An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists Visions of Culture eertz • feminist anthropology • Tylor • play of tropes • Wolf Geertz • feminist anthropology • Tylor • play of tropes • W cultural relativism • White • dialectical social structure • • cultural relativism • White • dialectical social structure • Moore enedict ANTHROPOLOGY • communitas • Radcliffe-Brown • thick description Benedict • communitas • Radcliffe-Brown • thick descript Sahlins •Praise functionalism for the Second Edition • Harris • agency • Evans-Pritchard • Sahlins • functionalism • Harris • agency • Evans-Pritcha cultural“Aevolution • biography Boas and • liminality Ortner • multilineal • cultural evolution • Boas • liminality • Ortner • multiline rich combination of theoretical summary•that brings anthropology to life by tying together elements of their personal, fieldwork, and theoretical volutiontheorists • Bourdieu • acculturation • Malinowski • super- evolution • Bourdieu • acculturation • Malinowski • super dimensions.” —Reed Riner, Northern Arizona University ructure “My • Fernandez • theory of practice • Morgan • Geertz structure • Fernandez • theory of practice • Morgan • Gee students and I have found that Visions of Culture helps them identify important concepts and•ideas and, further, associate with a person and feministanthropological anthropology Tylor • play ofideas tropes • Wolf • cul- • feminist anthropology • Tylor • play of tropes • Wolf • cu the totality of his or her work and life.” —Christina von Mayrhouser, Californiasocial State University, Northridge • Benedict ral relativism • White • dialectical structure tural relativism • White • dialectical social structure • Ben communitas • Radcliffe-Brown • thick This new edition of Jerry D. Moore’s Visions of Culture presents description anthropology students • Sahlins • communitas • Radcliffe-Brown • thick description • Sahl with a brief, readable, and balanced treatment of theoretical developments in the functionalism Harris • agency • Evans-Pritchard field. The key•ideas of major theorists, with Marshall Sahlins as a new addition, are• cultural • functionalism • Harris • agency • Evans-Pritchard • cultu An Introduction y described and—unique to this textbook—linked to the biographical and volutionbriefl • Boas • liminality • Ortner • multilineal evolution • evolution • Boas • liminality • Ortner • multilineal evoluti fieldwork experiences that helped shape their theories.The impact of each scholar on to Anthropological anthropology is • presented, along with numerous examples, quotes ourdieucontemporary • acculturation Malinowski • superstructure • Fer-Bourdieu • acculturation • Malinowski • superstructure • F from the theorists’ writings, and a description of the broader intellectual setting andez • theory practice • Morgan • Geertz • feminist an- nandez • theoryTheories of practiceand • Morgan • Geertz • feminist a in which theseof anthropologists worked. Theorists ropology • Tylor • play of tropes • Wolf • cultural relativism thropology • Tylor • play of tropes • Wolf • cultural relativ Jerry D. Moore is professor of anthropology at California State University, Hills, andsocial author of Cultural Landscapes in•theBenedict Ancient Andes: Archaeologies White • Dominguez dialectical structure • communitas ••White • dialectical social structure • Benedict • commun of Place. Third Edition adcliffe-Brown • thick description • Sahlins • functionalism •Radcliffe-Brown • thick description • Sahlins • functionalis arris • agency • Evans-Pritchard • cultural evolution • Boas •Harris • agency • Evans-Pritchard • cultural evolution • Bo Third minality • Ortner • multilineal evolution • Bourdieu • acculliminality • Ortner • multilineal evolution • Bourdieu • ac Edition orders and information please contact the publisher ration •ForMalinowski • superstructure • Fernandez • theory ofturation • Malinowski • superstructure • Fernandez • theo ractice • Morgan • Geertz • feminist anthropology • Tylor • practice • Morgan • GeertzD. • feminist anthropology • Tylo Jerry Moore A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ay of tropes • Wolf • cultural relativism • White • dialectical play of tropes • Wolf • cultural relativism • White • dialect 1-800-462-6420 www.altamirapress.com cial structure • Benedict • communitas • Radcliffe-Brown • social structure • Benedict • communitas • Radcliffe-Brow ick description • Sahlins • functionalism • Harris • agency • thick description • Sahlins • functionalism • Harris • agenc Visions of Culture ISBN-13: 978-0-7591-1146-2 ISBN-10: 0-7591-1146-4 VisionsCultureDSRPBK.indd 1 6/13/08 9:47:18 AM VISIONS OF CULTURE X VISIONS OF CULTURE X An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists Third Edition Jerry D. Moore A Division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Lanham • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK ALTAMIRA PRESS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706 www.altamirapress.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by AltaMira Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moore, Jerry D. Visions of culture : an introduction to anthropological theories and theorists / Jerry D. Moore. — 3rd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7591-1145-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7591-1145-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7591-1146-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-7591-1146-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) eISBN-13: 978-0-7591-1239-1 eISBN-10: 0-7591-1239-8 1. Anthropology—Methodology. 2. Anthropology—Fieldwork. 3. Anthropologists—History. 4. Anthropologists—Biography. I. Title. GN33.M587 2009 306—dc22 2008008638 Printed in the United States of America ! ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: What’s the Point? xi PART I: FOUNDERS 1 1 Edward Tylor: The Evolution of Culture 5 2 Lewis Henry Morgan: The Evolution of Society 18 3 Franz Boas: Culture in Context 33 4 Émile Durkheim: The Organic Society 46 PART II: THE NATURE OF CULTURE 61 5 Alfred Kroeber: Configurations of Culture 65 6 Ruth Benedict: Patterns of Culture 78 7 Edward Sapir: Culture, Language, and the Individual 88 8 Margaret Mead: The Individual and Culture v 104 vi / Contents PART III: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY 117 9 Marcel Mauss: Elemental Categories, Total Facts 121 10 Bronislaw Malinowski: The Functions of Culture 134 11 A. R. Radcliffe-Brown: The Structures of Society 147 12 Edward Evans-Pritchard: Social Anthropology, Social History 161 PART IV: EVOLUTIONARY, ADAPTATIONIST, AND MATERIALIST THEORIES 175 13 Leslie White: Evolution Emergent 179 14 Julian Steward: Cultural Ecology and Multilinear Evolution 194 15 Marvin Harris: Cultural Materialism 204 16 Eleanor Burke Leacock: Feminism, Marxism, and History 217 PART V: STRUCTURES, SYMBOLS, AND MEANING 227 17 Claude Lévi-Strauss: Structuralism 231 18 Victor Turner: Symbols, Pilgrims, and Drama 247 19 Clifford Geertz: An Interpretive Anthropology 259 20 Mary Douglas: Symbols and Structures, Pollution and Purity 272 PART VI: STRUCTURES, PRACTICE, AGENCY, POWER 289 21 James Fernandez: The Play of Tropes 295 Contents / vii 22 Sherry Ortner: Symbols, Gender, Practice 307 23 Pierre Bourdieu: An Anthropology of Practice 325 24 Eric Wolf: Culture, History, Power 343 25 Marshall Sahlins: Culture Matters 365 Postscript: Current Controversies 385 Index 393 About the Author 399 Acknowledgments This book was written for students, and since 1993 various versions of the chapters have been tested on my students at California State University, Dominguez Hills. I want to thank them for their patience, questions, and puzzling looks—and for forcing me to be clear in exposition and intent. When I was writing the chapter on Edward Sapir, I felt an immediate empathy for the Ottawa period in his life when he lacked students; to lack the exchange of ideas with students would be a great loss, and I thank my students for their contributions to this book. I would also like to acknowledge four of my teachers who taught me anthropological theory as an undergraduate and graduate student: Michael Seelye, Joel Canby, Charles Erasmus, and Albert Spaulding. I thank Dr. James W. Fernandez for answering my request for information on his anthropological career. I also want to thank Dr. Marshall Sahlins for providing me with a copy of his curriculum vitae, an important source for writing about his career and publications. I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to my wife and colleague, Janine Gasco, who read draft chapters, listened to theoretical and editorial problems, and whose advice was unfailingly sound. In addition, I have discussed aspects of this book with my friends and colleagues Andrew Stewart, Brenda Bowser, and Susan Needham; I appreciate their comments, tolerance, and encouragements. At AltaMira Press, I was fortunate to work on the first and second editions with Mitch Allen, whose confidence in this ix x / Acknowledgments book—even in the face of scathing reviews—is the principal reason this project was completed. More recently, I have had the pleasure of working with Alan McClare, whose enthusiasm and support for the third edition of Visions of Culture are very much appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge the contributions made by the ten anonymous reviewers who have read different versions of this manuscript in its three editions. Dr. Aletta Biersack caught an error in the second edition in the chapter on Claude Lévi-Strauss and was kind enough to notify me. I also appreciate comments I have received from other readers. Finally, I would like to thank the student, whose name I never knew, who asked one of the best questions anyone can pose: “What’s the goddamn point of it all?” This book is dedicated to him. Introduction What’s the Point? X Years ago I attended a weekend conference organized by a group of undergraduate anthropology students from a major Midwestern public university. The annual conference was held in a group of cabins on the edge of a beautiful lake. The setting was conducive to serious presentations and also provided an opportunity for professors and students to discuss ideas in an informal environment, an informality enhanced by several kegs of beer. Toward the end of an exhausting day of dialogue, the discussion turned to theoretical matters. Many of the students were enrolled in Professor X’s course on anthropological theory and theorists, and they began to complain about the course, emboldened by beer and the absence of Professor X, who was simply too busy to attend the conference. A young man stood up and said, “We start off with Edward Tylor, but Professor X tells us that Tylor was just an armchair anthropologist. So we read Malinowski who everyone says was a good fieldworker, but then Professor X says Malinowski was a racist. And then we read Margaret Mead, and Professor X says Mead was a liar.” The young man swayed slightly and demanded, “What’s the goddamn point of it all?” It was a very good question. It is commonplace to assert that anthropology is in a crisis, but if that is true, it is a crisis of our own making. James Peacock, a former president of the American Anthropological Association, summarized anthropology’s potential contributions and reflected on xi xii / Introduction its shortcomings: “Poised for victory, we retreat, turn within, luxuriate in ourselves, squander our resources in silly arguments, shrink our vision to the smallest world, fiddle while Rome burns and barbarians are at the gate” (1994:1). In a field as diverse as anthropology, it is inevitable that conflicting opinions exist. But in the midst of conflict, we lose sight of the intellectual achievements of anthropology and the personal contributions of anthropologists. And worse, we fail as teachers to communicate to our students the legacies of anthropologists who are worthy of attention, scrutiny, and respect. This book is written for anthropology students. It is an introduction to the principal theorists and theories that shaped and continue to influence modern anthropology. Organized in a series of profiles, I summarize the major theoretical concepts of twenty-five scholars and relate those concepts to each scholar’s formative influences, anthropological research, and intellectual framework. The chapters are organized into six thematic sections beginning with a brief introductory essay outlining the problems and issues common to the anthropologists discussed in the section. Each chapter introduces a scholar’s contribution to anthropology, profiles her/his professional life with an emphasis on fieldwork and publications, and discusses major aspects of the anthropologist’s work: Morgan’s comparative approach to kin systems, Durkheim’s conscience collective, Malinowski’s theory of needs, Lévi-Strauss’s structural approach to myth, Victor Turner’s concept of social drama, Ortner’s analysis of key symbols, and so on. The chapter conclusion is followed by a list of references students can pursue in more depth; I have tried to cite readily available sources. While the reference list is not exhaustive, it is a representative cross