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UNIT- VI- ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORIES

HIM A
(THOUGHT)
-HIMABINDU
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CLASSICAL
EVOLUTIONISM

B IND
A
SIR EDWARD

IM
BURNETT TYLOR
H
(1832 – 1917)
• He was an English anthropologist and founder of cultural anthropology
• Tylor believed that there was a kind of psychic unity among all peoples,
the basic similarities in the mental framework of all peoples, different

(Independent invention)
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societies often find the same solutions to the same problems independently

M A B
• It became the reason for cultural parallels and cultural similarities E.g.:

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Invention of Zero in Indian, Babylonian and Mayan cultures
simultaneously.
• The direction of evolution is from simple to complex, similarity to
dissimilarity, Indefinite to definite and from homogeneity to
heterogeneity.
• All societies need not be at the same stage of cultural evolution at a
given point of time.
• Tylor also noted that some societies can be exceptions from the

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evolutionary scheme cultural traits may spread from one society to
I
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another by simple diffusion.

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HI
• According to Tylor the material culture has developed from stone
age to bronze age and finally to Iron age.
• He proposed that civilized people are happier than uncivilized.
• Tylor formulated a definition of culture: "Culture or civilization is
that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,

man as a member of society,"

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law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
D
M A B
• According to Edward Tylor, religion had its origin in primitive man's

HI
belief that non-physical substances like soul inhabited the physical and
inanimate objects like stones, trees etc. Animism, derived from the
Greek word Anima, meaning soul.
• Animism is a belief soul or spirit.
• He also defined the soul as “ A thin unsubstantial human image, in its
nature a sort of vapour, film or shadow” or “the non-physical, trans

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empirical substance existing independent of body.”

B IND
• This belief in soul was confirmed by dreams in which man saw

HIM A
somebody talking to him, who had died recently.
• Tylor believed in two types of soul, body soul that leaves the body
after the death of the human. And free soul that continues to wander
around and looks after the kith and kin, punishes for the wrong doing
and rewards for the good deeds. This gave the idea of multiples souls
that later became multiples gods or goddesses. Then started a
hierarchy of gods which made one god supreme and this gradually led
to monotheism.
• Montesquieu proposed an evolutionary scheme consisting of three
stages: hunting or savagery, herding or barbarism, and civilization.
This division became very popular among the 19th century social
theorists, with figures such as Tylor and Morgan adopting this
scheme.

INDU
M A B
• Tylor correlates the three levels of social evolution to types of religion:

HI
savages practicing animism, barbarians practicing polytheism, and
civilized man practicing monotheism.
• The idea of soul also gave rise to Exorcism, a religious or spiritual
practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person, or
an area, they are believed to have possessed.
• He used statistical studies in anthropology.
ØMethodology:
• Tylor followed two methods for his studies.
1. Comparative method: Tylor and other early evolutionists
postulated that different contemporary societies were at different

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stages of evolution. According to this view, the "simpler" peoples of
IN
M A B
the day had not yet reached "higher" stages. Thus, simpler
contemporary societies were thought to resemble ancient societies /

HI
Extinct cultures.
2. Analysis of survivals: In more advanced societies one could see
proof of cultural evolution through the presence of what Tylor called
survivals / social fossils - traces of earlier customs that survive in
present-day cultures. The making of pottery is an example of a
survival in the sense used by Tylor.
• Works:
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M A B
I
• Primitive culture.

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• Anthropology an introduction to the study of man.
LEWIS HENRY MORGAN
INDU
(1818 - 1881)
M A B
HI
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• The growth of property and the desire for its transmission to

IN
B
children was, in reality, the moving power which brought in

HI A
monogamy to insure legitimate heirs, and to limit their
M
number to the actual progeny of the married pair.-
L.H.Morgan
• Lewis Henry Morgan was one of the most influential evolutionary
theorists of the 19th century and has been called the father of
American anthropology.
• The first modern ethnographic study of a Native American group, the

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League of the Iroquois in 1851. In this, he considered ceremonial,

IN
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religious, and political aspects and also initiated his study of kinship

HI A
and marriage which he was later to develop into a comparative theory
M
in his 1871 work, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity.
• Just out of curiosity! Morgan collected extensive data himself
through fieldwork among Native American groups. At the end of his
1862 field season he learned that his daughters Mary and Helen
Morgan (2 and 6 years old respectively) had died of scarlet
fever almost a month earlier. This devastated him and led him to forgo
additional fieldwork.
 • Morgan on evolution of culture and civilisation:
• Lewis Henry Morgan regarded Iroquois Indians as "noble savages.”
And the survivals as the remnants of the past. In his best-known

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work, Ancient Society, Morgan divided the evolution of human
D
culture into the same three basic stages savagery, barbarism, and

A B
civilization but he subdivided savagery and barbarism into upper,

M
HI
middle, and lower segments and distinguished these stages of
development in terms of technological achievement.
Ø Lower savagery – Invention of speech, subsistence on fruits and nuts
Ø Middle savagery - Acquisition of a fish diet and the discovery of fire
Ø Upper savagery – Invention of bow and arrow
Ø Lower barbarism – Invention of pottery
Ø Middle barbarism - Animal domestication and irrigated agriculture
Ø Upper barbarism - Manufacture of iron

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Ø Civilization - Phonetic alphabet & writing
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A B
• For Morgan, the cultural features distinguishing these various stages

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arose from a "few primary germs of thought"- germs that had
emerged while humans were still savages and that later developed into
the "principle institutions of mankind.”
• He constructed evolutionary sequences of family organisation, kinship
terminology, Descent patterns socio-political organisation and rules of
inheritance of property and correlated them with the scheme of
Savagery – barbarism – civilisation.
MORGAN ON EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE & FAMILY:
• Morgan postulated that the human society began as a "horde living in
promiscuity / Promiscuous horde," with no sexual prohibitions and
no real family structure.

INDU
M A B
• He has listed the successive forms of family based on type of

I
marriage.

H
i.Consanguine – group marriages between brothers and sisters. It was
based on system of promiscuity or sex communism.
ii. Punabran family - In this type of marriage, group of boys married a
group of girls but not brothers and sisters. This existed for a long time.
iii. Syndiasmian Family – Here one female married one male, but the
men and women could have sex–relationship with anyone they want.

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iv. Patriarchal Family: Authority is that of a male especially the eldest

IN
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male of the family. Here male can have more than one wife, but female
can have only one husband.

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V. Monogamous – (Modern family) one male can marry only one
female.
Morgan believed that family units became progressively smaller and
more self-contained as human society developed.
 Morgan on evolution of Kinship: Collected data from 139 groups
from North America, Asia, Oceania, and Europe. Based on this data he
divided the kinship systems in to two types, Descriptive and
classificatory.

INDU
M A B
• Semitic, Aryan and Uralian kinship systems are descriptive.

HI
• Ganowanian, Turanian, and Malayan kinship systems are
classificatory.
• The Semitic system was found in Arabs, Hebrews & Armenians.
• The Aryan system was found among the speakers of Persian, Sanskrit
& all European languages.
• The Uralian system was found among Turk, Magyar, Finn and
Estonian populations.
• Ganowanian is the term used for Native Americans.

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• Turanian includes Chinese, Japanese, Hindu and other groups of
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Indian subcontinent.

M A B
HI
• Malayan include Hawaiians, Maoris, and all other Oceanic groups.
• According to him Classificatory systems are followed by uncivilized
societies or the societies that did not develop monogamy as a norm
(Promiscuity in prescribed limits). E.g.: Hawaiian kinship system
(Generational system) reflects promiscuity involving the cohabitation
of brothers, sisters and perhaps parents and children.
• With the rise of individual property and property inheritance probably led to
the need for precise discrimination of consanguinity. Thus monogamous,
civilized societies follow descriptive kinship system.
• He discussed these ideas in his “Systems of consanguinity and affinity of
the human family”.

INDU
M A B
• According to him all societies went through the same process. What

I
have descriptive terminology today had classificatory terminology at one
time.
H
• Morgan on the evolution of Government / Socio political
organization: Morgan discussed about the Growth of the idea of
Government in his “Ancient society” He opined that at first the social
control was related to kinship ties and later to the territory.
 MORGAN ON PROPERTY:
• During savagery, property was buried as grave good when the owner
died.

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• During Lower Barbarism property was distributed among the
IN
M A B
members of gens (Lineages) when the owner died.

HI
• During middle Barbarism communal ownership of land with right to
use but not to sell developed.
• By the end of the upper Barbarism , state and individual ownership of
the land started .
• This got well established during civilisation.
Works: Ancient society, Systems of consanguinity and affinity of the human
family
Criticism:

complex form of government.

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• Hawaiians developed agriculture and were highly stratified and possessed a

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A B
• Civilisations existed long before the use of iron.
M
HI
• The Aztecs who had no knowledge of iron smelting had a state political
organisation and developed a system of writing. There are many such
examples.
• Present day Anthropologists have dropped the offensive words Savagery,
barbarism but accepted a general historical sequence of hunting-gathering to
domestication of plants and animals to civilization .
 INDU
M A B
SIR JAMES GEORGE FRAZER

I
(1854 - 1941)
H
• Sir James George Frazer was considered to be the last of the British
classical evolutionists.
• Frazer was an encyclopedic collector of data (although he never did

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any fieldwork), publishing dozens of volumes including the popular

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work The Golden Bough. Frazer's ideas from The Golden Bough were
widely accepted.
B
HIM A
• Frazer went on to study the value of superstition in the evolution of
culture saying that it strengthened the respect for private property,
marriage, and contributed to the stricter observance of the rules of
sexual morality.
• Differing from Morgan and Tylor, Sir James Frazer focused on the
evolution of religion.
• Frazer opines that all human societies progress through 3
successive stages of evolution, Magic – religion – Science.
• Frazer summed up this study of magic and religion by stating that
"magic came first in men's minds, then religion, then science, each

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giving way slowly and incompletely to the other”.

IN
M A B
• Magic was based on two principles

HI
i. The laws of similarity ( Belief that a stone rolled down the
mountain stimulates rain fall, pricking needles to a doll that
represent an enemy)
ii. The law of contact ( burning the nails or hair of the enemy to
harm him, a belief that drinking the tigers blood gives bravery)
• The practitioners of the magic soon realised that their laws did not
always work. They became helpless and began to lose faith in their
ability to control nature. Since they lost faith in manipulating the
supernatural powers they started worshipping them Thus was born

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religion. The next step was the development of science.
IN
M A B
• Criticism: He is a prolific writer. He wrote The Golden Bough (12

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Volumes), Totemism and exogamy (4 volumes) The belief in
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immortality and the worship of the dead ( 3 volumes) Folk lore in the
old testament ( 3 volumes) and Aftermath but he was criticized for not
having empirical basis for his observations.
• All of the early evolutionary schemes were unilineal. Therefore they
all are called Unilinear evolutionists.
ØPoints of Reaction:
• The degeneration theory of savagery states that primitives regressed
from the civilized state and that primitivism indicated the fall from

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grace. Tylor discounted the degeneration theory.

M A B
ØReactions within evolutionist thought:

HI
• Within the school of social evolution there were debates particularly
concerning the most primitive stages of society. It was highly debated
about the order of stages like primitive promiscuity, patriarchy, and
matriarchy.
ØReactions to evolutionism:
• Marx and his co-worker, Friedrich Engels, devised a theory in

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which the institutions of monogamy, private property, and the state

IN
M A B
were assumed to be chiefly responsible for the exploitation of the
working classes in modern industrialized societies. Marx and Engels

HI
extended Morgan’s evolutionary scheme to include a future stage of
cultural evolution in which monogamy, private property, and the state
would cease to exist and the “communism” of primitive society
would once more come into being.
Criticism to classical evolutionism:
• The beginning of the twentieth century brought the end of evolutionism’s reign
in cultural anthropology. Its leading opponent was Franz Boas, whose main
disagreement with the evolutionists involved their assumption that universal
laws governed all human culture. Boas argued that these nineteenth-century

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individuals lacked sufficient data. Thus historicism and, later, functionalism

IN
B
were reactions to nineteenth century social evolutionism.

HI A
• Criticism by Westermarck: Simple societies have monogamy and nuclear

M
families, but evolutionists considered them as characteristics of civilized
society.
• Evolutionists considered Victorian society as the highest stage of development
which indicates their ethnocentrism.
• Neo evolutionists do not accept the unilinear cultural evolution, Parabolic curve
of the cultural evolution is when a social institution is born in a specific form in
the early stages, develops into an entirely different form in different direction &
again moves towards the original form but in a modified form.
 E.g.: Stage 1
Ø Common property
ownership
Ø Shortage of cloth
Stage 2
Ø Sexual promiscuity

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1. Individual/private

M A B property ownership
2.Luxury of cloth
Stage 3
Common HI 3.Monogamy

ownership
Nudism
Sexual freedom
 NEO EVOLUTIONISM
• Julian Steward, in his book theory of culture change, suggested the
typology of cultural evolution. As given below
1. Uni linear evolution

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2. Universal evolution

M A B
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3. Multi linear evolution
The classical evolutionists like EB Tylor, LH Morgan are considered to
be unilinear evolutionists.
V. Gordon Childe of Britain, Julian Steward and Leslie A .White of
America are the most important neo evolutionists.
MULTI LINEAR EVOLUTION/
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CULTURAL ECOLOGY

M A B
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JULIAN STEWARD (1902 - 1972)
H
• He is an American anthropologist, best known for his Cultural
ecology and Scientific theory of culture change
• Julian Steward belongs to the group of multi linear evolutionists. He

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believed that all cultures of the world have not passed through the

IN
M A B
same developmental stages, rather their stages were different in

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different areas.

H
• The sequence of cultural evolution in Ice area, forest area, and plain
area are different due to different environmental conditions.
• In order to study the relation between environment and culture, he
suggested a method called “Culture ecology”, a study of human
adaptations to social and physical environments.
• Human adaptation refers to both biological and cultural processes that
enable a population to survive and reproduce within a given or
changing environment. Man’s adaptation to the nature is mostly
through cultural means. Cultural ecology attempts to study such
processes of adaptation.

