Evolutionism In Cultural Anthropology: A Critical History

by Carneiro,Robert L.

• ISBN13: 9780813337661
• ISBN10: 0813337666
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2003-01-24
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropologytraces the interaction of evolutionary thought and anthropological theory from Herbert Spencer to the twenty-first century. It is a focused examination of how the idea of evolution has continued to provide anthropology with a master principle around which a vast body of data can be organized and synthesized. Erudite and readable, and quoting extensively from early theorists (such as Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, John McLennan, Henry Maine, and James Frazer) so that the reader might judge them on the basis of their own words,Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropologyis useful reading for courses in anthropological theory and the history of anthropology.

Author Biography

Robert L. Carneiro Curator of South American Ethnology, American Museum of Natural History, and adjunct professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. His field work has been among the Kuikuru of central Brazil, the Amahuaca of eastern Peru, and the Yanomamo of southern Venezuela.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	vii
Preface	ix
The Early History of Evolutionism	1	(8)
Herbert Spencer and the Concept of Evolution	3	(2)
The Evolutionary Views of Tylor and Morgan	5	(4)
The Reconstruction of Cultural Evolution	9	(18)
The Comparative Method	10	(1)
The Possibility of a Social Science	11	(2)
The Uniformity of Nature	13	(1)
The Principle of Continuity	14	(1)
From Simplicity to Complexity	14	(1)
The Objective Rating of Cultures	15	(1)
Evolution Not an Inherent Tendency	16	(1)
The Psychic Unity of Man	17	(1)
Differential Evolution	18	(1)
Contemporary Primitives and Ancestral Cultures	19	(3)
Modern Primitives Not Primeval	22	(1)
Primal Human Society	23	(1)
Survivals	24	(3)
The Characteristics of Cultural Evolution	27	(12)
Rectilinearity	27	(1)
Unilinearity	28	(3)
The Skipping of Stages	31	(1)
The Law of Evolutionary Potential	32	(1)
Rates of Evolution	32	(1)
Diffusion and Evolution	33	(6)
The Determinants of Cultural Evolution	39	(36)
Inherent versus External Determinants	40	(2)
Psychic Unity as an Active Agent	42	(2)
Racial Determinism	44	(4)
Human Perfectibility	48	(1)
Individuals as Determinants	49	(1)
The Influence of Great Men	50	(3)
Ideas as Prime Movers	53	(5)
Historical Materialism	58	(3)
Environmental Factors	61	(1)
Subsistence as a Determinant	62	(2)
Economic Determinants	64	(1)
Social Determinants	65	(1)
War as a Determinant	66	(2)
Natural Selection	68	(5)
Conclusion	73	(2)
Anti-Evolutionism in the Ascendancy	75	(24)
The Boasian Backlash	75	(3)
Diffusionism in British Anthropology	78	(2)
The Functionalist Reaction	80	(1)
Malinowski	81	(1)
Radcliffe-Brown	82	(3)
Anti-Evolutionism in Later British Social Anthropology	85	(2)
Remaining Islands of Cultural Evolutionism: James G. Frazer	87	(2)
Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg	89	(2)
Sumner and Keller	91	(3)
George P. Murdock	94	(2)
The Barren Landscape	96	(1)
Theorizing Disavowed	97	(1)
Historical Particularism	98	(1)
Early Stages in the Reemergence of Evolutionism	99	(28)
Leslie A. White	99	(3)
Diffusion versus Evolution	102	(2)
The Derivation of Evolutionary Formulas	104	(3)
Cultural Relativism and the Rating of Cultures	107	(1)
In Spite of Themselves	108	(2)
Julian H. Steward	110	(5)
V. Gordon Childe	115	(3)
Evolutionism in Ethnology in the 1950s	118	(4)
The Darwin Centennial	122	(5)
Issues in Late Midcentury Evolutionism	127	(24)
New Steps Forward	127	(1)
General and Specific Evolution	127	(3)
History versus Evolution	130	(2)
Archaeology and Evolution	132	(5)
Service's Sequence of Stages	137	(4)
Processual Archaeology	141	(1)
Lewis Binford and Middle Range Theory	142	(2)
Ethnographic Analogy and Parallels	144	(1)
Ethnoarchaeology	145	(1)
General Systems Theory	146	(2)
Respectability Regained	148	(1)
``Neo-Evolutionism,''	149	(2)
Features of the Evolutionary Process	151	(34)
Developmental Stages	151	(4)
Process versus Stages	155	(2)
Scale Analysis and the Refinement of Sequences	157	(2)
Verifying Inferred Sequences of Development	159	(1)
Directionality in Evolution	159	(2)
Complexity as the Hallmark of Evolution	161	(2)
Is Evolution Irreversible?	163	(2)
The Objective Rating of Cultures	165	(4)
Rates of Cultural Evolution	169	(2)
The Mechanisms of Cultural Evolution	171	(2)
The Darwinian Model	173	(6)
Adaptation Considered Further	179	(2)
Typological versus Populational Concepts	181	(4)
What Drives the Evolution of Culture?	185	(28)
Elman Service versus Marvin Harris	185	(2)
Cultural Causality Examined	187	(4)
Determinants: White and Steward Considered Separately	191	(3)
Steward and White Compared	194	(2)
Ecological Approaches: Limitations and Pitfalls	196	(2)
Functionalism and Evolutionism Join Forces	198	(2)
Population Pressure as a Determinant of Evolution	200	(8)
Warfare as a Determinant	208	(3)
Trade as a Determinant	211	(2)
Other Perspectives on Cultural Evolution	213	(16)
Ideology and Evolution	213	(5)
Marxist Anthropology and Cultural Evolution	218	(5)
Microevolution and Agency Theory	223	(6)
Elements of Evolutionary Formulations	229	(34)
Evolution: Unilinear or Multilinear?	229	(9)
Laws of Cultural Development	238	(4)
British Social Anthropology and Cultural Laws	242	(1)
American Anthropologists and Cultural Laws	243	(7)
The Comparative Method and Its Application	250	(4)
The Problem of Sampling	254	(9)
Current Issues and Attitudes in the Study of Cultural Evolution	263	(26)
New and Lingering Opposition to Cultural Evolutionism	263	(3)
The Attitude of British Social Anthropologists	266	(7)
American Archaeologists Resist ``Neo-Evolutionism,''	273	(3)
Archaeologists Accept and Apply Evolutionism	276	(9)
The Quantification of Cultural Evolution	285	(1)
Cultural Evolutionism and the Sociologists	286	(1)
Summary	287	(2)
References Cited	289	(24)
Index	313