section listing principal bibliographical sources and recent critical assessments. Visions of Culture is organized differently from other texts on anthropological theory. First, I have attempted to represent a broader range of anthropological viewpoints than, for example, Adam Kuper describes in his excellent study of British social anthropologists (Kuper 1983). Second, I have attempted to sample more current trends in anthropology than are discussed in Elvin Hatch’s (1973) Theories of Man and Culture. Third, I try to provide What’s the Point? / xiii a balanced, though not uncritical, reading of each anthropologist’s contribution to anthropological theory. I do not personally advocate a specific theory as Marvin Harris (1968) does in The Rise of Anthropological Theory. The scholars discussed in Visions of Culture are not straw men or whipping boys. Each anthropologist discussed in this book has intellectual merit; they were included because their ideas are important and deserve to be understood. Finally, I have presented each anthropologist in the context of her/his intellectual milieu; I have not measured each scholar against current theoretical trends in anthropology. Today, for example, cultural ecology and cultural evolution have fallen into disfavor, but they were important theoretical lines of inquiry from roughly 1945 to 1975. The several variations on functionalism were important to anthropology from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s, although they are less so now. Because of their impact in the development of anthropological theory, I discuss these works even if some current theorists might consider such positions hopelessly outdated. Visions of Culture is organized around the women and men who shaped modern anthropology. Other texts on anthropological theory emphasize ideas over individuals, but I believe there are good reasons for a biographical structure. Ideas do not exist in the ether; they take shape in the experiences of individuals. Obviously, certain ideas become generally held, common properties. The organic analogy, the idea of progress, the function of society, the postmodernist critique, and so on, have broad existences; they are not the single-handed creations of “Great Men.” In my reading of anthropologists’ theories, such broad concepts seem to be generic foundations on which specific scholars build their theoretical structures. Other factors and more immediate issues configure individual anthropologists’ ideas. Preeminent among these is the experience of anthropological fieldwork. Repeatedly, one discovers that anthropologists arrive at their theoretical positions in the process of trying to understand another human culture. Benedict and the Zuni, Mead and the Samoans, Radcliffe-Brown and the Andamanese, Malinowski and the Trobriand Islanders, Evans-Pritchard and the Azande, Steward and the Shoshone, Harris and rural Brazilians, xiv / Introduction Turner and the Ndembu, Geertz and the Javanese, Fernandez and the Fang, Ortner and the Sherpas, Bourdieu in Algeria, Sahlins and historic Oceana—there is a recurrent dialectic that occurs in the context of research. In general discussions of theory, the empirical contexts of fieldwork are too often ignored. This is a shame since ethnographic research is anthropology’s most important addition to the social sciences, and our translations of other cultures’ experiences are anthropology’s most lasting contribution to intellectual life. Obviously, I could not write about every major anthropological figure, so my selections require justification. First, I have considered anthropologists who dealt with central issues, such as: “What is the nature of culture?” “What is the relationship between the individual and society?” and “How can another culture be understood by an anthropological outsider?” These are fundamental issues with which anthropologists have struggled since the late nineteenth century, but not all anthropologists have focused on these theoretical issues. I realize that I have ignored major figures who made significant theoretical and substantive contributions to anthropology, and I apologize to them, their students, and their posthumous advocates. Second, I have not considered scholars whose works were important during their lifetimes but have since become marginal to major currents in the field (see, for example, Ackerman [1987:1–4] on Sir James Frazer). Third, I have selected anthropologists who reflect basic trends within anthropology—unilineal evolution, Boasian historicism, functionalism, cultural materialism, structuralism, semiotics, feminism, practice theory, and postmodernism. Fourth, I have limited myself to anthropologists from the United States, Great Britain, and France and emphasize Anglo-American anthropology, which I assume is of most interest to my audience. Finally, I have not discussed social thinkers in related fields who have made huge impacts on anthropology: Marx, Freud, Weber, Giddens, and so on. That would involve writing a biographical encyclopedia of the social sciences, which is not my goal, intention, or desire. The final selection of twenty-five anthropologists—Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Franz Boas, Émile Durkheim, Alfred Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, What’s the Point? / xv Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Edward Evans-Pritchard, Leslie White, Julian Steward, Marvin Harris, Eleanor Burke Leacock, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Clifford Geertz, Mary Douglas, James Fernandez, Sherry Ortner, Pierre Bourdieu, Eric Wolf, and Marshall Sahlins—is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point for further research, classroom discussion, and student inquiry into the ideas and individuals who have shaped anthropology by contributing their particular and creative visions of culture. References Ackerman, Robert 1987 James Frazer: A Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harris, Marvin 1968 The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Hatch, Elvin 1973 Theories of Man and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Kuper, Adam 1983 Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Peacock, James 1994 The AAA President’s Report: Challenges Facing the Discipline. Anthropology Newsletter 35(9):1, 5. I FOUNDERS X Anthropology addresses a series of questions that humans have considered for millennia: What is the nature of society? Why do cultures change? What is the relationship between the person as an individual and the person as a member of a distinctive social group? What