INDU
M A B
• Cultural ecology studies the features of environment and the cultural

HI
arrangements by which the environment is exploited, including
technology and economic organisation.
• In his Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multi linear
Evolution (1955), cultural ecology represents the "ways in which
culture change is induced by adaptation to the environment."
ØCase study: Julian Steward’s monograph on Shoshonean people
of the Basin plateau area of USA. The region is quite arid,
supporting a meagre plant and animal life. The inhabitants of this
region employed a simple hunting and gathering economy. They live

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at bare subsistence level. They were nomadic and travelled for the

B I
together in all their travels.
ND
most part of the year in search of food. Elementary family remained

IM A
• There was no exclusive ownership of land or resources. Families were
H
free to wander. Both men and women were treated equally.
• Conclusion:According to him if any other society moved to Basin
plateau in early days would have adapted in the same lines or would
have perished.
ØCase study: Roy Rappaport’s explanation of pig feasts among
Tsembaga, New Guinea:
• They are horticulturalists living mainly on root crops and greens which

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they grow in their home gardens. They also raise pigs. As long as pigs

IN
B
are not too many, they serve many useful functions. They keep the

HIM A
residential area clean. They help preparing the soil for planting by
rooting in it. It is also not difficult to grow them.
• They can be fed on substandard tubers, but once the pig herd grows
large, they must be fed on human rations. They may also intrude in to
the others gardens, leading to disputes. He suggested that the ritual pig
feasts involving the slaughter of large number of pigs had developed
to cope with the problem of surplus pig population.
• Works: Theory of culture change: The methodology of multilinear
evolution (1955)
• Methodology: Steward proposed that one must look for "parallel

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developments in different societies, Once parallels in development are
I
A B
identified, one must then look for similar causal explanations”.

M
HI
Steward also developed the idea of culture types that have "cross-
cultural validity.
• Criticism: Cultural ecology could not explain why a particular
solution is followed out of many possible solutions. For instance, why
don’t they eat the pigs regularly instead of performing a pig feast.
ØUNIVERSAL EVOLUTION
• Universal evolution is concerned with the evolution of culture as a
whole. It treats the whole culture of the humankind rather the

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particular cultures. According to this view, evolution is a universal

A B
phenomenon, and every culture is subject to the process of evolution
M
HI
whether it is pre literal or advanced. This type of cultural evolution is
presented by V Gordon Childe of Britain and Leslie A. White of
America.
 INDU
M A B V. GORDON CHILDE

HI (1892-1957)
• He was an Australian archaeologist
• V. Gordon Childe is the only pioneer of British school of neo-
evolutionism. In his famous book, Social Evolution (1951). He

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described evolution of culture in terms of three major events:

M A B
i) invention of food production,

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ii) urbanization and
iii) industrialization.
• The universal evolutionary scheme of Childe was similar to Leslie
White, who also believed in universal sequences of evolution.
• According to Childe, the multiplicity of cultures revealed by
ethnographic and archaeological research is a handicap if the objective

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is to establish general stages in the evolution of cultures. Therefore, in
D
order to discover general laws descriptive of the evolution of all

A B
societies one must omit the features peculiar to particular habitats or

M
environments.
HI
• Gordon Childe, being a noted archeologist (proposed the concept of
Neolithic revolution), he compared the archeological periods with
different stages of cultural evolution. The table below describes the
comparison.
Archaeological periods Stages of cultural development
Paleolithic period Savagery
Neolithic period Barbarism
Copper age
INDU Barbarism
Early bronze age
M A B Civilisation

HI
According to him, a drastic change in the life pattern appeared in the stage
of civilization,
• Aggressive attitude towards environment developed among mankind.
• Forest-dwellers or cave-dwellers became house-dwellers.
• Hunters and gatherers became food producer by adopting agriculture.
• Writing made them capable of preserving their tradition.
• Mathematics came into being for counting things.
• The development of cities made them urbanized and

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• Technological advancement of smelting copper, bronze, iron, etc.
D
made them capable of producing durable utensils and implements.

M A B
• Thus, according to him, at. each stage of cultural development,

HI
mankind developed their technological skill to exploit natural
resources. In the early stage, less advanced technological skill,
had made them less aggressive towards environment, but as
knowledge went on increasing, they became more and more
aggressive.
• Works:
• Social Evolution (1951)
• Society and knowledge: The growth of human traditions (1956)
Criticism:

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evolution.
M A B
• He relied too much on archaeological data to explain cultural

HI
• He did not take any interest in the civilizational sequence outside
Middle East and Europe.
• He did not take into consideration, the universal existing institutions
of matriarchy, sexual promiscuity etc. But despite such criticisms, he
was successful in presenting universal scheme of cultural evolution in
terms of archaeological sequences.
 INDU
M A B
LESLIE. A. WHITE (1900 - 1975)

HI
• He was and American anthropologist
• He disagreed with Historical particularism and championed
evolutionism.

IN
forces of nature” – Leslie White.U
• “Culture is a system that grows by increasing its control over the
D
A
ØLaw of cultural development:
M B
HI
• "culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per captia per
year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of
putting the energy to work is increased". Thus, simplest societies are
those that have least amount of energy at their disposal and advanced
societies have higher energy at their disposal.
• It means culture develops in direct response to technological
development.

EXT=C

N D U
where E = energy, C=culture T=technology
I
M A B
H I
Social organisation =NXPXR=S

• According to him Social organisation = Nutrition X protection X

Reproduction

Property = Things X labour

• In his book, “Evolution of culture”, he said that socio cultural
system consists of 3 aspects.
1. Techno economic aspects: Include tools and economic activities
of humans.

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2. Sociological aspects: Includes institutions like family, marriage,
kinship, politics, religion, customs and laws.

M A B
3. Ideological aspects: Ideas, knowledge, values, morals,

HI
expressions etc.
• According to him technological factors determine the culture. This
makes him a cultural materialist. He says that "man as an animal
species, and consequently culture as a whole, is dependent upon the
material, mechanical means of adjustment to the natural environment"
(Idealism is a belief that ideal determine culture and its evolution &
Materialism is a belief that material forces shapes the society and
culture.)
• Thus, He was concerned with ecological anthropology and was
heavily influenced by Marxian economic theory as well as

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Darwinian evolutionary theory.
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Works:
M A B
HI
• The Evolution of culture: The development of civilisation to the
fall of Rome, 1959
• The science of culture: A study of man and civilisation, 1949
 INDU
M A B
MARSHALL SAHLINS . (1930)

HI
• He was an American anthropologist

IN U
• Sahlins' training under Leslie White, a proponent of materialist and
D
evolutionary anthropology at the University of Michigan, is reflected

M
in his early work.
A B
HI
• In his Evolution and Culture (1960), he touched on the areas
of cultural evolution and neo-evolutionism. He divided the evolution
of societies into "general" and "specific". General evolution is the
tendency of cultural and social systems to increase in complexity,
organization and adaptiveness to environment.
• However, as the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction and
a diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads
cultures to develop in different ways (specific evolution), as various elements
are introduced to them in different combinations and on different stages of

U
evolution. Moala: Culture and nature on a Fijian island Sahlins' first

B IND
major monograph, exemplifies this approach.

A
• Other works: What is kinship and what is not

HIM
• Stone Age Economics (1972) collects some of Sahlins's key essays
in substantivist economic anthropology. As opposed to "formalists,"
substantivists insist that economic life is produced through cultural rules that
govern the production and distribution of goods, and therefore any
understanding of economic life has to start from cultural principles not from
the assumption that the economy is made up of independently acting,
"economically rational" individuals. Perhaps Sahlins's most famous essay
from the collection, "The Original Affluent Society," elaborates on this
theme.
• Stone Age Economics inaugurated Sahlins's persistent critique of the
discipline of economics, particularly in its Neoclassical form.

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B
• He says , "The world's most 'primitive' people have few possessions,

HIM A
but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods,
nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a
relation between people. Poverty is a social status”.
• Marshall Sahlins has studied the big man phenomenon. In his 1963
article "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political Types in
Melanesia and Polynesia", Sahlins says

Polynesian-type hierarchical
INDU Melanesian-type big-man
society of chiefs

M A B system.
Hierarchy
HI
Leadership is ascribed status
(Hereditary)
Segmented lineage groups
Leadership is achieved
Status
Lifetime tenure Temporarily held.
Wields power Uses influence
 INDU
A B
ELMAN R. SERVICE (1915-1996)
M
HI
• Elman Service, a former student of Julian Steward and a member of
the neo-evolutionary group at Columbia University claimed that social
evolution was based on adaptations to the environment.

U
• In Origins of the State and Civilization: The Processes of Cultural

IND
Evolution (1975), Service said the societies used an over-arching

B
ideology to maintain social control and that the “earliest government

IM A
worked to protect, not another class or stratum of the society, but
H
itself. It legitimized itself in its role of maintaining the whole society”.
• Elman Service gives a four -fold scheme of development of human
societies on the basis of socio -economic and political -religion. They
are the band, the tribe, the chiefdom and the state. Out of the 4,
first 3 can be considered as stateless.
vForagers/Hunter-gatherers: Band society
vHorticulture: Tribe
vPastoralism: Chiefdom
vAgriculture: State

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M A B
• Service believed that civilizations that fell were adaptive failures to a

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changing environment. They suffered from a “kind of failure of

H
bureaucratic governance” by not being able to save its society from
“external and internal threats.
• Service predicts that China’s modern civilization, newly
industrializing in 1975 when the book was published, may one day
supersede the United States due to the American dependence of fossil
fuels.
• Service explains social stratification due to differing access to
resources and claims the “differential power exists actually or

U
potentially in all human groups”.

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• Service believes that governance by moral code and custom is far
B
A
more stable and effective than governance by physical force.

HIM
ØMarshall Sahlins and Elman Service were the students and
colleagues of both White and Steward. They combined both the
approaches by recognizing two kinds of evolution.
1. Specific Evolution refers to the particular sequence of
change and adaptation of a particular society in a given

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environment. (Similar to Steward’s multi linear evolution)

IN
M A B
2. General Evolution refers to general progress of human

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society in which higher forms arise and surpass lower forms.

H
( Similar to White’s universal evolution)
 INDU
M A B
HI
• Marvin Harris was an American anthropologist.
• Coined by Marvin Harris in his 1968 text, The Rise of Anthropological
Theory.

INDU
• cultural materialism embraces three anthropological schools of thought,
cultural evolution and cultural ecology.

M A B
I
• Risen as an expansion of Marxist materialism.

H
• Societies are organised in three levels. Infrastructure, structure and
superstructure.
• Infrastructure: The infrastructure consists of etic modes of production and
etic modes of reproduction as determined by the combination of ecological,
technological, environmental, and demographic variables.
• Structure: The structure consists of a society’s economic, social and
political organisation.

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• Superstructure: The superstructure is the symbolic or ideological

A B
segment of culture. The superstructure involves things such as
M
HI
religion, rituals, taboos, and symbols.
• Priority of Infrastructure: In Harris’ words, The innovations within
the infrastructure will be selected by a society if they increase
productive and reproductive capabilities even when they are in conflict
with structural or superstructural elements of society.
• Innovations can also take place in the structure or the superstructure,
but will only be selected by society if they do not diminish the ability
of society to satisfy basic human needs. Therefore, the driving force
behind culture change is satisfying the basic needs of production and
reproduction.
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A B
• Cultural materialism aims to understand the effects of infrastructure
M
HI
(technological, economic and demographic factors) on moulding
societal structure and superstructure through strictly scientific
methods.
• Cultural materialism is an expansion upon Marxist materialism.
 INFRA STRUCTURE

IN DU
M A B
STRUCTURE

HI
SUPER STRUCTURE
• The principle of techno-environmental and techno economic
determinism: This principle holds that similar technologies when
applied to similar environments tend to produce similar arrangements
of labour in production and distribution which in turn leads to similar

DU
kinds of social groupings, values and beliefs

IN
A B
• Technology + Environment → Economic relations → Social

M
HI
groupings, values and beliefs.
• Methodologies:
• Emic & Etic: Cultural materialism focuses on how the emic of
thought and the behaviour of a native population are the results of etic
processes (i.e., observable phenomena).
• Cultural materialism focuses only on those entities and events that are
observable and quantifiable. Using empirical methods, cultural
materialists reduce cultural phenomena into observable, measurable
variables that can be applied across societies to formulate theories.
ØCase study: India’s sacred cow:
INDU
A B
• Harris used a cultural materialist model to examine the Hindu belief
M
HI
that cows are sacred and must not be killed. First, he argued that the
taboos on cow slaughter (emic thought) were superstructural elements
resulting from the economic need to utilize cows as draft animals
rather than as food. He also observed that the Indian farmers claimed
that no calves died because cows are sacred.
• In reality, however, male calves were observed to be starved to death
when feed supplies are low. Harris argues that the scarcity of feed
(infrastructural change) shaped ideological (superstructural)
beliefs of the farmers. Thus, Harris shows how, using empirical
change holistically.
IN U
methods, an etic perspective is essential in order to understand culture
D
A B
• Marvin Harris has suggested that the taboo against cow slaughter may
M
HI
be a cultural adaptation to the material conditions.
• Cows provide a number of resources like Oxen for agriculture.
• Cow dung for cooking fuel(National council of applied economic
research has estimated that an amount of dung equivalent to 45
million tons of coal is burnt annually).
• Cow dung as a fertiliser ( About 340 million tons to cow dung is being
used as manure annually).

INDU
• Although Hindus do not eat beef, cattle can die naturally or the old

A B
cattle are butchered by non-Hindus and lower caste Hindus which
M
HI
provides them with much needed proteins.
• Most importantly all these are produced with consumption of
minimum resources. The taboo against slaughtering cattle may be the
result of a culture adapting to its material conditions.
 Works:
• 1927. Culture, people, nature: an introduction to general
anthropology.

INDU
• 1966. The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle. Current
Anthropology
M A B
HI
• 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of
Culture.
• 1977. Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Culture.
• 1979. Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture.
• Case study: The study of women’s roles in the post-World War II
United States by Maxine Margolis: She empirically studied this
phenomenon and interpreted her findings according to a classic
cultural materialist model. The 1950’s was a time when ideology held

U
that the duties of women should be located solely in the home (emic
thought);

B IND
A
• however, empirically, Margolis found that women were entering the

HIM
workforce in large numbers (actual behaviour) (Margolis 1984). This
movement was an economic necessity that increased the productive
and reproductive capabilities of U.S. households. Furthermore,
Margolis argues that the ideological movement known as "feminism"
did not cause this increase of women in the workforce, but rather
was a result of this movement by women into the workforce. Thus,
here we see how infrastructure determined superstructure as ideology
changed to suit new infrastructural innovations.
ØCriticisms:
• Cultural materialism has been termed "vulgar materialism" by
Marxists who believe that cultural materialists rely too heavily on the

NDU
one-directional infrastructure-superstructure relationship to explain
I
A B
culture change, and that the relationship between the "base" and the

M
HI
superstructure must be dialectically viewed. They argue that a
cultural materialist approach can disregard the superstructure to such
an extent that the effect of superstructure on shaping structural
elements can be overlooked.
• Idealists such as structuralists argue that the key to understanding
culture change lies in the emic thoughts and behaviours of members
of a native society.

