting on fruits and nuts.
Middle savagery: Began with the discovery of fishing technology and the use of fire.
Upper savagery: Began with the invention of the bow and arrow.
Lower barbarism: Began with the art of pottery making.
Middle barbarism: Began with domestication of plants and animals in the Old World
and irrigation cultivation in the New World.
Upper barbarism: Began with the smelting of iron and use of iron tools.
Civilization: Began with the invention of the phonetic alphabet and writing.

E. B. Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan

were the most notable of the Nineteenth-
century social evolutionists. They collected
data from missionaries and traders; they
themselves rarely went to the societies that
they were analyzing.
 4. POST-MODERNISM
• It is the belief that it is impossible to have any “true” knowledge about the world.
• Postmodernism rejects the idea of objective truth. What we “know” about the
world is our own construction, created by society.
• Rejects the existence of objective facts in favor of emic perspectives.
• Studies culture as a phenomenon that creates different realities for each person
and each society.

Renato Rosaldo
an American cultural anthropologist. He has done field
research among the Ilongots of northern Luzon, Philippines,
and he is the author of Ilongot Headhunting: 1883-1974: A
Study in Society and History (1980) and Culture and Truth: The
Remaking of Social Analysis (1989).

SUMMARY:

FUNCTIONALISM
attempts to understand cultures from individual to a whole; Brolisnaw Marinolski
STRUCTURALISM
attempts to understand cultures based on common properties of the human mind:
Claude Levi-Strauss

CULTURAL MATERIALISM
attempts to understand cultures though technology and economy; Marvin Harris

DIFFUSIONISM
All societies change as a result of cultural borrowing

RELATIVISM
Viewing the beliefs and practice of a culture from its own point of view; rejects the idea
of ethnocentrism

EVOLUTIONSIM
All societies pass through a series of stages; rejects the idea of racism
POST-MODERNISM
Human behavior comes from how people perceive and classify their world; rejects the idea
of modernism and objective facts