are the distinguishing characteristics of humanness? Why are cultures different? The written record of such inquiries covers at least twentyfive hundred years. In fourth-century BC Athens, Aristotle pondered the organization of the state and used the organic analogy—the comparison of society to a living organism— which became a recurrent theme in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury anthropology. The fourteenth-century Arab geographer Ibn Khaldun explained the differences between cultures in terms of climate—passionate, expressive societies exist in warmer climates while restrained, impassive cultures exist in northern climates. In 1725 Giovanni Battista Vico, a poor scholar in Italy, wrote Principii d’ una scienza nuova and outlined a historical model of the evolution of human society. By the 1700s a wide range of moral philosophers were considering the nature of human cultures, drawing on ethnographic sources from Herodotus, Garcilaso de la Vega, Joseph-François Lafitau, and others. So how can we call four men—Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Émile Durkheim, and Franz Boas—the “founders” of anthropology? First, because there are direct connections between modern anthropological issues and the ideas of these late 1 2 / Part I nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century scholars. A significant change occurred in the social sciences with the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The directness of Darwin’s impact has been discussed by Stocking (1968, 1987), but it seems clear that the Darwinian theory of biological variation served as a model for inquiry into the nature of human cultural differences. The mid-nineteenth century is a threshold: earlier writers may have thought about cultural differences and the nature of humanity, but their approaches to understanding are distinct from post-Darwinian science. It is not that earlier scholars were unaware of cultural differences, but rather that they lacked “the slightest clue as to how cultural differences might be scientifically explained” (Harris 1968:18). Morgan, Tylor, Durkheim, and Boas stand on this side of that intellectual divide, and thus their ideas remain more immediate and direct. Before 1860, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “anthropology” meant the study of human nature encompassing physiology and psychology; after 1860, the word denotes a science of humankind “in its widest sense.” This shift in usage marks a change in an intellectual field that the works of Morgan, Tylor, Boas, and Durkheim partly created. Second, all these men were founders in a practical sense: they were instrumental in establishing anthropology as an academic discipline. Between 1860 and 1900, anthropology changed from a loose collection of shared interests into a formally defined science of humankind. Tylor, Morgan, Durkheim, and Boas were directly involved in the creations of new anthropological institutions. Tylor held the first professorship of anthropology at Oxford, and he wrote the first anthropology textbook. Morgan obtained support for anthropological research from the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. government. Durkheim outlined a new curriculum of social inquiry, founded influential journals, and established a cadre of students and colleagues who in turn would shape French social science through the 1970s. Boas would supervise the first American Ph.D. in anthropology, establish new journals and associations, and literally set the broad investigative boundaries of American anthropology. Finally, Tylor, Morgan, Durkheim, and Boas—though drawing on existing conceptual frameworks and ideas—articulated Founders / 3 new sets of anthropological problems and proposed methods for their scientific study. In so doing, they developed ways of thinking about human culture that continue to inform our inquiries, and that shaped the course of current anthropology. Tylor’s definition of culture, Morgan’s examination of social evolution, Durkheim’s creation of a science of society, and Boas’s insistence on viewing cultures in specific historical contexts—these positions form the landscape of the emergent field of anthropology as it developed from the late nineteenth century to the present. These men were founders. References Darwin, Charles 1859 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: J. Murray. Harris, Marvin 1968 The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Stocking, George W., Jr. 1968 Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. New York: Free Press. 1987 Victorian Anthropology. New York: Free Press. 1 Edward Tylor The Evolution of Culture X Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) is considered the founding father of British anthropology. Tylor was the first professor of anthropology at Oxford; he was active in establishing anthropological associations and institutions; and his ideas contributed to the intellectual debates of the late nineteenth century sparked by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. His friend A. C. Haddon wrote that Tylor’s books, “while replete with vast erudition, are so suggestive and graced by such quiet humour that they have become ‘classics,’ and have profoundly influenced modern thought. From their first appearance it was recognized that a mastermind was guiding the destinies of the nascent science” (1910:159). When a contemporary, the religious scholar Max Müller, dubbed anthropology “Mr. Tylor’s science,” it was a recognition of Tylor’s impact on the definition of a scholarly field. Central to Tylor’s contribution was his definition of culture: “Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (1958:1). In these opening lines of his major work, Primitive Culture, Tylor first defined culture in “its modern technical or anthropological meaning” (Kroeber and Kluckhohn 1952:9; compare Stocking 1963). It is a definition of culture that Bohannan and Glazer note “is the only one most anthropologists can quote correctly, and the one they fall back on when others prove too cumbersome” (1988:62). 