INDU
A B
• Postmodernists also argue vehemently against cultural materialism

M
HI
because of its use of strict scientific method. Postmodernists believe
that science is itself a culturally determined phenomenon that is
affected by class, race and other structural and infrastructural
variables.
HISTORICISM
• Historicism is an approach to the study of anthropology and culture
that dates back to the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

DU
• It encompasses two distinct forms of historicism: diffusionism and
IN
historical particularism.

M A B
ØDIFFUSIONISM
HI
• Emerged in early 20 the century.
• Diffusionists view that the various cultural traits and culture
complexes develop at various times in different places in the world
and later on gets diffused.
• They believe that the culture has growth not because of evolution but
because of spread that occur due to historical happenings and mutual
contact.

U
• Cultural diffusion is a process by which cultural traits discovered or

IND
invented at one place or society spread directly or indirectly to other

B
A
societies or places .

HIM
ØConditions for diffusion:
• Any cultural group adopts the cultural traits of other cultural group
only when they are meaningful or useful either economically or
socially or both.
• In the course of diffusion, the culture traits do not remain in their
original form. They change according to the environmental situations
• Process of diffusion is always from high culture to low culture or
developed culture to undeveloped culture .

DU
• Process of diffusion may create culture change in the group

IN
M A B
• There are some obstacles or barriers for the diffusion of culture They

HI
include lack of transportation, communication or some form of
physical barriers such as ocean, river, mountains etc.
Schools of diffusionism : There are 3 schools of diffusionism

W. H. R. Rivers
IN U
1. British school of diffusionism: G. E. Smith, W. J. Perry,
D
M A B
I
2. German or continental school of diffusionism: F. Ratzel,
H
J. W. Schmidt, Graebner
3. American school of diffusionism: Franz Boas, Clark
Wissler, AL Kroeber
ØBRITISH SCHOOL OF DIFFUSIONISM
• Considered ancient Egypt as the cultural cradle of the world.
• Also called Pan Egyptian school of diffusionism

NDU
• G.E. Smith was the founder of this theory and W.J. Perry was his
I
true follower.

M A B
HI
• They are also called extreme diffusionists & Egyptologists as they
believed that Egypt was the only Centre of culture.
• They argued that worship of sun which was originated in Egypt is
found in all other parts of the world.
• They mentioned migration as the main cause of diffusion
 INDU
M A B
I
G. ELLIOT SMITH (1871-1937)
H
• He was a prominent British anatomist who produced a most curious
view of cultural distribution that Egypt was the source of all higher
culture. He based this on the following assumptions:

U
(1) man was uninventive, culture seldom arose independently, and

IND
culture only arose in certain circumstances
B
IM A
(2) these circumstances only existed in ancient Egypt, which was the

H
location from which all culture had spread after the advent of navigation
(3) human history was full of decadence and the spread of this
civilization was naturally diluted as it radiated outwardly
• He was impressed with the Egyptian complexes of large stone
monuments (Pyramids) in his visit to Egypt, and felt that Mayan
pyramids, Japanese pagodas, Cambodian temples and American Indian
burial mounds were all imitations of Egyptian pyramids. He thus came
to other places.
IN U
to the conclusion that civilisation originated in Egypt and got diffused
D
A B
• Other Egyptian cultural traits constituting a complex consisted of

M
I
irrigation and agriculture, mummification, ear-piercing and
H
circumcision practices also got diffused to other areas.
• He assumed that before the spread of civilisation from Egypt, the
earth was inhabited by “Natural man” who not only lacked
domesticated animals, agriculture, houses, clothing, but also religion,
social organisation, hereditary chiefs, and formal laws of marriage or
burial rituals.
• domesticate animals, build towns, and began to bury their dead bodies,
developed the notion of deities, started travelling by land and sea in
search of precious metals, and thus they rapidly spread the civilisation
by diffusion and colonisation.

INDU
• Thus all cultures were tied together by this thread of common origin

A B
inferring the psychic unity of mankind as a result, but not as cause
M
HI
for the cultural similarities between cultures.
• Worldwide cultural development could be viewed as a reaction of
native people to this diffusion of culture from Egypt. The diversity
exists as few cultures prospered and others degenerated.
 DU
• He proposed these assumptions in his books, The origin of civilisation

IN
M A B
and The diffusion of culture.

I
• Criticism: This school of thought did not hold up long due to its
H
inability to account for independent invention and inability to
explain diversity.
 INDU
M A B
I
WILLIAM. J. PERRY (1868—1949)
H
• He supported the theory of G. E. Smith and popularised it in his book, The
children of the sun.
• He hypothesized that the entire cultural inventory of the world had diffused

U
from Egypt. The development began in Egypt, according to them, about
6,000 years ago.

B IND
• This form of diffusion is known as heliocentrism as the sun worship is a

HIM A
major element in the Egyptian culture.
• They believed that "Natural Man" inhabited the world before
development began. The discovery of barley in 4,000 B. C. enabled people
to settle in one location. From that point invention in culture exploded and
was spread during Egyptian migrations by land and sea.
• He also stated that the transmission of culture is accompanied by
degradation , no culture is enduring in nature.
 INDU
A B
W. H. R. RIVERS (1864-1922)

M
HI
• He was a British doctor and psychiatrist who became interested in
ethnology after he went on a Cambridge expedition to the Torres Straits in
1898.

DU
• He later pursued research in India and Melanesia. His interest in kinship

IN
B
established him as a pioneer in the genealogical method.

HIM A
• Rivers was converted to diffusionism while writing his book, The History
of Melanesian Society, and was the founder of the diffusionist trend in
Britain.
• In 1911, He was the first to speak out against evolutionism. He found 5
different types of burying rituals in Australia which is otherwise a
homogeneous population. He proposed that they might have come from 5
different places through migration and diffusion as the aborigines were not
inventive.
GERMAN /CONTINENTAL /
GERMAN-AUSTRIAN
INDU
M A B
SCHOOL OF DIFFUSIONISM

HI
FRITZ GRAEBNER
(1877-1934)
• He was a German anthropologist, who was a leading diffusionist
thinker. The German school, led by Fritz Graebner.
• To account for the independent invention of culture elements, the

U
theory of culture circles was utilized. This theory argued that culture

B IND
traits developed in a few areas of the world and diffused in concentric
circles, or culture circles. Thus, worldwide socio-cultural

IM A
development could be viewed as a function of the interaction of

H
expanding culture circles with native cultures and other culture
circles.
• Development of culture took place not only in one place like Egypt but
also in different places at several parts of the world from where it was
initiated and migrated to different parts of the world.
• He believed that discovery of all aspects of culture is not possible at
same time in same place.
• According to him each culture trait and complex had a circle from

DU
where they migrated to different places.

IN
A B
• This school of thought is also known as Kulturkreis school (German

M
HI
word, Kulturkreis = singular, Kulturkreise = plural for culture
circles) or culture circle school.
• As they felt that the origin of various culture traits must be historically
traced they also called it as Culture historic school.
• As they felt that the origin of various culture traits must be historically
traced they also called it as Culture historic school.
• Graebner, in his book “Die Method der ethnologie” proposed the

U
idea that the early man invented basic culture (Language, stone tools

B IND
etc.). They soon formed number of small bands. Each band had their
distinctive culture. Such bands migrated in all directions and

IM A
eventually populated all continents. The task of culture historians is to

H
trace or reconstruct the various culture circles.
• Graebner and his followers were not satisfied with such tracing, but
they were also interested in reconstruction of chronology. On the basis
of research carried out in Oceania, Graebner reconstructed 6
successive layers (Culture strata) of cultural development.
 i. Tasmanian culture (Earliest)
ii.Australian boomerang culture
iii.Totemic hunter culture
iv.Two class horticulturist culture
v.Melanesian bow culture
INDU
A B
vi.Polynesian patrilineal culture (recent)

M
HI
• Each of these had counter parts in other parts of the world.
• Graebner classified diffusion in to two types
Ø primary diffusion: Diffusion from the origin to the first place. E.g.
Tasmanian culture
Ø Secondary diffusion: Diffusion from the first place to the subsequent
places.
 INDU
M A B
FATHER PATER WILHELM

I
SCHMIDT (1868-1954)
H
• He was a Catholic priest in Germany and an ethnologist who studied
religions of the world and wrote extensively on their inter-
relationship.
• He declared himself as a follower of Graebner. He divided the culture

NDU
of the world into different strata and circles.
I
A B
• He distinguished 4 major temporal grades of culture circles each

M
HI
one further divided into several culture circles.
1. Primitive culture circle:
a. central or exogamous kreise: corresponding to pigmy people of
Asia and Africa distinguished by their exogamous hordes and their
monogamous families.
b. Arctic kreise: corresponding to samoyeds, eskimos, Algonkians etc.
distinguished by exogamy and sexual equality.
c. The Antarctic kreise: Corresponding to south eastern australians,

U
bushmen, tasmanian etc. distinguished by exogamy with sex totems.
2. Primary stage:
B IND
HIM A
a. Patriarchal cattle rearing nomads

b. Exogamous patrilineal totemic higher hunters

c. Exogamous matrilineal village dwelling horticulturists.

3. Secondary stage /grade
a. A free patrilineal system: (Polynesia, Sudan, India, western Asia,
southern Europe etc.)

INDU
B
b. A free matrilineal system: (southern china, Indochina, Melanesia,

HIM A
North eastern south America etc.)
4.Tertiary grade: Higher civilisations of Asia, Europe and Africa.
• Reactions: According to Marvin Harris the most striking feature of
this scheme is its evolutionism. His strata indicate universal
chronological scheme. It also leads to comparative method and an
assumption that the contemporary societies can be arranged according
to the degree of primitiveness.
ØCriticism:

INDU
• His scheme had no empirical basis and was highly speculative

M A B
• Marvin Harris says that diffusionism could not explain the reasons

HI
for acceptance, rejection or modifications of culture traits.
 INDU
A B
FRIEDRICH RATZEL (1844 – 1904)
M
HI
• He was founder of anthropogeography or cultural geography.
According to Ratzel, the most important consideration was to discover
from where cultural traits came and where they went.
• Ratzel felt that culture traits may become simplified or elaborated in

DU
their course of diffusion or migration, depending upon the local
IN
M A B
conditions and relative sophistication of local technology.

HI
• Principle of Formengedanke or ‘Criterion of Form’: According to
Ratzel, every similarity cannot be taken as proof of historical
connection because objects of material culture must possess certain
features in order to have any utility. For example, a canoe paddle
needs a blade, and an arrowhead or a spear must have a point. If,
however, there are other similarities which are not related to use they
serve as proof of historical relationship.
• Thus, if paddles have similar incised ornamentations, or spears have
feathers attached to their shafts, this cannot be accidental, but they
certainly imply borrowing or migration diffusion, even though
respective cultures may be widely separated in time and space.

DU
Graebner called this as the “Criterion of form” and Schmidt called
IN
M A B
it as the “Criterion of quality”.

I
• Ratzel warned that possible migration or other contact phenomena
H
should be ruled out in each case before cross-cultural similarities were
attributed to independent invention. He wrote The History of
Mankind, a three volume publication in 1896, which was said to be
"a solid foundation in anthropological study" by E. B. Tylor, a
competing British cultural evolutionist.
 INDU
M A B
LEO FROBENIUS (1873 – 1938)

HI
• He is a pupil of Ratzel, expanded on the "culture circle" concept. He
observed the similarities between masks, houses, drums, clothing and
shields in Melanesia, Indonesia, and West Africa and proves that the
similarities existed not only between elements of culture but also
diffusion.
IN U
between culture complexes. He attributed these similarities to
D
A B
• To Ratzel’s Criterion of form, he added one more principle,

M
HI
Geographical statistics. It states that the probability of historical
relationship between two items increases as the number of additional
items showing similarities between the two societies increases. Several
similarities prove the diffusion better than a single similarity does.
Graebner and Schmidt called it “Criterion of quantity”.
• Biological or development criterion: He proposed that only
similarities, but significant differences related to ecological adaptation
could become indicators of historical connection.
 AMERICAN SCHOOL OF
INDU
DIFFUSIONISM

M A B
I
CLARK WISSLER (1870-1947)
H
• He was an American anthropologist at the American Museum of
Natural History in New York.
• His ideas on the culture-area approach were especially significant. In

U
1917 Wissler created a "landmark treatment" of American Indian

B IND
ethnology and classified American Indian culture areas (Food areas)
according to their dominant traits and geographic locations, taking

IM A
subsistence as the most basic factor.

H
Subsistence Area
Caribou (animal) Eskimo
Bison (animal) Great plains
Salmon (Fish)
DU
North pacific coast

IN
B
Wild seeds California
Eastern Maize

HIM
Intensive agriculture
A South – east and eastern woodland
South - west, Mexico, Peru
Manioc (root crop/tuber) Amazon region, Caribbean
Guanaco (animal) Guanaco
• Culture area is the dominant theme in this school. Clark Wissler
emphasized the concept of culture area in which similar culture traits
and complexes are found. Hence this school is also known as culture
area school. He divided the world into different culture areas on the
basis of geographical similarity.

INDU
M A B
• Wissler also pointed that in each culture area there is a culture center
It is the core in a culture area from where all social, political and

HI
economic activities are controlled and governed. It is an area where
maximum culture traits of the culture circle are found and from where
various culture traits spread to other parts.
• He expanded the idea of "culture Centre" by proposing a "law of
diffusion," which stated that "... traits tend to diffuse in all directions
from their center of origin."
• Wissler’ s age area hypothesis / culture age: It is assessing the relative
age of the cultural traits based on their degree of diffusion. It means the
most widely distributed trait around the center would be the oldest one.
• Culture margin: It is an area where minimum culture traits of the culture

NDU
circle are found. It also keeps border with other cultures.

