Name of theory Name of Anthropologist(s) Characteristics of theory

introduced the theory

Neo evolutionism Leslie Alvin White Neo evolutionism is concerned

with long-term, directional,
evolutionary social change and
with the regular patterns of
development that may be seen
in unrelated, widely separated
cultures.
Historicism Herbert Spencer Historicism is the idea of
attributing meaningful
significance to space and time,
such as historical period,
geographical place, and local
culture. Historicism tends to
be hermeneutic because it
values cautious, rigorous, and
contextualized interpretation of
information; or relativist,
because it rejects notions of
universal, fundamental and
immutable interpretations
Functionalism Malinowski The primary concepts
within Functionalism are
collective conscience, value
consensus, social order,
education, family, crime and
deviance and the media.

French Structuralism Claude Lévi-Strauss These were understood as

signifying systems and therefore
open to a linguistic type of
analysis in which attention was
focused not on empirical or
functional matters but on myth
or ritual as a set of relations in
which meaning was created by
differences between
signifying elements

Ahmad Affan

Mc 130401300