5 6 / Chapter 1 Yet one of his most careful modern readers, George W. Stocking Jr., writes, “To judge by current textbooks, Tylor has little to say to anthropology today” (1968:176). Contending that many of his later readers simply misunderstood his concept of culture (Stocking 1963), Stocking concludes that Tylor was not “one of the major investors in the general intellectual capital of the modern human sciences,” dwarfed by figures like Marx, Freud, Weber, or Durkheim (1987:301–302). Ironically, Tylor’s lasting influence was greater on American anthropology than on subsequent British social anthropology (see, for example, Evans-Pritchard’s [1981:91–94] curiously curt discussion of his eminent predecessor at Oxford). In contrast, an American anthropologist like Robert Lowie (1937) lauded Tylor as a careful scholar with a “serene willingness to weigh evidence.” Varying assessments of Tylor and his American contemporary, Lewis Henry Morgan, led Meyer Fortes (1969) to suggest that Morgan gave birth to British social anthropology, while the very British Tylor fathered American cultural anthropology. How do we make sense of such contradictory assessments? Why was Tylor so influential in his time? What is the lasting value of his ideas? Background Tylor’s family were Quakers, then a religious minority, though one firmly part of the British middle class. Tylor’s religion precluded education at Oxford or Cambridge, which only granted degrees to members of the Church of England. Tylor was educated in Quaker schools before joining the family foundry business at the age of sixteen. Tylor’s Quaker upbringing also led to an agnosticism that tempered his studies of the origins of religion. Ackerman observes that Tylor’s agnosticism led him to approach religions as intellectual systems rather than expressions of belief, noting that Tylor “cared more about creed than consolation” (1987:77). In his early twenties, Tylor exhibited preliminary symptoms of tuberculosis, and “secure of a modest competency” in Marett’s (1936:13) discreet phrase, Tylor left the family business Edward Tylor / 7 and traveled to warmer latitudes to regain his health. In Cuba he met Henry Christy, a British businessman and avid archaeologist, and the two set off for a four-month journey through Mexico described in Tylor’s first book, Anahuac: Or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern (1861). Anahuac is a travelogue informed by wide reading and crafted with an eye for telling detail and an ear for dialogue. From the port of Veracruz, Tylor and Christy traveled inland by stagecoach to Mexico City with frequent stops as the archaeologist Christy searched roadside gullies for obsidian arrowheads (Tylor 1861:35). The travelers visited archaeological sites like Teotihuacán and Cholula, searched for potsherds in newly plowed fields, and compared the artifacts of Mexico with recent finds from Europe. But most of Anahuac describes modern, not ancient, Mexico. Tylor and Christy toured sugar plantations, textile factories, pulque shops, and haciendas. He describes Mexico’s political instability and poverty. Tylor’s anticlerical upbringing erupts in a rash of diatribes against the Catholic Church. His criticisms are so stinging that Tylor himself admits, “It seems hard to be always attacking the Roman Catholic clergy,” but then proceeds to blame priests for the “doleful ignorance” and poverty of the population (1861:126). In Anahuac Tylor shows himself as an informed and observant, though not unprejudiced, writer. Over the next four years, Tylor matured into a more serious student of human culture. In 1865 he published Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization, which outlined the analytical themes that he developed the rest of his life. “The early Culture History of Mankind,” Tylor wrote, “is capable of being treated as an Inductive Science, by collecting and grouping facts” (1964:137). Tylor sifted through missionaries’ accounts, explorers’ journals, ancient texts, and ethnological reports to search for similarities in human cultures. “When similar arts, customs, beliefs or legends are found in several distant regions, among peoples not known to be of the same stock,” Tylor asked, “how is this similarity to be accounted for?” (1964:3). Essentially there are two possible explanations: the similarity is either the result of parallel invention—“the like working of men’s minds under 8 / Chapter 1 like conditions” (1964:3)—or it is evidence of contacts—direct or indirect, contemporary or historical—between the societies and the consequent diffusion of cultural knowledge. Tylor’s consideration of diffusion marks his early work, yet Stocking notes that Tylor increasingly emphasized the importance of evolution over diffusion or parallel invention (1963:788). Sixteen years later, the scholar would conceive of his textbook Anthropology as “a series of chapters demonstrating the fact and course of progression in various areas of life,” almost exclusively emphasizing evolution (Stocking 1982:79). Evolution and progress were important themes even in Tylor’s first serious ethnological book. Nearly half of Researches into the Early History of Mankind considers the evolution of language and symbols. Although admitting that there is “no evidence of man ever having lived in society without use of spoken language,” Tylor describes certain societies with “a speech so imperfect that even if talking of ordinary matters they have to eke it out by gestures.” Weighing alternate hypotheses, he suggests that such societies either are “the strongest case of degeneration known in the history of the human race or supply a telling argument that the gesture-language is part of the original utterance of mankind” (Tylor 1964:62–64). In his first serious anthropological book, Tylor sketches a handful of themes he will develop in later work: the interpretation of myth, native rationales of dreams, and the logic of sympathetic magic, among others. Researches also contains his initial methodological musings about how to document the evolution of human society (see, for example, Tylor 1964:236–241). Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization was published by John Murray and Sons, publishers of the most important scientific writings of the nineteenth century, including Lyell’s Principles of Geology and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. It was a measure of Tylor’s growing status in the scientific community. By the late 1860s, Tylor “had climbed into the scientific establishment,” Joan Leopold writes (1980), becoming the friend of Alfred Russel Wallace, Thomas Henry Huxley, and other eminent Victorians; publishing articles and reviews in major periodicals; and giving public lectures. Tylor’s achievement was marked by his election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1871 and the publication of Primitive Culture. Edward Tylor / 9 Primitive Culture In Primitive Culture Tylor sets out to reconstruct the history of human culture and immediately faces a major problem: How can humanity’s prehistoric, unwritten history be known? Tylor closely followed contemporary archaeological discoveries of stone tools and extinct mammals in Great Britain and France, but fragments of bone and stone were not enough to reconstruct the “complex whole” of culture or civilization. And so Tylor crafted his reconstruction on two principles: uniformitarianism and the concept of survivals. The condition of culture among the various societies of mankind, insofar as it is capable of being investigated on general principles, is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action. On the one hand, the uniformity which so largely pervades civilization may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action of uniform causes: while on the other hand its various grades may be regarded as stages of development or evolution, each the outcome of previous history, and about to do its proper part in shaping the history of the future. (Tylor 1958:1) Uniformitarianism was derived from Charles Lyell’s multivolume Principles of Geology (1830–1833). Lyell argued that the geological processes observable today—erosion, sedimentation, and so on—were the same processes that shaped the earth in the past rather than spectacular, unique catastrophes like Noah’s Flood. Observations of modern processes allowed for reconstructing the history of the earth because the same geological processes were at work then as now. This was also true for culture, Tylor argued, because culture was created by universally similar human minds and governed by the same basic laws of cognition. “Surveyed in a broad view,” Tylor writes, the character and habit of mankind at once display that similarity and consistency which led the Italian proverb-maker to declare “all the world is one country.” . . . To general likeness in human nature on the one hand, and to general likeness in 10 / Chapter 1 the circumstances of life on the other, this similarity and consistency may no doubt be traced, and they may be studied with especial fitness comparing races near the same grade of civilization. (1958:6) Setting aside for the moment the issue of “grade of civilization,” Tylor’s key point is that the processes of culture are similar for all people, regardless of where or when they lived, because human minds are similar (Tylor 1958:159). This is the central logic of Tylor’s uniformitarianism: culture or civilization consists of knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, customs, and other mental constructs; since human mental processes are universal, human societies have developed culture along similar trajectories, characterized by progress and expressed in the evolution of culture. This has three implications. First, race does not explain cultural differences. Believing that it was “possible and desirable to eliminate considerations of hereditary varieties or races of man,” Tylor contended his study demonstrated “that stages of culture may be compared without taking into account how far tribes who use the same implement, follow the same custom, or believe the same myth, may differ in their bodily configuration and the colour of their skin and hair” (1958:7). Rather, if two societies have analogous cultural traits (pottery or monotheism or stock markets), it is because either (1) the trait has diffused from one society to another, or (2) because independent inventions have developed due to the similarly constructed human minds encountering similar situations. Second, it means that societies with similar cultural traits may represent analogous stages in the development of human culture. Citing Samuel Johnson’s fairly predictable insult “one set of savages is like another,” Tylor surprisingly exclaims, “How true a generalization this really is, any Ethnological Museum may show” (1958:6). Tylor quickly explains that these similarities are most pronounced in the realm of technology—the tools for hunting, fishing, fire making, cooking, and so on—although cross-cultural similarities also exist in mythology, kinship, and other aspects of social life. Such parallels reflect similar stages of cultural development among existing societies and also allow us Edward Tylor / 11 to reconstruct prehistoric societies. Since the laws of mind are uniform, the patterns of contemporary “primitive” societies must be similar to those of extinct prehistoric peoples, a “hypothetical primitive condition [that] corresponds in a considerable degree to that of modern savage tribes, who in spite of their difference and distance, have in common certain elements of civilization, which seem remains of an early state of the human race at large” (Tylor 1958:21). Tylor essentially asserted, as Robert Ackerman states, that “human nature and development being relatively homogeneous, one might legitimately discover, in the behaviour of contemporary primitive peoples, living links in the evolutionary chain” (1987:78). Third, Tylor’s uniformitarianism allowed him to reconstruct the specific processes leading to a particular belief, moral, or set of cultural knowledge. Since culture was a cognitive construction created by similar human minds solving the problems of existence in a rational though often erroneous way, it was possible for Tylor to retrace the logical steps that led to a superstition, folk belief, or “irrational” practice. Tylor’s reconstruction of the evolution of human culture relied on the comparative method and the doctrine of survivals. The comparative method is based on a straightforward logic: similar objects are historically related. Apes, monkeys, and humans have five digits because those animals are historically related. The words “no,” non, and nein are similar because English, French, and German share historical roots. By Tylor’s time the comparative method had produced major advances in different fields. The method was evident in Georges Cuvier’s (1769–1832) comparative zoology and in the major advances in comparative linguistics, particularly the discovery of a proto-Indo-European language reconstructed from linguistic fragments found in Sanskrit (Hoeningswald 1963). The comparative method forms the basis of a history of origins. Tylor presents his version of the comparative method as a natural history of human culture: “A first step in the study of civilization is to dissect it into details, and to classify these in their proper groups” (1958:7). For example, “myths” may be classified into myths about the sun, myths about eclipses or earthquakes, myths about the names of places, myths about the 12 / Chapter 1 establishment of a tribe, and so on. Each of these, he argues, is a species of the genus “myth,” and