I
A B
• According to Wissler there are two types of diffusion

M
HI
• Natural diffusion: Culture traits diffuse through natural agencies or trial
and error method
• Organised diffusion: culture traits are transmitted through some
organised agencies like missionary invasion. It’s a very fast and quick
process.
 INDU
M A B
HI
ALFRED. L. KROEBER (1876-1960)
• He was an early American student of Franz Boas.
• Kroeber (1931) observed that the culture-area concept was "a
community product of nearly the whole school of American

U
Anthropologists." Using the culture areas, Kroeber published his well-

in 1939.
B IND
known book, “Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America”,

IM A
• AL Kroeber used culture climax as equivalent to culture center, from

H
where the culture starts getting diffused.
• He also used the words Grand areas, areas and subareas. He divided
North and central America in to 7 grand areas, 21 areas and 63 sub areas.
Stout recognized 11 areas in South America which were narrowed down to
3 by Bennett and Bird but increased again to 24 by Murdock.
ØLimitations:
• The culture center and boundary may change with time

U
• Culture within the area may change so that it resembles cultures in

IND
different areas in different times.
B
HIM A
• A portion of the area may contain radically different culture elements
despite sharing many features.
• Marvin Harris says that Diffusionism could not explain the reasons
for acceptance, rejection or modifications of culture traits.
 I
HISTORICAL PARTICULARISM
NDU
FRANZ BOAS
M A B
H
(1858-1942)
I
• Historical particularism was an approach popularized by Franz Boas
as an alternative to both evolutionists and extreme diffusionists.
• Franz Uri Boas was a German-born American anthropologist and a pioneer

DU
of modern anthropology who has been called the “Father of American

IN
Anthropology”.

M A B
HI
• His work is associated with the movements known as Historical
particularism and Cultural relativism.
• In evolutionism, Low levels of development were attributed to relatively
lower mental developments than in more developed societies.
• Diffusionism ignores independent invention.
• Boas considered societies of varying complexities to be the outcome
of particular historical processes and circumstances, a perspective
described as historical particularism.

IN U
• He argued that many cultures developed independently, each based on
D
its own particular set of circumstances such as geographic location,

A B
climate, resources, particular cultural borrowing, Historical
M
HI
period, Individual development, specific context of culture etc.
• Reconstructing the history of individual cultures requires an in-depth
investigation of the distribution of culture traits.
• Once the distribution of many sets of culture traits is plotted for a
geographic area, patterns of cultural borrowing may be determined.
• This allows the reconstruction of individual histories of specific
cultures and helps us to understand which of the cultural elements
were borrowed and which were developed individually.

INDU
• He stressed the meticulous collection and organization of

B
ethnographic data on all aspects of many different human societies.

IM A
• Only after information on the particulars of many different cultures

H
had been gathered could generalizations about cultural development
be made with any expectation of accuracy.
• This approach is most often associated with Franz Boas and his
many students, but it was actually developed much earlier by
diffusionists.
• Another important aspect of Boasian anthropology was its perspective
of cultural relativism which assumes that a culture can only be
understood by first understanding its own standards and values, rather
than assuming that the values and standards of the anthropologist's

DU
society, can be used to judge other cultures.

IN
M A B
• In this way Boasian anthropologists did not assume as a given that
non-Western societies are necessarily inferior to Western ones, but

HI
rather attempt to understand them on their own terms. From this
approach also stemmed an investment in understanding and protecting
cultural minorities, and in critiquing and relativizing American and
Western society through contrasting its values and norms with those of
other societies.
• Methodological Puritanism:
“For him science was a sacred enterprise. Those who rushed to
conclusions with out proper attention to facts were in effect

INDU
desecrating a temple” – Marvin Harris

A B
• Critique of comparative method:
M
HI
In his article, “Limitations of the comparative method in
Anthropology” he said that the major error of this method is its
assumption that “the same phenomena are always due to same
causes”.
• For example clans in Navaho were formed by fusion of groups but
among the north west tribes they were formed from village fission.
He was not against any school of thought but against
premature generalisations.
INDU
A B
• Perhaps the most important and lasting of Boas’ contributions to

M
HI
the field of anthropology is his influence on the generation of
anthropologists that followed him and developed and improved on
his own work. He was an important figure in encouraging women
to enter and thrive in the field. The better known of his students
include A.L. Kroeber, Mead, Ruth Benedict, Robert
Lowie, Paul Radin, Wissler, Edward Sapir, Ruth Bunzel,
Hallowell and Montagu.
Criticisms:
• Boas’ insistence on the tireless collection of data fell under attack by

INDU
some of his own students, particularly Wissler.

M A B
• Some saw the vast amounts being collected as a body of knowledge

HI
that would never be synthesized by the investigator.
• Instead of asking people about their past, some anthropologists have
found it more important to study the cultural processes of the present.
1. Cultural materialism. (2019,10M).
2. Gordon Childe’s theory of cultural evolution. ( 2018, 10M )

(2017, 15M )
IN U
3. Critically examine the Stewardian view of Neo-evolutionism.
D
M A B
4. Historical Particularism.(2015,10m)

HI
5. Historical particularism and Franz Boas (2021, 10M)
6. How did Morgan explain the evolution of marriage, family and
Socio-Political organization, and how did other evolutionists
disagree with his explanation? (2015,20m)
7. Critically evaluate Morgan’s classification of family (2021, 15M)
8. How do diffusionism and evolutionism differ as explanations
of Culture Change? (2015,15m)

INDU
B
9. Cultural materialism (10M, 2011)

IM A
10. Point out the differences in the concepts of classical

H
evolutionism and Neo evolutionism in Sociocultural
anthropology . Which stage of prehistoric culture is known as
the cultural revolution? Why? (30M, 2010)
 NDU
CULTURE AND PERSONALITY SCHOOL
I
A B
• In 1920s some American anthropologists began to study the

M
HI
relationship between culture and personality. Freud had great
influence on this school of thought.
 INDU
M A B
HI
RUTH BENEDICT (1887-1948)
• Ruth Benedict was a student of Franz Boas at Columbia University.
Her well-known contribution was to the configuration view of Culture
and Personality. Like Boas, she believed that the cultures are discrete
(Distinct) entities and integrated wholes. Benedict conducted

DU
fieldwork among American Indians, contemporary European and

IN
B
Asian societies.

IM A
• Her key works, Patterns of Culture and the Chrysanthemum and

H
the Sword, spread the importance of culture in individual personality
formation.
• Her close association with Mead made her realize the relationship
between personality and culture which resulted in her famous book,
“Patterns of culture” which summarized Benedict's views on culture
and has been one of the best-selling anthropological books.
• She proposed that culture is an integrated whole, and pattern is a
specific way in which integration takes place, consistent within itself
and with the overall temperament of its participants. To demonstrate
this, she compared three societies. The societies and the patterns are
given below.

INDU
A B
1. The Zuni of southwestern United States:

M
HI
• She called the “Zuni way of life” as “Apollonian pattern” Zunis are
very cooperative people. A typical Zuni would rather blend into a
group than stand out as a superior. This basic pattern manifests itself in
many other aspects of their culture. Initiation ceremonies are
conducted in a group setting and are never an ordeal (Unpleasant and
prolonged experience).
• Marriage is relatively simples or casual. Leadership was either
declined or accepted with reluctance. Special positions of power are
delegated on a group basis. E.g.: There is a medicine society, rather

NDU
than a single powerful medicine man. Death calls for little mourning.
I
A B
2. The Kwakiutl of western Canada:
M
HI
• She called the “Kwakiutl way of life” as “Dionysian pattern”.
People are ambitious and striving. Individuality is emphasized in every
aspect of life. In the Initiation ceremonies a boy is expected to go out
by himself and experience a personal relationship with the
supernatural. Marriage is not a casual occasion but calls for great
celebration.
• Leadership was characterized by intense struggle for power. Special
positions of power are delegated on individual basis. E.g.: Shaman,

U
medicine man & priest wielded a lot of power. Death is an occasion
for much mourning.

B IND
HI A
3. The Debuans of Melanesia: Their culture is magic ridden, with
M
everyone fearing and hating every one else. She called their way of life
as Paranoid.
• She stated that a pattern only describes a typical member of a society
and in no way assumes that there are no individual differences.
• Configurational Approach: Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict
developed this school of thought early in the culture and personality studies.
The configurational approach believed that culture takes on (Designed by /
shaped based on) the character of the members' personality structure.

DU
• She proposed that culture is an integrated whole, and pattern / configuration

IN
B
is a specific way in which integration takes place, consistent within itself

HI A
and with the overall temperament of its participants
M
• Culture promotes a personality type: Thus, members of a culture display
similar personalities that are further collected as personality types. Patterns
within a culture would be linked by symbolism and interpretation. A culture
was defined through a system of common ideas and beliefs, and individuals
were considered an integral component of culture.
 INDU
M A B
HI
Culture elements
Configurations
NATIONAL CHARACTER STUDIES:

1. Chrysanthemum and the sword (1946) depicted the culture of a

DU
nation in a holistic manner. She described that Japanese culture has two

IN
B
methods of child rearing, during childhood an individual is given full

HI A
love, care, protection and freedom (She compared the child rearing
M
with the Japan national flower Chrysanthemum).
• The adolescents should face a tough life. They cannot break the
cultural traditions. Parents leave them to earn something and lead an
independent life. Hey cannot seek cooperation from their elders (A
sword constantly hangs on their neck). This makes the adolescents
aggressive.
2. During the height of Second World War, Geoffrey Gorer
proposed that the brutality and sadism of Japanese at war is due to the
severe early cleanliness and toilet training which created a repressed
rage in Japanese infants because they are obliged to control their

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sphincters before the appropriate muscular and intellectual
I
M A B
development has been acquired.

HI
3. Geoffrey Gorer and John Rickman’s in their book “The People
of Great Russia: A psychological study” (1949) Wrote that
Russians swaddle (Wrap cloth strips around an infant’s body to keep
arms and legs immobile) their infants during the first year after the
birth. The infant would experience rage wile swaddled and freedom
when bandages were removed. This would lead to a manic- depressive
adult personality.
• Thus, they concluded that the people of one country will have a characteristic
culture and personality traits. Most national character studies have been
heavily criticized as being un anthropological for being too general and
having no ethnographic field work incorporated.
Criticism:

INDU
B
Ø She deemphasized or neglected non-conforming data. E.g. There are known

HI A
cases of factional internecine strife among zunis. Also, their initiation
M
ceremonies are not as peaceful as depicted by Benedict.
Ø Same way Kwakiutl people are many times humble in their behavior.
Ø She neglected individual differences and individual adaptations to culture.
Ø According to Morris Opler, a single culture may have multiples ideas and
themes.
 DU
1. What do you understand by the national character study?
IN
M A B
Illustrate the concept. ( 2018, 15M )

I
2. Explain Ruth Benedict’s patterns of culture. ( 2017, 20M )
H
 INDU
M A B
HI
MARGARET MEAD (1901-1978)
• Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia. She was a student of Fraz
Boas. She was also a student, a lifelong friend, and collaborator of
Ruth Benedict. They both studied the relationship among the
configuration of culture, socialization in each particular culture and

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individual personality formation. Mead's works explored human
I
M A B
development in a cross-cultural perspective and covered topics on
gender roles and childrearing in both American and foreign cultures.

HI
• Her first work, Coming of Age in Samoa, was her first major work
and a best seller and built up Mead as a leading figure in cultural
anthropology. The book described how individual development was
determined by cultural expectations and was not biologically
determined.
• It dealt with the question that whether the rebellion that marked
adolescent personality in western cultures was a product of biological
changes at puberty or a result of cultural conditioning. She found that
the whole cultural mood of Samoa was much less emotional than in

DU
America. Facts of birth, death and sex are not hidden from children.
IN
A B
• Premarital sex was considered natural. Adolescents were not

M
HI
confronted with the necessity of selecting from a variety of often
conflicting standards of ethics and values. Adolescence was not
marked by stress. Thus Mead wrote that the “girls’ minds were
perplexed (Confused) by no conflicts troubled by no philosophical
queries, beset (Surrounded/covered) by no remote ambitions”. It
means causes for the stress that adolescents experience in western
civilization are more cultural than biological.
• In another important work, “Sex and temperament in three
primitive societies” Mead did field work in 3 cultures and studied the
variations in sex roles in Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli. In
Arapesh both men and women act in a mild parental responsive way.

U
In Mundugumor both men and women act in a fierce initiating

B IND
fashion. In Tchambuli both men act according to our stereotype for
women, wear curls, go shopping etc. Women are energetic and
managerial.
Criticism:
HIM A
• Like Benedict, Mead has been criticized for the exaggerated nature of
her findings. She did not consider the girls whose minds are in
conflict, treated them as deviants. Their works were basically
impressionistic
• B. Kalpan, after conducting Rorschach tests in four different cultures,
Zuni, Navaho, Spanish American and Mormon, found that there was
so much of variability with in each culture but he noted that the
existence of great variability does not argue against the influence of

U
culture on personality, it merely means that cultural influences do not

B I D
necessarily create uniformity in a group.
N
• After her death Derec Freeman in his book Margaret Mead and

IM A
Samoa: The making and unmaking of an Anthropological myth ,

H
based on his field works between 1940s and 1960s, wrote that Samoa
is a Christian, patriarchal, violent and sexually inhibited society. They
valued virginity so much that there was a custom of having a
ceremonial virgin called Taupou, whose chastity (Abstaining from
sex) the entire village zealously guarded- a custom Mead did not even
mention.
• In 1983 American Anthropological association denounced his book as
“poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading”. He went
to Samoa again and met Mead’s informant Fa’apua ( a Taupou) and
wrote another book The fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A

DU
Historical analysis of her Samoan research in which he wrote ,
IN
M A B
according to Fa’apua , the girls were all lying and joking with Mead
about their sex lives which Mead took seriously.

HI
• After analysing the works of both Mead and Freeman, some came to
an opinion that Mead got her data from 1925 and Freeman from 1940s
to 1980s. Society might have changed over time. Freeman got the
information from elderly men some of them were chiefs while Mead
got her data from adolescent girls.
• Later Paul Shankman periodically conducted field work in Samoa

IN U
and came up with a book The trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy
D
of an Anthropological controversy, in which he concludes that

A B
“Coming of age in Samoa” did include errors and overstatements but

M
HI
Freeman used his knowledge not to correct the ethnography but to
damage Mead’s reputation. He said that Taupou was confined to only
upper strata of the society and Freeman purposefully glorified the
custom.
 INDU
M A B
ABRAM KARDINER (1891-1981)

HI
• Kardiner was born in New York City and was one of the founders of
the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. His contribution concerned the
interplay of individual personality development and the situated
cultures. He was a Neo- Freudian, He accepted certain aspects of

DU
Freud’s theories and modified or rejected the others.
IN
A B
• He developed a psycho-cultural model for the relationship between

M
HI
child-rearing, housing and descent types in the different cultures.
• He distinguished primary institutions (e.g. child training, toilet
behavior and family structure) and secondary institutions (such as
religion and art).
• 1. Primary institutions: Those institutions that are responsible for forming
the basic personality structure. They are concerned with disciplining,
gratifying, and inhibiting the deviant tendencies of young children.

