1

Influential Scholars
E.B.Tylor (1832-1917)
 2

Edward Burnett Tylor Definition

● He is the founding father of cultural anthropology.
● Believed transformation from Savagery to Barbarism to Civilization
of any culture.
● His book Primitive Culture (1871) said that culture is that “complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member
of society.”
● Tylor reintroduced the term animism (faith in the individual soul or
anima of all things and natural manifestations) into common use.[5]
He regarded animism as the first phase in the development of
religions.
L.H.Morgan (1818-1881)
Lewis Henry Morgan
●A railroad lawyer
● Considered one of the founding fathers of modern
anthropology.
● Introduced the theories of social evolution.
● Morgan's ideas about the development of technology over
time have come to be regarded as generally correct in their
fundamental aspects.
● His theory that human social life advanced from an initial
stage of promiscuity through various forms of family life that
culminated in monogamy has long been held obsolete,
however.
 5

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

● Father of American Anthropology
● He is a Physicist and also a Geographer
● Introduced Cultural Relativism - cultures should be
studied from their own perspective.
● He disagreed to the concept of cultural superiority
and inferiority. He believed that all people have equal
capacity for development and there are no separate
“races”.
Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 - 1942)

● He is known as the father of social anthropology

● Responsible for establishing the concept
participant observation.
● He argued that only through direct and da
contact with a culture, could you come
understand it in all its varied facets.