ethnography becomes natural history. Tylor states, “The ethnographer’s business is to classify such details with a view of making out their distribution in geography and history, and the relations which exist among them” (1958:8). Temporal and spatial distributions of cultural traits may reflect different processes. Some patterns could result from contacts between different cultures and the diffusion of cultural traits. Other patterns could represent parallel resolution of similar problems of existence: fishnets are similar worldwide because there are only certain ways you can catch fish, but patterns could also be reflections of earlier stages of human culture, traits that Tylor named “survivals.” For example, throughout the United States you see signs like “Ye Olde Steak House” or “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe” or (my personal favorite) “Ye Olde Pizza Parlor.” Most Americans will pronounce the word as “yee” and recognize it as an archaic English word but not know that “Y” was a symbol for the “th” sound and thus that “Ye” is simply “The.” The symbol has survived, although its meaning is not really understood. “Ye” is a survival. Tylor defines survivals as “processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which they had their original home and they remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved” (1958:16). We say “God bless you” or “Gesundheit” when someone sneezes because it is a survival, not because we still believe the soul is leaving the body. We celebrate Halloween because it is a survival, not because we are placating the wild spirits on the night before All Souls’ Day. We shake hands as a form of greeting because it is a custom, not to show that we are unarmed. We frequently use words, gestures, sayings, and practices whose original meanings have been lost but in our daily encounters nonetheless survive. Survivals, Tylor argues, are not merely quaint customs, but are the vestiges of previous culture. “Children’s sports, popular sayings, absurd customs, may be practically unimportant, but are not philosophically insignificant bearing as they do on one of the most instructive phases of early culture” (1958:111). Such Edward Tylor / 13 “relics of primitive barbarism” allow the ethnographer to reconstruct earlier cultural patterns and ultimately define the evolution of culture. Human history, Tylor believed, was characterized by progress. In technology, the development of firearms showed a clear progression from matchlock to wheel lock to flintlock to percussion cap to automatic weapon. The order of technological change is obvious: one innovation leads to another. The crossbow is clearly derived from the longbow, and no one would doubt the relationship even without a written record (Tylor 1958:15). Similarly, other dimensions of culture can be seen as having a progressive relationship, demonstrating “that the main tendency from primaeval up to modern times has been from savagery towards civilization” (Tylor 1958:21). At this point Tylor pursues a tenuous line of logic: just as specific cultural traits may be vestigial survivals of an earlier culture, entire societies may reflect earlier stages of human evolution. A society that in the late nineteenth century used stone tools was not simply a society without metal tools, but literally a vestige of prehistory, a “Stone Age” culture. The study of extant “primitive” societies is the investigation of “primaeval monuments of barbaric thought and life” leading to a reconstruction of the stages of evolution through which humans—at least some—have progressed (Tylor 1958). At this point Tylor’s cautious argument swerves into essentially unreflective assumption and prejudice. Civilization, Tylor writes, may be looked upon as the general improvement of mankind by higher organization of the individual and society, to the end of promoting at once man’s goodness, power and happiness. This theoretical civilization does in no small measure correspond with actual civilization, as traced by comparing savagery with barbarism, and barbarism with modern educated life. So far as we take into account only material and intellectual culture, this is especially true. Acquaintance with the physical laws of the world, and the accompanying power of adapting nature to man’s own ends, are, on the whole, lowest among savages, mean among barbarians, and highest among modern educated nations. (1958:27) 14 / Chapter 1 Not surprisingly, Tylor’s “physical laws” are the principles of Western science; alternative epistemologies are merely error-filled remnants of prescientific barbarism. Based on a society’s mastery of “material and intellectual culture,” one can assign a relative rank on an evolutionary scale: “Thus, on the definite basis of compared facts, ethnographers are able to set up at least a rough scale of civilization. Few would dispute that the following races are arranged rightly in order of culture:—Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian” (Tylor 1958:27). Obviously many people would dispute this order, particularly Australians, Tahitians, Aztecs, and Chinese. How can any ranking of societies be untainted by prejudice? The violent convulsions of the past century make it difficult to assume that “modern educated nations” successfully promote humanity’s goodness, power, and happiness. Most modern readers will stumble on the very ideas that Tylor took for granted. Perhaps less obvious is the problem in considering entire societies as evolutionary survivals of earlier stages of human progress. The concept of a survival suggests that a cultural practice—“Ye” or “Gesundheit”—has been carried unchanged from the past into the present, and we can cite examples of such survivals. But it is another matter to assume that an entire human group has been static, a fossilized representative of an earlier cultural stage. Tylor had no reason to think that the histories of the Australians or Tahitians were either brief or static and no basis to believe that such societies reflected earlier forms of human culture rather than just different, contemporary patterns. Simply, this was justified by Tylor’s assumption of human progress. Progress and Anthropology Progress is the backbone of Tylor’s Anthropology, the first textbook on the subject. Written for a popular audience, Tylor deletes most of the references to nonevolutionary processes, focusing instead on the developmental issues of “how mankind came to be as they are, and to live as they do” (1960:1). He emphasizes the progress of cultural development: “History . . . shows arts, sciences, and