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• 2. Secondary institutions: Those institutions that satisfy the tensions

I
M A B
created by the primary institutions. E.g.: Taboo systems, religion, rituals,
folk tales etc.

HI
• He postulated the existence of basic personality structure. He believed
that Primary institutions from the basic personality structure. Basic
personality structures in a society influence the personality types which
further influence the secondary institutions. Thus, changes in Primary
institutions lead to changes in the basic personality structure. (flow chart)
• Basic Personality Structure Approach This approach was developed jointly
by Abram Kardiner and Ralph Linton in response to the configurational
approach. Kardiner and Linton did not believe that culture types were
adequate for differentiating societies. Instead, they offered a new approach

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which looks at individual members within a society and then compares the
I
M A B
traits of these members in order to achieve a basic personality for each culture.

HI
• His interpretations were documented in The Individual and His Society
(1939) and Psychological Frontiers of Society (1945).
• Criticism: Could not explain the existence of primary institutions and
himself stated that “Psychology alone can cast no light whatsoever without the
aid of history on how these primary institutions took their final forms. So far
we know no satisfactory explanations have ever made of primary institutions.”
 INDU
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HI

RALPH LINTON (1893-1953)

• Ralph Linton was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was one of
the founders of the basic personality structure theory. He worked on

U
ethnographies of Melanesians and American Indians.

IND
• Personality mediation view: Developed by Abram Kardiner, a
B
A
psychoanalyst, with Ralph Linton, an anthropologist. It theorizes

HIM
that the environment affects the primary institutions, like the
subsistence and settlement patterns, of a society. This, in turn, affects
the basic personality structure which then affects the secondary
institutions, such as religion. Personality becomes an intervening
variable.
 Environment
↓

U
Primary institutions

B IND
↓

HIM A
Basic personality structure
↓
Secondary institutions
Status and role:
• Linton developed his concepts of “status” and “role” to deal with the
discrete elements as well as the integrated aspects of society.

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• By status he meant the place of an individual in society, defining it as
I
A B
a collection of rights and duties.

M
HI
• By role he meant the dynamic aspect of behaviour in a status, the
putting into action of rights and duties.
• Statuses and roles may be universal or specialized, depending on
whether they are shared by all members of a society or only by a
segment of the society.
• Roles appropriate to a given status are not necessarily performed in the
same way by all those members of the society in that status, nor are
they even performed identically by the same individual at different
times. There may be recognized alternative ways of achieving
particular customary goals: such alternative roles may arise within the

DU
society or they may be imported from other societies.

IN
M A B
• Behaviour in a role, according to Linton, is simply behaviour

I
appropriate to a particular recognized status.
H
• Statuses or positions are, in Linton’s view, either ascribed to the
individual—that is, assigned at birth, on the basis of sex, caste, or
other fixed characteristics—or they are achieved by the individual by
virtue of his own effort.
• Roles also are of two kinds: “actual” roles—the way roles are in fact
performed; and “ideal” roles—the normative patterns that serve as
models for actual role performance.

DU
• The total set of ideal roles constituted for Linton a social system.
IN
• Personality and culture .

M A B
HI
• Linton & Abram Kardiner worked in collaboration. Their views
were published in The Individual and His Society (Kardiner 1939)
and The Psychological Frontiers of Society (Kardiner 1945). From
this work emerged the concept of basic personality structure, or
modal personality type—
• Linton thinks of personality at two levels.
Central organization: Something that is deeper to an individual. It contains
invariable aspects such as degree of introversion or extroversion & other
temperaments.

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Superficial organization: Based on goals and interests of an individual.

A B
• Superficial is almost determined by the culture in which one is raised.

M
HI
Superficial does not mean temporary nor does it mean insignificant. It only
means at surface level, as an intermediary layer.
• According to him culture refers to the external world as experienced by the
person. His caste or class would surely impact his experience with external
world.
• Thus personality represents adjustments and integration of one’s temperaments
with what one faces from outside. No one including a rebel is free from this
influence of enculturation.
• Linton expounded his own views in The Cultural Background of
Personality (1945), showing how each individual’s experiences in a

U
society —his performance of a particular set of more or less

“status personality.”
B IND
standardized cultural roles—produce what Linton then called the

HIM A
• The common elements of the status personalities found in a group of
persons may be considered the basic personality type for a culture.
• Linton dealt with problems of deviation from basic personality type
in a posthumously published volume, Culture and Mental Disorders
(1956).
 DU
1. Define Status and Role. Distinguish between Ascribed and

IN
B
Achieved Status(2014,15M)

IM A
2. Explain the concept of status and role in Anthropology
(20M,2012)
H
 INDU
M A B
CORA DUBOIS (1903- 1991)

HI
• Cora Dubois was born in New York City. She earned her M.A. degree
in Columbia University and attended the University of Berkeley for
her Ph. D degree. She was influenced by her mentor and collaborator
Abram Kardiner in cross-cultural diagnosis and the psychoanalytic
study of culture.
INDU
A B
• Between 1937 and 1939, Dubois investigated the island of Alor (now

M
HI
Indonesia) using participant observation, detailed case studies, life-
history interviews, 8 lengthy biographies and various personality tests
like projective tests, child drawings. She submitted the life histories
and other test results to Kardiner and some other thinkers all of them
independently noted the shallowness, insecurity, apathy,
suspiciousness of Alorese.
• This psycho gram described the most prevalent personality features of the
group. DuBois called this the modal personality. She advanced the concept
of modal personality structure in her book The People of Alor (1944). Cora

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Dubois stated that individual variation within a culture exists, and each
I
A B
culture shares the development of a particular personality type which might

M
HI
not exist in all its individuals.
• Modal Personality Approach: Modal personality assumes that a certain
personality structure is the most frequently occurring structure within a
society, but this does not necessarily mean that the structure is common to all
members of that society.
In 1945, Cora Dubois, Abram Kardiner and Ralph Linton co-
authored the book, The Psychological Frontiers of Society which
consisted of careful descriptions and interpretations of three cultures

IN U
(the Comanche culture, the Alorese culture, and the culture of an
D
American rural community). It explained the basic personality

A B
formed by the diversity of subject matter in each culture.
M
H
Methodologies:
I
Clinical Interviews
Dream Analysis: This is accomplished through discussion of an
individual’s dreams. This was a part of Freud's psychoanalysis and
attempts to seek out the repressed emotions of a person.
• Life Histories: The documentation of an individual's experiences
throughout his life.

INDU
• Person-centered Ethnography: The term was first used by Robert I. Levy.

A B
It is an approach that draws interpretations from psychiatry and

M
HI
psychoanalysis to see how individuals relate and interact with the socio-
cultural context.
• Projective Tests One common test is the Rorschach inkblot test. In this
test, an individual must describe what he sees and his perceptions are
compared with other results from the society.
• Accomplishments:

INDU
Culture and personality studies have greatly limited the number of

B
racist, hierarchical descriptions of culture types that were common in

HIM A
the early part of this century. Through these studies, a new emphasis on
the individual emerged and one of the first links between anthropology
and psychology was made. From culture and personality, psychological
anthropology developed which is small but still active today.
• Criticisms:
Culture and Personality came under the heavy scrutiny of Radcliffe-
Brown and other British social anthropologists. They dismissed this

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view due as a 'vague abstraction' It was criticized as being unscientific
I
A B
and hard to disprove, and little evidence was given for the connection

M
HI
between child-rearing practices and adulthood personality traits.
Benedict and Mead were critiqued for not considering individual
variation within a culture and discussing the society as a homologous
unit.
 SYMBOLIC AND INTERPRETATIVE THEORIES :
• Turner states that “symbols initiate social action and exert determinable
influences inclining persons and groups to action".

INDU
• Geertz states that culture is expressed in the form of symbols. They reveal

A B
how individuals "see, feel, and think about the world".

M
HI
• Geertz's position illustrates the interpretive approach
• Turner's position illustrates the symbolic approach to symbolic
anthropology.
• Symbolic anthropology can be divided into two major approaches. One is
associated with Clifford Geertz and the other with Victor W. Turner.
• Geertz was influenced largely by the sociologist Max Weber, who
believed “sociology was only an interpretative understanding of
social action”.

NDU
• Turner, influenced by Emile Durkheim, and was concerned with
I
A B
the operations of "society" and the ways in which symbols operate in
M
HI
the social process.
• (Durkheim believed that there is coherence an connectivity across
cultural traits and each trait serves a function and plays a role in
maintaining that coherence this idea influenced functionalism and
symbolic anthropology)
 INDU
A
VICTOR TURNER (1920-1983)
M B
HI
• Victor Witter Turner was a British symbolic Anthropologist and was the
major figure in the symbolic approach.
• Born in Scotland, Turner was influenced by the Structural-functionalist

DU
approach of British social anthropology. However, upon embarking on a

IN
M A B
study of the Ndembu in Africa, Turner's focus shifted from economics and

I
demography to ritual symbolism.

H
• investigated symbols as "operators in the social process" Symbols
"instigate social action" and exerts "determinable influences inclining
persons and groups to action".
• Turner felt that these "operators," by their arrangement and context, produce
"social transformations" which tie the people in a society to the society's
norms, resolve conflict, and aid in changing the status of the actors.
• For him, A symbol, by itself does not mean anything. But to the natives it
stands for something of the culture, which an anthropologist has to decipher.
• A Tri color piece of cloth may not mean anything to an outsider but it has

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emotional significance to Indians. Similarly, a sacred thread that twice-born
wear is a symbol, it is not a thread worn casually.

M A B
• Turner was particularly interested in Rites of passage. To him symbolism

HI
associated with these rites revealed a lot about the Ndembu society.
• In the analysis of theses rites of passage, Turner took the classification first
made by Arnold Van Gannep who divided the rites of passage in to three
stages. Preliminal, liminal and post liminal. Limen in Latin meant
Threshold.
• Rites of passage are the symbolic way of changing the status of members
of a society. The symbol becomes associated with human interests,
purposes, ends and means.
• The structure and properties of the symbol becomes those of a dynamic

DU
entity, at least within its appropriate context of action.

IN
M A B
• Rites of passage are the rites marking the transition from one stage of life

I
to another stage.

H
• E.g.: A puberty ritual marks transition from girl to women. What is
expected from a girl is different from what is expected from a woman. She
needs to behave differently, and people needs to treat her differently. The
stage of transition is called liminal. The stage before is called pre liminal
and the stage after is called post liminal. As a girl she had to follow one
pattern and as a woman she had to follow another pattern.
• The rites of passage in this case include separation from being a girl,
transition during the liminal period and the integration as a woman.
• E.g. Among Muslims, the status after Haj pilgrimage is higher compared to

DU
the status before Haj pilgrimage. During Haj, Muslims and during

IN
B
Sabarimal pilgrimage, Ayyappa devotees are in liminal period.

IM A
• The ambiguous, intermediate nature of liminal period is expressed by rich

H
variety of symbols in many societies that ritualize social and cultural
transitions.
• The people in such transition/ liminality/ inter-structural situation come
under a collective identity called Communitas. For them one day
replicates another for many weeks.
• The novices in tribal initiations waken and rest at fixed hours often at
sunrise and sunset, as in the monastic life in Christianity and Buddhism.
ØSocial Drama:

INDU
• It is a concept devised by Victor Turner to study the dialectic of social

B
transformation and continuity. A social drama is "a spontaneous unit of

HIM A
social process and a fact of everyone's experience in every human society".
• He used the concept to explain the conflict in Ndembu society. This drama
can be broken into four acts.
Ø The first act is a rupture in social relations, or breach.
Ø The second act is a crisis that cannot be handled by normal strategies.
Ø The third act is a remedy to the initial problem, or redress and the re-
establishment of social relations.
Ø The final act can occur in two ways: reintegration, the return to the

DU
status quo, or recognition of schism, an alteration in the social

IN
arrangements.

M A B
HI
• Thus Social drama is about how a norm is breached, and how it leads
to a crisis and how it is resolved or leads to schism.
• Social dramas are a part of any societies. E.g.: A low caste man
eloping with a high caste girl. It is a breach of caste rule that lands the
entire village in crisis. Then caste councils meet deliver judgement.
The punishment can be very severe.
• Social dramas either lead to restoration of harmony or schism. He
gave this concept in his book about Ndembu, “Schism and continuity
in an African society”.

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• Some social processes are based on cooperative efforts rather than
I
A B
conflicts. Turner called them social enterprises.

M
HI
• Ritual symbolism: understanding Ndembu society through
Nkanga ritual: (In his book “The forest of symbols”)
• Symbol is the smallest unit of ritual which still retains the specific
properties of ritual behavior, it is the ultimate unit of specific structure
in a ritual context.
• A symbol can be an object, activity, relationship, event, Gesture.
• Symbols stands for certain aspects of culture and an anthropologist has to
decipher (or) interpret what they stand for. If there is no interpretation at
all, it is not a symbol!

INDU
M A B
• Nkanga ritual takes place around Mudyi tree which is known for its
white latex that exudes when the bark is scratched. Turner calls it Milk
tree.
HI
• Mudyi is where the girls slept during their initiation. Ndembus value the
milk tree as their flag.
• The tree symbolism reinforces matriliny. (This is a structural
functionalist explanation).
• The ritual represents not only social cohesion but also the social conflict.
During this ritual, women taunt men and deny their access to their dance
circles. According to Gluckman the ritual enactment of conflict does not
disrupt the structure rather it ends up supporting the structure.

INDU
• Mother and daughter exchange portions of clothing indicating the girl’s
transition into a woman (Similar to a custom where mourners wear small

A B
portions of dead relative’s clothing).

