Methods of Ethnology

Franz Boas (1858-1942)

Introduction Boas started the

article showing the development of the methods of inquiry from the second half of the last century up to the present.

http://www.sciography.com/franz-boas.htm

ContentEVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT

DIFFUSION AND MIGRATION

became the leading idea during the second half of the last century

Spencer, Morgan, Tylor and Lubbock (to name a few)

the idea of a general, uniform evolution of culture in which all parts of mankind participated.

became the counterpart of the evolutionary thought and provided new ideas for the present century

Foy, and Graebner with Elliot Smith and Rivers

In the present time, ethnological research is based on the concept of migration and dissemination rather than upon that of evolution.

Content

Evolutionary point of view

that the development is explained in the full manner: the decorative forms are arranged in such order that the most representative forms are placed at the beginning.

William Henry Holmes Boas’s critique on these two possibilities is

that neither the one nor the other theory can be established without actual historical proof.

Content

Diffusionist point of view

was taken up in detail particularly in America, which was applied to a much wider sense by Foy and Graebner

Radical English diffusionists like Smith and Rivers believed that all civilization had diffused from Egypt

Boas’ attack to the diffusionists’ idea is that historical contact is demanded for enormously large areas.

Content

The Approach

Boas’s approach was to be purely inductive

He insisted that cultures could only be understood with respect to their unique historical development

Content

The Approach

General Conclusion is that the history of human civilization does not appear to us as determined entirely by psychological necessity that leads to a uniform evolution the world over. It is rather that each cultural group has its own unique history, dependent partly upon the peculiar inner development of the social group, and partly upon the foreign influences to which it has been subjected.

Content

Two points of analysis

(1) the process of gradual differentiation (2) the process of leveling down differences

between neighboring cultural centersIlustration: comparison of the treatment

of Zuni civilization

- Frank Hamilton Cushing- modern students (Elsie Clews Parsons,

A.L. Kroeber and Leslie Spier)

Content Cushing believed that is

was possible to explain Zuni culture entirely on the basis of the reaction of the Zuni mind to its geographical environment, and that the whole of the Zuni culture could be explained as the development which followed necessarily from the position in which the people were placed.

Frank Hamilton Cushing and Zuni IndiansJ.W. Black, 1882, Smithsonian Institution (

Wikimedia Commons)http://www.sialis.org/zuni.htm

Content Conclusively

described that the deep influence which Spanish ideas have had on Zuni culture, give us one of the best examples of acculturation.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo3638666.html

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/kroeber/

Content theorized that all

complex cultural traits diffused from Egypt

Boas’s critique on this idea is that it is very unlikely that ancient Mediterranean customs could be found at the present time particularly unchanged in different parts of the globe, as Smith’s theory demands.

Grafton Elliot Smith http://acravan.blogspot.com/2013/04/rewriting-mystery.html

Content Parallelism

- critiqued by Boas by saying that there should not be too much inclination to look for these similarities in detailed customs but rather in certain dynamic conditions which are due to social or psychological causes that are liable to lead to similar results

Content Parallelism

- Two examples indicated in the article are: (1) relation between food supply and population; and (2) those cases in hiwch a certain problem confronting man may be solved by a limited number of methods only (for instance, marriage). A regular sequence of these may accompany both the (a) the development of the psychological or social status and (b) the development of rationalism.

Content The key aspect of Boas’ theoretical

position is equifinality. Here, he argues that the present similar traits in many societies is not necessarily evidenced either for psychic unity or large-scale diffusion. They may be the result of convergent evolution and independent invention.

Critique Generally, Boas’ ideas towards other

principles show that he does not entirely disapprove them. It is evident that he provided his own explanation.

Critique Boas partly agreed and is interested with

the diffusionist, he just does not believe that culture traits takes the form of what the radical diffusionist like Smith believed it does.

Boas also has a part with the evolutionists (where they see all cultures as sharing the same developmental program). Boas believed that each individual has its own unique developmental arrangement (or as Ruth Benedict puts it, “configuration”).

Critique With Boas insisting that cultures

could only be understood with respect to their unique historical development, building a theory (which involves comparison and generalization), seems unlikely that there could ever be a broad theoretical propositions that can be generated.