M
HI
• According to Turner, certain rituals reveal and settle the tension between two
aspects of a society. E.g. Matriliny and virilocality. In the ritual women of
both the villages compete for a large spoonful of Cassava and beans. It is
considered lucky if the spoon goes to a woman of the novice’s own village as it
means the girl would stay in the village and not go to a different village
because of virilocality.
• Turner used hermeneutics as a method for understanding the meanings of
"cultural performances" like dance, drama, etc.
 INDU
M A B
HI
CLIFFORD GEERTZ (1926-2006)
• Clifford Geertz was an American Anthropologist. He studied at Harvard
University in the 1950s.
• He believed that “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he

U
himself has spun. culture is those webs and it’s analysis should therefore not

IND
be an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search

B
of meaning"- “The interpretation of culture” (1973)

IM A
• Culture is expressed by the external symbols that a society uses rather than
H
being locked inside people's heads.
• He defined culture as "A historically transmitted pattern of meanings
embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in
symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and
develop their knowledge about and their attitudes toward life”.
• Societies use these symbols to express their worldview, value-
orientation, ethos, and other aspects of their culture.
• For Geertz symbols are "vehicles of 'culture', meaning that symbols

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should not be studied in and of themselves, but for what they can
I
reveal about culture.

M A B
HI
• Geertz's main interest was the way in which symbols shape the ways
that social actors see, feel, and think about the world.
• Throughout his writings, Geertz characterized culture as a social
phenomenon and a shared system of inter subjective symbols and
meanings.
 Methodology:
• An anthropologist should study and analyse an event, not just for the
sake of the event, but to interpret how culture is expressed through it,

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describing various aspects and viewpoints of an event. Geertz
I
A B
introduced this approach in an article “The social history of an

M
HI
Indonesian town” (1965). He later called this “Thick description”.
• His report is only an interpretation and not the final truth. He makes
no claims of finality.
• There is no effort on his part to arrive at laws of culture. Nor does he
have any belief in arriving at laws.
 THICK DESCRIPTION:
• It is a term Geertz borrowed from Gilbert Ryle to describe and define
the aim of interpretive anthropology.

DU
• The thick description is a description of the particular form of
IN
M A B
communication used and its stratified hierarchy of meaningful

HI
interpretations possible.
• Thick description is an interpretation of what the natives are thinking
made by an outsider who cannot think like a native.
• To illustrate thick description, Geertz uses Ryle's example which
discusses the difference between a "blink" and a "wink." A blink, is an
involuntary twitch - Thin description.
• A wink, is a conspiratorial signal to a friend, While the physical movements
involved in each are identical, each has a distinct meaning "as anyone
unfortunate enough to have had the first taken for the second knows".
• A wink is a special form of communication which consists of several

INDU
characteristics: it is deliberate; to someone in particular; to impart a
particular message; according to a socially established code; and without the

A B
knowledge of the other members of the group of which the winker and

M
I
winkee are a part.

H
• Each type of wink can be considered to be a separate cultural category.
Winking means different in different contexts, what it means between a girl
and a boy is different from what it means between a superior and a
subordinate. The combination of the blink and the types of winks discussed
above produce "a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures" – Thick
description
• The same is true for a cultural event.
• This approach is a semiotic one. Semiotics is the analysis of signs and
symbols.

INDU
• He tries to read a culture as a text. “ Doing ethnography is like trying

A B
to read a manuscript- foreign, faded, full of ellipsis, incoherencies....”
M
ØHermeneutics:
HI
• It is a term first applied to the critical interpretation of religious texts.
The modern use of the term is a "combination of empirical
investigation and subsequent subjective understanding of human
phenomena".
• Geertz used hermeneutics in his studies of symbol systems to try to
understand the ways that people "understand and act in social,
religious, and economic contexts ". The hierarchy that surrounds
Balinese cockfighting provides an interesting example.

INDU
DEEP PLAY: NOTES ON THE BALINESE COCKFIGHT (1972):

M A B
• It is one of Clifford Geertz's most influential articles which illustrates
not only the meaning of a given cultural phenomenon, the Balinese

HI
cockfight, but also Geertz's interpretative approach that sees a culture
as a set of texts to be read by the anthropologist.
• Despite being illegal, cockfighting is a widespread and highly popular
phenomenon in Bali, at least at the time "Deep Play: Notes on the
Balinese Cockfight" was written (1972).
• Cock fights takes place between two cocks.
• 4-5-inch steel spurs are affixed to their legs. If a cock delivers a blow it is
picked up. Fight to mutual death is avoided. The cock that dies first is

U
declared the loser.

IND
• Rules of the fight along with the lore are passed on in palm leaf

B
A
manuscripts.

HIM
• The umpire’s decision is final.
• Geertz distinguishes "deep fights", with high wages, and "shallow fights",
usually with low wages of both gambling and prestige.
• The deep fights bets are so high that in terms of Bentham’s utilitarianism,
the marginal disutility of losing money is higher than the marginal utility of
gaining, making it clear that the play is for esteem, honor and dignity.
• In shallow game money may be important but in deep one psychological
variables are more important.
• The main bet is between owners, but the audience is also involved in
betting.

INDU
B
• One is not supposed to bet against the cock of his own kin group which

HI A
indicates disloyalty to his own group.
M
• That village has 4 factions. One is not supposed to bet against the cock of
his own faction.
• Village level factions are not important if the fight is with cock of another
village. In such case one can only bet on the cock from his village.
• Thus, betting alliances reflect alliances outside the cock fight.
• Cock fights reveal not only horizontal groupings but also hierarchical
arrangements in the society.
• Around the cockfight area there are sheer chance type gambling games
like dice throw, coin spin, roulette etc. Only women, adolescents, poor

INDU
and the socially despised play those games.

M A B
• Above them are the men who do not fight the cocks but only bet on

I
the cocks.

H
• Above them are those who fight in small matches.
• Above them are those who fight in big matches.
• Thus, Geertz records the representation of Balinese status hierarchy in
the body of cock fight.
• Geertz calls it a status blood bath, but it does not even alter the status
forever.

DU
• Geertz says the cock fight is not the master key to Balinese life, any

IN
M A B
more than bull fighting to Spanish people.

HI
• He says contradictory texts (Symbols) are possible. This shows that
Geertz is moving towards postmodernism that culture is an
intersection of competing texts.
 DAVID M. SCHNEIDER (1918-1995)
• David Schneider was another important figure in the "Chicago
school" of symbolic anthropology.

DU
• He did not make the complete break from structuralism that had been

IN
M A B
made by Geertz and Turner, rather he retained and modified Levi-

I
Strauss' idea of culture as a set of relationships. (E.g., Relation

H
between groups women as a gift )
• Schneider defined culture as a system of symbols and meanings.
• According to Schneider, regularity in behavior is not necessarily
"culture," nor can culture be inferred from a regular pattern of
behavior.
• According to Schneider cultural system can be broken into cultural
categories (groups of people or objects), however there are no rules for
the categories. A category can be made for an observable act or can be
created through inference. Therefore, things that cannot be seen,

IN U
such as spirits, can embody a cultural category.
D
• Schneider was interested in the connections between the cultural

A B
symbols and observable events and strove to identify the symbols and
M
HI
meanings that governed the rules of a society.
• Schneider differed from Geertz by detaching culture from everyday
life. He defined a cultural system as "a series of symbols" where a
symbol is "something which stands for something else. This contrasted
with the elaborate definitions favored by Geertz and Turner.
• The symbolism that Schneider referred to is more fundamental kind.
He says an Anthropologist must know what the wife means in a given
society before asking a native man whether he has a wife. What wife
means in one culture is not the same in another culture. Wife a

DU
culturally specific relationship which the anthropologist should

IN
B
unravel.

IM A
• He studied the primitive people, the Yap of Pacific islands. But he is
H
more known for what he wrote on his own culture, American kinship:
A cultural account.
• Earlier kinship was assumed to be uniform, but Schneider showed
that it is not. He said that kinship is not a system of objective
meanings but a system of culture specific symbols.
• This makes kinship worthy of studying even in advanced societies.
• Schneider observed that in American culture, an individual can decide
whether the remote agnate or affine located in genealogy can be considered

DU
a relative at all/ whether a kinship term can be used in addressing him. The

IN
B
choice is based on the realities of actual social relationship between the
parties.

HIM A
• His study is only based on interviews of 53 middle class white families in
Chicago with various religious and ethnic origins. So, its applicability to
entire American culture is questioned. But the idea that kinship too is a
system of symbols is valid across the cultures.
• Many feminist scholars extended this theory of kinship to the study of sex
roles.
Methodologies:
• Like many forms of cultural anthropology, symbolic anthropology is
based on cross-cultural comparison. In addition, symbolic

NDU
anthropology examines symbols from different aspects of social
I
A B
life, rather than from one aspect at a time isolated from the rest. This is

M
HI
an attempt to show that a few central ideas expressed in symbols
manifest themselves in different aspects of culture. (Matriliny through
mudyi tree, women daunting men, conflict between matrilocal and
patrilocal residence)
• This contrasted the structuralist approach favored by European social
anthropologists such as Levi-Strauss. (Culture is in the mind not in symbols)
Symbolic anthropology focuses largely on culture as a whole rather than on
specific aspects of culture that are isolated from one another.
Criticisms:

DU
• Symbolic anthropology has come under fire from several fronts, most

IN
B
notably from Marxists. Assad attacks the gap between "cultural system"

HIM A
and "social reality". Assad argues that anthropologists should instead focus
on the historical conditions that are crucial to the development of certain
religious practices.
• Another attack on symbolic anthropology came from cultural ecology.
Cultural ecologists considered symbolic anthropologists to be "fuzzy headed
mentalists, involved in unscientific and unverifiable flights of subjective
interpretation". In other words, symbolic anthropology did not attempt to
carry out their research in a manner so that other researchers could reproduce
their results. The observations are subjective.
 Structuralism

INDU
M A B
HI
• Levi - Strauss states that social structure is a model constructed by
the researcher. Model is a mental construct or a mental scheme. It
does not lie in reality.
• According to him social relations are the raw data of social

DU
experience of which models comprising the social structure are built.

IN
M A B
HI
 INDU
M A B
HI
 INDU
M A B
HI
• There are four characteristics of a model.
Ø Systemic: Several parts are combined to give rise to a model.
Change in one part leads to a change in the other parts. Therefore,

NDU
they exhibit the properties of a system.
I
A B
Ø Predictable: By studying the changes in one part, the researcher can

M
HI
predict the changes in the other part.
Ø Intelligible: The model is so constructed that it makes the
observable reality intelligible (Understandable).
Ø Transformable.
• TYPES OF MODELS:
Ø Descriptive model: A model that provides an answer to what is the
phenomenon.

phenomenon is in existence.
IN U
Ø Analytical model: A model that provides an answer to why the

D
A B
Ø Conscious models: When the researcher makes a model of his own

M
HI
society. They are derived models. One must clear the conscious models
formulated to explain their culture or society to themselves in order to get
underlying basic structures.
Ø Un conscious model: When a researcher makes a model of some other
society. They are fundamental models. The presence of an unconscious
model makes it possible for the ethnographer to foresee the existence of a
conscious model hiding the structure itself.
• Mechanical model: ‘jural rules’ with which personal behavior must comply
within a society.
• E.g., (Phenomena: all monogamy, elements: All elements/members practice
monogamy)

DU
• E.g., The mechanical model allows one to determine the group of persons

IN
B
among whom one can get married (Endogamy) , Their distribution in kinship

HI A
classes (Matrilineal/patrilineal etc).

M
• Statistical model: the statistical norms anthropologists discover concerning
the actual persons’ behavior.
• E.g.: A model relating to marriage in modern societies should be based on
statistical data because in modern societies marriages are not governed by a set
of generative rules. Much greater number of unforeseeable factors like social
mobility, social class, emotions etc. should be taken into account.
• Lévi-Strauss agrees with Radcliffe Brown that structure is an
orderly arrangement of the parts or components. He wanted to
discover the structure of the human thought process.

DU
• His work was heavily influenced by Emile Durkheim and Marcel

IN
B
Mauss.

IM A
• He derived the concept of binary contrasts, later referred to in his
H
work as binary oppositions, which became fundamental in his
theory.
• In 1972, his book Structuralism and Ecology he proposed that
“culture, like language, is composed of hidden rules that govern
the behavior of its practitioners”.
• What made cultures unique and different from one another are the
hidden rules participants understood but are unable to articulate;
thus, the goal of structural anthropology is to identify these
rules.

INDU
B
• He maintained that culture is a dialectic process: thesis, antithesis,

HI
rational solution ) A
and synthesis. (Conflict between two opposites and arriving at a
M
• Levi-Strauss proposed a methodological means of discovering these
rules—through the identification of binary oppositions.
• The structuralism suggests that the structure of human thought
processes is the same in all cultures, and that these mental
processes exist in the form of binary oppositions.
• Some of these oppositions include hot-cold, male-female, culture-
nature, and raw-cooked.
• Essentially, elements of culture are not explanatory in and of

NDU
themselves, but rather form part of a meaningful system. (Will get
I
A B
meaning only in relation with other elements)

M
HI
• Structuralism assumes the universality of human thought processes in
an effort to explain the “deep structure” or underlying meaning
existing in cultural phenomena.
• Structuralism is a set of principles for studying the mental
superstructure”.
LEVI-STRAUSS VIEWS ON STRUCTURAL LINGUISTICS:
• According to Levi-Strauss, in order to deal with kinship structure, the
structure of the language is also important. Similarly, there are areas of

NDU
historical and sociolinguistics which depend a lot on the
I
A B
anthropological data. Thus, he applied the principles of structural

M
HI
linguistics to Anthropological studies.
• Like phonemes in language, kinship terms are elements of meaning
and they acquire meaning only if they are integrated into systems.
Kinship systems, like phonemic systems are built in mind at the level
of unconscious thought.
• The recurrence of kinship patterns, marriage rules, kinship behaviours in
different regions of the world makes us believe that in case of kinship as
well as linguistics, the laws are general but implicit.
• Like words in a language, kinship relations are symbolic. E.g.: Word pen
himself.
INDU
is not the pen itself same way an avunculate relation is not the uncle

A B
• ELEMENTARY STRUCTURAL THEORY: According to his elementary

M
HI
structural theory of Kinship, four types of kin relations are important.
1. Filial (F): Father – son
2. Conjugal (C): Husband – wife
3. Avuncular (A): mother’s brother – sister’s son
4. Sibling (S) Brother – sister
Descent Tribe F C A S
Matrilineal Trobriand + + - -
Matrilineal Siuai + - - +
Matrilineal Dobu
INDU + - - +

M
Patrilineal
A B
Kubutu + - - +
HI
Patrilineal Cherkess - - + +
Patrilineal Tonga - + + -

+ Friednly , - authoritative
LEVI-STRAUSS VIEWS ON TOTEMISM:
• In his book Totemism, he attempts to explain. How the animals and
natural objects are chosen as symbols of clans or families.

DU
• Totemism also reveals the relation between nature and culture.

IN
B
Below given are the types of totems.

IM A
I. Social and sex totems of some Australian tribes where there is a

H
relationship between a natural category of animals and a cultural
group of individuals of same sex.
II. North American Indian individual totems where an individual
seeks to identify himself with some natural category by means of
physical traits.
III. Common totemism: A clan being represented by a particular
animal. E.g., Maori
IV. Individual totems in Mota: In this tribe a child is believed to be an

during her gestation.

INDU
incarnation of a particular animal or a plant consumed by the mother

M A B
HI I II III IV
Nature Category Category Particular Particular
Culture Group Person Group Person
LEVI-STRAUSS THEORY OF BINARY OPPOSITIONS:
• He says that the human thought process exists in the form of binary

U
opposites. E.g., Hot – cold, Male – female, culture – nature, raw –
cooked.
B IND
HIM A
• According to him there are two forms of material exchange.
Restricted exchange and Generalized exchange
• Marriages everywhere are exchanges of women. He says that there
exists a binary opposition between mine and yours or between us and
them. The mediator of this opposition is the gift of women. He
stated that binary oppositions lead to contradictions and they lead to a
third element called mediator for the resolution of the contradiction.
• E.g. Life: death
• Mediator is hunting as a life sustaining war against animals.
• E.g. Eating plants: Eating animals
• A tricky coyote that eats the animals killed by the other animals. North American
Indian myths compare supernatural tricksters as a coyote as they mediate and
resolve.

INDU
B
• Famous works:
•

HIM A
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1963)Structural Anthropology, Volume I.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1976)Structural Anthropology, Volume II
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1963) The Elementary Structures of Kinship.
• Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1966) The Savage Mind.
• Totemism
• Mythologiques
• An introduction to the science of mythology
Points of Reaction:
• Maurice Godelier incorporated a dynamic aspect into his
structural analysis that when internal contradictions between

transform or evolve”.
IN U
structures or within a structure cannot be overcome, the structure
D
A B
• Although poststructuralists are influenced by the structuralist ideas put
M
HI
forth by Lévi-Strauss, their work has more of a reflexive quality.
Pierre Bourdieu is a poststructuralist who sees “structure as a
product of human creation, even though the participants may not be
conscious of the structure”.
• Instead of the structuralist notion of the universality of human
thought processes found in the structure of the human mind,
Bourdieu proposes that dominant thought processes are a product of
society and determine how people act . However, in poststructuralist

U
methods, interpretation imposes the observer’s perceptions onto the

B I
like postmodernism in this sense. D
analysis of culture (Therefore subjective) . Poststructuralism is much
N
Methodologies:
HIM A
• Folk stories, religious stories, and fairy tales were the principle subject
matter for structuralists because they believed these made manifest the
underlying universal human structures, the binary oppositions. For
example, in the story of Cinderella, some of the binary oppositions
include good versus evil, pretty versus ugly (Cinderella versus her two
stepsisters), clean versus dirty, etc.
• Because of this focus, the principal methodology employed was
hermeneutics. Hermeneutics originated as a study of the Gospels and has
since come to refer to the interpretation of the meaning or written works.
Criticisms:

INDU
• Structuralism is primarily concerned with the structure of the human
psyche, and it does not address historical aspects or change in culture.

A B
• Theory does not account for human individuality
M
HI
• Theory does not account for independent human acts Theory does not
address dynamic aspects of culture
• Materialists criticized structuralism and demanded for more observable or
practical explanations.
• One more major criticism is that they cannot be subjected to scientific
scrutiny.
 INDU
M A B SIR EDMUND LEACH

HI (1910-1989)
• Sir Edmund Leach was very influential in social anthropology and the
most important British exponent of Levi-Strauss structuralism.
• Although his initial theoretical approach was functionalist, Leach was
later influenced by Claude Levi-Strass and adopted a structuralist
approach.

INDU
B
• His 1962 publication Rethinking Anthropology offered a challenge to

•
structural functionalism.

HIM A
He also did not agree the idea of one society having a single social
structure. He said that there can be different social structures within a
society.
• “Social structure” in practical situations consists of some ideas about
distribution of power between persons or groups of persons
• The form in which the ideas of people in a society are expressed “cultural
form” and the expression is called “Ritual expression”
• E.g. 1. English women after marriage puts on a finger ring

U
2. Indian women puts vermillion on the forehead

B IND
3. Kachin women usually have a bobbed hair before marriage and

HI A
puts on a turban on the head after marriage.
M
• They all have a similar idea, change of the marital status of the women
is indicated. There is an idea of subjugating women (Sexuality of
women is controlled by the husband-sexual monopoly) but the cultural
form and ritual expression are different.
• Oscillating equilibrium: Leach rejected the equilibrium model of Radcliffe
Brown and stated that structural functionalism is a necessary evil, an
explanatory framework that enabled social scientists to artificially capture
the workings of a society that was in reality always in a state of flux,
Oscillating equilibrium is Leach’s term for continuing existence of social
change is of 2 types .
INDU
structure even against the backdrop of a constant social change & Such

A B
1. Change in structure: They are continuing small changes
M
HI
while the structure remains the same. E.g.: When a lineage
head dies his son takes over, the values may slightly change
but the overall structure remains the same.
2. Change of structure: It is a radical change like
feudalism to capitalism to socialism etc.
• Political system of highland Burma: A study of Kachin social
structure: The book is about two neighboring groups Kachin and
Shan, but he does not see them as different in any significant way.
• The book is primarily about social structures especially about the gap

U
between what he calls as “Ideal social structure” and “Reality on

B IND
the ground”. Leach describes Kachin highlands as politically and
socially always in flux, floating between two ideal (expected)

HI A
structures / social models.
M
1. Gumlao: Kachin republican, essentially anarchistic, equalitarian,
democratic political system that does not believe in social
stratification, inherited chiefdom based on lineage.
2. Shan: Aristocratic, autocratic system that believes in social
stratification and inherited chiefdom.
• Gumsa: compromise / flux between Gumlao (democratic) and Shan
(Autocratic) . The reality on the ground is this flux (Gumsa) .

INDU
• Implicit models: he defined implicit models as ‘jural rules’ with

A B
which personal behavior must comply within a society. (Similar to
M
HI
mechanical model)
• Explicit models: explicit models, i.e., the statistical norms
anthropologists discover concerning the actual persons’ behavior.
(Similar to statistical model)
Claude Levi-Strauss Edmund Leach

Strauss talks only about Leach talks about both models and
models
INDU
reality

M A B
HI
Strauss was more
interested in Linguistics
In Leach’s approach power and its
distribution occupies a central place.

Strauss writes in empirical Leach write in philosophical

tradition (Emphasizes tradition (Emphasizes analysis)
objective observation)
 I DU
STRUCTURAL
N
B
FUNCTIONALISM

HIM A R. RADCLIFFE-
BROWN (1881-
1955)
• A. R. Radcliffe-Brown was a founding father of functionalism
associated with the branch known as structural-functionalism.
• He conducted fieldwork in the Andaman Islands and Western
Australia.

INDU
M A B
• Closely related to Malinowski's theory of functionalism is the theory

I
of structural functionalism of Radcliffe Brown but.
H
• Malinowski conceived society as to fulfil the needs of the individual,
while Radcliffe Brown conceived society as to maintain its structure.
• Alfred Reginald Radcliffe Brown showed how functions could be
analysed in the context of structure. Hence he has been labelled as a
structural functionalist.
• In social structure, the ultimate components are human beings or
persons. Social structure consists of arrangement of persons in
relation to each other.

DU
• Within a society, the individuals are grouped into different social units

IN
and institutions.

M A B
HI
• Each of these social units or institutions performs its respective
functions. These are inter-related, inter- dependent and form the
structure of a society.
• For instance, in a village, we find an arrangement of persons into
families. In family, the structure consists of the relations of father,
mother, brother, sister, uncle etc.
• A R Radcliffe Brown, in his book Structure and Function in Primitive
Societies (1952) elaborates his concept of social structure and its function.
• Social structure: The groups organised along the territorial, kinship and

DU
political lines and the interrelationships among them by which an orderly

IN
M A B
social life is maintained. (Orderly arrangement of parts / components)

HI
• Function: The contribution an institution makes to the maintenance of
social structure.
• Theory of structural functionalism: “ Every custom and belief plays some
determinate part in the social life of the community, just as every organ of a
living body plays some part in the general life of the organism”. –
Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman islanders.
Types of social structure:
1. Actual social structure : The internal structure of the society. It is the
relationship of persons or groups, changes from time to time. New members
come into being by birth or immigration, while some others will go out by

NDU
death or out-migration. Besides this, there are marriages and divorces,

I
many times.
M A B
whereby members change several times. Actual social structure may change

HI
2. General social structure : refers to the external structure of the society.
This social structure is constituted by the social institutions, and it may
remain relatively constant. Even though birth and death take place in society,
the general structure of society remains the same. (Equilibrium model)
• For example, the actual social structure of a family may change due to birth
or death. But the institution of family remains relatively constant over a
period.
Social Structure and Social Organisation:
• Firth postulated the necessity of distinguishing between social
structure and social organization.

INDU
• Radcliffe Brown differentiated social structure from social
organization.
M A B
HI
• Social structure refers to an arrangement of persons.
• Social organisation refers to the arrangement of activities of two
or more persons. For example, organisation of factory means, it is
the arrangement of activities or duties done by the manager, foreman
and other labourers in a factory.
• Radcliffe-Brown's emphasis on social function is derived from the
influence of the French sociological school. This school developed in the
1890s around the work of Emile Durkheim who argued that "social

IN U
phenomena constitute a domain, or order of reality that is independent of
D
psychological and biological facts. Social phenomena, therefore, must be

A B
explained in terms of other social phenomena, and not by reference to

M
• I
psychobiological needs, drives, impulses, and so forth"
H
Radcliffe-Brown focused on social structure rather than biological
needs.
• He suggested that a society is a system of relationships maintaining itself ,
while institutions are orderly sets of relationships whose function is to
maintain the society as a system.
• Radcliffe-Brown tried to study the conditions under which social
structures are maintained.
• Radcliffe-Brown’s analogy between social life and organic life

INDU
indicates his disregard for individual needs. He argued that as long as
a biological organism lives, it preserves the continuity of structure

A B
over a period of time, while the constituent cells do not remain the
M
HI
same, the structural arrangement of the constituent units remains
similar.
• Like the biological organism, the continuity of the social structure
is not destroyed by changes in the units. Although individuals may
leave the society by death or other means, other individuals may
enter it..
• The social life of a community is the functioning of the social
structure. The function of any recurrent activity is the part it plays in
the social life as a whole and thereby, the contribution it makes to
structural continuity.

INDU
• Joking relation among Bathonga of Eastern Africa:

M A B
Among Bathonga of Eastern Africa, the sister’s son would enter his

HI
uncle’s house and steal his favourite spear, carry on lewd conversation
with his wife , demand to be fed, and presents disrespectful behaviour.
Custom demand that the uncle not retaliate. But in marked contrast ,
custom demands that one should show great respect to his father’s
brother.
• Radcliffe Brown says that among patrilineal Bathonga, since father is

IN U
a stern patriarch, so will be his brothers and sisters, and his sister (
D
Nanani which means ‘female father’) is more so Since mother is a

A B
warm and indulgent figure, so will be her brothers and sisters, and her

M
HI
brother (Malume which means ‘male mother’) is more so. According
to Structural functionalism, the significance of this joking relationship
is to the maintenance of the patrilineage.
 Key Works:

U
• 1922. The Andaman Islanders.

B IND
• 1924. "The Mother's Brother in South Africa."

IM A
• 1950. African Systems of Kinship and Marriage.
H
• 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society.
• 1957. A Natural Science of Society.
FUNCTIONALISM
Basic Premises:
• Functionalism, as a school of thought in anthropology, emerged in the
early twentieth century.
INDU
A B
• Functionalism was a reaction to the excesses of the evolutionary and
M
HI
diffusionist theories of the nineteenth century and the historicism of
the early twentieth .
• Two versions of functionalism developed between 1910 and 1930:
Malinowski’s biocultural or psychological functionalism; and
structural-functionalism, the approach advanced by Radcliffe-
Brown.
 INDU
M A B
HI
• Malinowski made his greatest contribution as an ethnographer.
• He emphasized participant-observation.
• His detailed descriptions of Trobriand social life and thought are among the most

INDU
comprehensive in world ethnography and his Argonauts of the Western Pacific

B
(1922) is one of the most widely read works of anthropology.

IM A
Malinowski’s Theory of Need: Malinowski says culture is an instrumental

H
apparatus for the satisfaction of human needs and needs of the society as a whole.
• Thus, each culture trait or culture institution performs certain functions. These
culture traits and cultural institutions are inter-related and inter-dependant in a
culture and fulfil the needs of humans.
• Malinowski says a functionless cultural traits would not survive, Hence there
are no survivals.
• In his book, Scientific Theory of Culture (1944) which was
published posthumously, Malinowski distinguishes three levels of
needs of a society.

NDU
1. Primary/Basic/Biological needs: sex and feeding. These are
I
A B
satisfied through the cultural institutions like marriage, family and

M
kinship.
HI
2. Instrumental needs/ Derived needs: institutions such as economic,
educational, legal and political, which help to achieve primary needs.
3. Integrative needs: those that help society to integrate (cohere or
unite) and include knowledge, religion, magic, art, morals and values.
Basic Needs
Responses
(Individual)

U
Nutrition (metabolism)Commissariat
Reproduction
IND
Marriage and family
B
Bodily comforts
Safety
HIM A
Domicile and dress
Protection and defence
Relaxation Systems of play and repose
Set activities and systems of
Movement
communication
Growth Training and Apprenticeship
INSTRUMENTAL NEEDS RESPONSES

U
Renewal of cultural apparatus Economics

B
Characters of behaviour and
IND
IM
their sanctions
H A Social control

Renewal of personnel Education

Organization of force and
Political organization
compulsion
Symbolic and Integrative Needs Responses

IN U
Transmission of experience by means
D Knowledge

B
of precise, consistent principles

HIM A
Means of intellectual, emotional, and
pragmatic control of destiny and
Magic
Religion
chance
Communal rhythm of recreation, Art, Sports, Games,
exercise and rest Ceremonial
As stated in Malinowski’s text The Scientific Theory of
Culture and Other Essays:
• Culture is essentially an instrumental apparatus by which man is

INDU
put in a position to better cope with the concrete, specific

A B
problems that face him in his environment in the course of the
M
HI
satisfaction of his needs.
• It is a system of objects, activities, and attitudes in which every
part exists as a means to an end.
• It is an integral in which the various elements are
interdependent.
Social institution:
• Malinowski considered institutions to be examples of organized behaviours.
Since such behaviour always involves a plurality of persons, an institution in this

U
sense is therefore a social system, which is a subsystem of society.
• Each institution has 6 aspects,

B IND
A
ü Personnel (people)

HIM
ü A charter (a set of values, myths or beliefs which legitimise the activity)
ü A set of norms or rules
ü Activities
ü Material apparatus (technology), and
ü A function.
• Though functionally differentiated
from other institutions, an institution

U
is a segmentary cross-section of
culture that involves all the
components included in
B IND
•
HIM A
Malinowski's definition of culture.
Malinowski believed that the central
feature of the charter of an
institution is “the system of values
for the pursuit of which human
beings organize, or enter
organizations already existing”.
• Institutions differ because they are organized to serve different
functions.
• He argued that institutions function for continuing life and

INDU
"normality" of an organism, or an aggregate of organisms as a
species .
M A B
HI
• Indeed, for Malinowski, the primary reference of the concept of
function was to a theory of the biological needs of the individual
organism: Any theory of culture has to start from the organic needs
of man.
• Key Works:

U
1926. Crime and Custom in Savage Society.

D
•

B IN
1944. A Scientific Theory of Culture.

A
•

• HIM
1945. The Dynamics of Culture Change.
1948. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays.
• 1927. Sex and repression in savage society.
• 1922. Argonauts of western pacific
Methodologies:
• The functionalists also shared an emphasis on intensive fieldwork, involving
participant-observation. This methodological emphasis has resulted in a series

DU
of excellent monographs on native societies.

IN
•
A B
functionalists opposed, in principle, the study of history as the needs keep

M
changing.
Criticisms: HI
• Functionalism became dominant in American theory in the 1950s and 1960s.
With time, criticism of this approach has escalated, resulting in its decline in
the early 1970s.
• Marxist theory argued against functionalism's conservativism and the
static nature of analysis that is for its disregard of the historical
process.

INDU
• criticized for being circular: needs are postulated on the basis of

A B
existing institutions which are, in turn used to explain their existence.
M
HI
• Antihistoric approach made it impossible to examine social
processes,
• rejection of psychology made it impossible to understand attitudes
and sentiments
• Malinowski argued that every culture can be understood in its own
terms; every institution be seen as a product of the culture within which

IN U
it developed. Following this, a cross-cultural comparison of institutions
D
is a false as it compares phenomena that could not be compared.

M A B
• Recognizing this "Malinowskian dilemma," Walter Goldschmidt

HI
argued for a "comparative functionalism." This approach recognizes
the universality of functions to which institutions are a response.
Goldschmidt suggested that problems are consistent from culture to
culture, but institutional solutions vary.
COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY
Basic Premises:
• Cognitive anthropology addresses the ways in which people conceive of

NDU
and think about events and objects in the world.

I
A B
• It provides a link between human thought processes and the physical and

M
HI
ideational aspects of culture.
• Cognitive anthropology emphasizes the rules (In the mind of the
people) of behavior, not behavior itself. It does not claim that it can
predict human behavior but delineates what is socially and culturally
expected or appropriate in given situations, circumstances, and contexts.
 INDU
M A B
HI
 INDU
M A B HAROLD C.
CONKLIN

HI (1926-2016)
• Harold Conklin was an American cognitive anthropologist.
• Cognitive anthropology studies cognitive processes that are specific to
a culture.

INDU
• Cognitive processes refer to the processes within the mind as opposed

A B
to the processes in the external world.

M
HI
• How the people perceive the world, how they categorise, how they
think about the external world is the subject of cognitive anthropology.
• He conducted extensive research in Southeast Asia, producing one of
the largest ethnographic collections for the Philippines.
• His interest in linguistics and ecology and commitment to
ethnoscience led to pioneering investigations of indigenous systems of
tropical forest agriculture.

DU
• He also made important contributions to the study of kinship
IN
A B
terminology including "Lexicographical Treatment of Folk

M
HI
Taxonomies” (1969) and "Ethnogenealogical Method" (1969).
• Conklin’s investigation of colour perception in “Hanunóo Color
Categories” (1955) is characteristic of the sort of study produced by
the early ethnoscientific approach. For this he did linguistic field
work in Hanunoo of Philippines.
• In this article, Conklin demonstrates that Hanunóo color terms do

INDU
not segment the color spectrum in the same manner as western
colour terms but perceive some culture specific contrasts like

M A B
• Wetness /Freshness (Green shades) vs. dryness / lack of

HI
freshness (Brown shades): As it is a hunter gatherer society,
where there is no food security, getting a fresh fruit or a recently
hunted animal is precious to them. Their ecology and culture made
their minds perceive this contrast when they see any colour. Thus
they classify the colours in to
 • (Ma) rara: Relative presence of

U
red/brown – Maroon, red, Orange,

B IND
Yellow, and their shades (Indicate
relative dryness/lack of freshness)

HIM A• (Ma) latuy: Relative presence of

green – light green, mixture of green
and yellow, light brown and their
shades (Indicate wetness/relative
freshness)
• Abundance (dark shades) vs. lack of abundance (light shades): Food
insecurity also made abundance very precious for them. Thus, their minds
perceive dark vs. light contrast in the colours.

INDU
1.(Ma) biru: relatively dark shades of colour – includes black, violet,

A B
indigo, blue, dark green, dark gray and deep shades of other colours.

M
•
HI
2.(Ma) lagti: White or relatively light shades of other colours and mixtures.
This is level I terminology for colour classification. Level II terminology
is used when greater specification is required. E.g. Somewhat ‘Mabiru’
or very ‘Mabiru’.
• He also stated that males men who commonly go for

DU
hunting and gathering excel in shades of reds and

IN
M A B
greys ( Animals, hair, feather, fruits etc).

HI
• Thus colour classification is influenced by what people
consider important in their environment.
 INDU
M A B STEPHEN

HI A. TYLER
• For Anthropological research, the researchers are using a pseudo meta language.
• It is meta language as it subsumes the languages of various cultures.
• The very classification we are using in pseudo meta language is false and
misleading.

DU
• The Anthropologists have their own culture and a particular way of looking at

IN
B
things. They are observing and recording other cultures in the categories of their

their society.
HI A
own culture. In this approach they can never understand what the native thinks of

M
• To understand the native’s point of view an Anthropologist should first understand
how a native classify the chaos around him.
• It is emic approach as it deals with the native point of view. And it is cognitive
approach as it tries to figure out what is going on inside the minds of the natives.
• Tyler believes that language is the key to the cognitive structures of mind, as
language is not simply a tool of communication but it a way of perceiving, a way
of thinking.
Controlled eliciting:
• To analyse the Semantic domains in the minds of people, Tyler gives a method
called controlled eliciting.
• In this approach instead of using regular questionnaires used in anthropological

DU
research, one should frame meaningful questions by observing the language of

IN
B
the people. It not only gives answers but also helps him discover relevant
questions.

HIM A
Formal semantic analysis: It is a method of analyzing the data collected by
controlled eliciting.
• We need particular theories of culture rather than a general theory of culture
• When such particular theories are expressed in correct meta language, we can
arrive at a general theory of culture.
• Thus cognitive anthropology entails an ethnographic technique which describes
cultures from inside out rather than outside in.
• Present comparative method is not correct as it compares the incomparable
cultures.

NDU
• Cognitive anthropology was alternatively referred to as Ethno semantics, Ethno

I
M A B
science, Ethno linguistics, and New Ethnography.

I
• Later, Tyler found himself moving towards postmodernism abandoning cognitive
anthropology.
H
Key Works: “Cognitive Anthropology”.
Reaction: Brent Berlin and Paul Kay presented a study of colour categories in
which they trace universal tendencies, arguing against the cultural relativism implied
in Conklin’s publication.
Criticisms:
• According to Keesing - artificially simplified and often trivial semantic

U
domains.

IND
• Ethnoscientists tended to study the phenomena without being able to

B
A
elucidate their relevance to understanding culture as a whole.

HIM
• question of how applicable the results can be for other non-western cultures.
• questions remain about whether results in fact reflect how individuals
organize and perceive society, or whether they are merely manufactured by
investigators.
• Another criticism is that universal agreement on how to find culture in the
mind has yet to emerge.
 POST MODERNISM
• Postmodernism literally means “after modernity. Jean-Francois Lyotard, in his
seminal work The Postmodern Condition (1984) defines it as an “incredulity toward
metanarratives,” which is a product of scientific progress.

U
Principal Concepts:

B IND
• “Culture” in Peril - “Culture is becoming a dangerously unfocused term,
increasingly lacking in scientific credentials”.

HIM
that needed to be stopped. A
• Lament - Discontent with the loss of traditional culture, was a “backwards” custom

• Metanarrative: Lawrence Kuznar describes metanarratives as grand narratives

such as the Enlightenment, Marxism or the American dream. Postmodernists
questions the metanarratives.
• Polyvocality - Maintains that there exists multiple, legitimate versions of reality or
truths as seen from different perspectives.
• Power - Foucault was a prominent critic of the idea of “culture,” preferring instead
to deal in the concept of “power” as the major focus of anthropological research.
• According to Rosenau (1992), postmodernists can be divided into two very
broad camps, Skeptics and Affirmatives.
• Skeptical Postmodernists – They are extremely critical of the modern subject.
They reject Theory because theories are abundant, and no theory is considered
more correct that any other. They feel that “theory conceals and distorts the
reality.

INDU
B
• Affirmative Postmodernists –They do not feel that Theory needs to be

HIM A
abolished but merely transformed. Affirmatives are less rigid than Skeptics.
• Relativism – Relativism is the notion that different perspectives have no absolute
truth or validity.
• Self-Reflexivity The process of anthropologists questioning both theoretically
and practically, themselves and their work.

LEADING FIGURES:
Michael agar, Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Clifford
Geertz, Ian Hodder, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Jean-Francois Lyotard.
1. Basic tenets of structural functionalism. (2017, 10M)
2. Explain the structural analysis of kinship as proposed by Levi-Strauss
(2021,15M)
3. How do the concepts of binary opposites and exchange figure in (Included in)

DU
Levi-Strauss’ structural analysis of kinship? (2016,20M)

IN
B
4. What are the major criticisms of the theory of structuralism as propounded by
Claude Levi-Strauss. (2009)

HIM A
5. How did Radcliffe-Brown and Levi-Strauss study kinship in terms of social
structure?(2019,15M).
6. Functionalism (2016,10M)
7. What is Functionalism ? Discuss the functional approach to the understanding
of Religion (2014)
8. In what way Functionalism is different from the structural functionalism (20M,
2013)
9. Examine critically the contributions of Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz in
anthropology (2019,20M).
10. What made Geertz’s Interpretive Anthropology distinct from Turner’s
Symbolic Anthropology? What does each of them mean by the terms ‘Symbol’ and

U
‘Symbolic’? (2015,20m)

IND
11. Bring out the contribution of Turner and Geertz in symbolic and interpretive
theories(15M, 2013)
B
IM A
12. Critically examine the contribution of Anthropologists in the interpretation of

H
symbols. (30M,2011)
13. According to Geertz, how does the cock-fight reveal aspects of Balinese
culture? (2016,20M)
14. Elucidate the concept of “thick description” of Clifford Geertz with a suitable
example. (2021, 15M)
15. Explain the basic features of ‘Postmodernism’ in Anthropology. (2015,20m)
16. Post modernism in Anthropology (10M, 2012)
• 15. The relation between Linguistics and social - cultural
anthropology. (2019,10M)
• Linguistics plays a very important role in the understanding of

U
Social-cultural anthropology.

IND
• Ganesh Narayan Devy who documented 780 Indian languages
B
HI A
Opines that each language is a unique way of looking at the world.
M
• In 1954 a linguist Kenneth Pike coined the terms Etic (Out sider
approach) and emic (Insider approach) , the two approaches to
studying human culture. Emic and etic are derived from the linguistic
terms phonemic and phonetic respectively.
• The terms were also championed by anthropologist, Marvin Harris.
• According to Structuralist, LEVI- STRAUSS, like phonemes in
language, kinship terms are elements of meaning and they acquire meaning
only if they are integrated into Kinship systems. & Like words in a
language, kinship relations are symbolic.

INDU
• Harold Conklin did linguistic field work in Hanunoo of Philippines &

A B
demonstrated that Hanunóo color terms do not segment the colour

M
HI
spectrum based on wavelength but based on,
Freshness (Green shades – Colour term Ma Latuy) vs.
Dryness (Brown shades – Colour term Ma Rara) &
Abundance (Dark shades – Colour term ma Biru) Vs.
Scarcity (Light shades – Colour term Ma lagti)
His important work "Lexicographical Treatment of Folk
Taxonomies” (1969) is also based on linguistic field work.

DU
Another important cognitive thinker Stephen A. Tyler

IN
M A B
also gave importance to linguistics in his study of culture.

HI
These studies explain the relation between Linguistics and
social - cultural anthropology
16. Discuss phenomenology as a research method in
anthropological studies.(2019,15M).
• Phenomenology is study of structures of consciousness as
experienced from first person’s point of view. It is study of qualia, i.e.,

IN U
studying things as perceived or experienced by a person.
D
• Phenomenology was developed by Edmund Husserl.
Assumptions of phenomenology:
M A B
HI
• Knowledge is never definitely correct.
• Meaning is fluid.
• Phenomenology says we can only obtain the knowledge about the
external world through our mental acts of categorising. We try to
give everything a meaning and organise them into groups. (Write the
points about categorising in structuralism e.g., Binary opposition
and cognitive anthropology E.g., Hanunoo colour categories).
• Some philosophers argue that we can never define how the external
world is in reality. We can only know what our senses can perceive.
• This world as we know it, is only a product of our mind. (Write points
about the social structure being only in the mind of the people in

U
structuralism and studying culture as perceived by the people in
cognitive anthropology).

B IND
HI
with phenomenology. A
• Postmodernism concepts like polyvocality, relativism are inline
M
• Research method: Phenomenology primarily depends on interview
method.
• Conclusion: Thus, Postmodernism, Structuralism and cognitive
theory are inspired by phenomenology as a research method.