political institutions beginning in ruder states, and becoming in the course of ages more intelligent, more systematic, more perfectly arranged or organized to answer their Edward Tylor / 15 purposes” (1960:11). In the balance of Anthropology, Tylor summarizes his discussions of language, technology, and religion with a clarity and purpose rarely present in Researches into the Early History of Mankind or Primitive Culture. Tylor’s evolution exhibits an uneven determinism. On the one hand, human history is framed by progress rather than degeneration, by transformation from the simple to complex, and by the trajectory from savagery to civilization. Progress, Tylor believed, did not end in the nineteenth century but was transformed from an unconscious tendency to a conscious tenet: “Acquainted with events and their consequences far and wide over the world, we are able to direct our own course with more confidence toward improvement” (1960:275). Anthropology contributes to human progress, Tylor argued; knowing the course of human history “from the remote past to the present, will not only help us to forecast the future, but may guide us in our duty of leaving the world better than we found it” (1960:275). Tylor writes that “the science of culture is essentially a reformer’s science” (1964:539). Perhaps Tylor’s Quaker liberalism led him to embrace progress and reform (Stocking 1968). Most of Tylor’s adult life was spent in Oxford where he became keeper of the University Museum in 1883. In 1884 Tylor was given a readership in anthropology and held that position until 1896, when he was named the first professor of anthropology. He lectured on the origins of human culture, myth and magic, and the distribution of cultural traits. After the publication of Anthropology, Tylor spent his time teaching and developing academic institutions and anthropological associations rather than writing new works. But Tylor remained extremely influential on the development of British anthropology. He developed potential questions for researchers to ask in the field; influenced scholars like James Frazer, A. C. Haddon, and W. R. Rivers; and gave numerous public lectures. Primitive Culture was reprinted ten times and was translated into Russian, German, French, and Polish during Tylor’s lifetime. Tylor retired from Oxford in 1909 as professor emeritus, and his achievements were recognized by a knighthood in 1912. His final years were marked by decreasing mental clarity, and his friends lamented that Tylor never produced another work as great as Primitive Culture (Lang 1907; Stocking 1968). 16 / Chapter 1 Conclusion Edward Burnett Tylor shaped the development of anthropology as a field of inquiry. Tylor’s comparative method was emulated by many scholars and later fiercely attacked by Franz Boas and other American cultural anthropologists. Tylor’s ideas about the origins of religion would lead others, like James Frazer, to investigate religions as systems of knowledge, and Tylor’s concept of animism would remain a key contribution in comparative studies of religion (Sharpe 1986:56–58). But of his contributions, it was Tylor’s definition of the concept of culture that is most enduring. By arguing for the nonbiological basis of social difference, Tylor stepped away from the racial explanations that characterized Western thought since the ancient Greeks (compare Harris 1968:140–141). By outlining general principles of social life, Tylor gave new directions to comparative inquiry into human life. Finally, in defining the cultural dimension of human existence, Edward Tylor created anthropology, the study of humankind. References Ackerman, Robert 1987 J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bohannan, Paul, and Mark Glazer 1988 High Points in Anthropology. New York: Knopf. Evans-Prichard, Edward 1981 A History of Ethnological Thought. New York: Basic Books. Fortes, Meyer 1969 Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan. Chicago: Aldine. Freire-Marreco, Barbara 1907 A Bibliography of Edward Burnett Tylor. In Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Tylor in Honour of His 75th Birthday, October 2, 1907. W. Rivers, R. Marett, and N. Thomas, eds. Pp. 375–409. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Haddon, A. C. 1910 A History of Anthropology. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Edward Tylor / 17 Harris, Marvin 1968 The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell. Hoenigswald, Henry 1963 On the History of the Comparative Method. Anthropological Linguistics 5:1–11. Kroeber, A. L., and Clyde Kluckhohn 1952 Culture; A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. Cambridge, Mass.: The Museum. Lang, Andrew 1907 Edward Burnett Tylor. In Anthropological Essays Presented to Edward Tylor in Honour of His 75th Birthday, October 2, 1907. W. Rivers, R. Marett, and N. Thomas, eds. Pp. 1–15. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Leopold, Joan 1980 Culture in Comparative and Evolutionary Perspective: E. B. Tylor and the Making of Primitive Culture. Berlin: Reimer. Lowie, Robert 1937 The History of Ethnological Theory. New York: Holt, Farrar & Rinehart. Marett, R. 1936 Tylor. New York: Wiley and Sons. Sharpe, Eric 1986 Comparative Religions: A History. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Press. Stocking, George W., Jr. 1963 Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor and the Uses of Invention. American Anthropologist 65:783–799. 1968 Edward Tylor. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 16. D. L. Sills, ed. Pp. 170–177. New York: Macmillan. 1982 Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1987 Victorian Anthropology. New York: Free Press. Tylor, Edward 1861 Anahuac: Or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern. London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts. 1958 Primitive Culture. New York: Harper & Row. [Originally published 1871.] 1960 Anthropology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. [Originally published 1881.] 1964 Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Originally published 1865.] 2 Lewis Henry Morgan The Evolution of Society X It is commonly alleged that the Victorian evolutionists based their conclusions solely on library research, sheltered from the vagaries of anthropological fieldwork or the complexities of interacting with real people. Bronislaw Malinowski, who revolutionized anthropological fieldwork in the twentieth century (see chapter 10), characterized the nineteenth-century evolutionists as “satisfied in reaching a rigid, self-contained entity” uncomplicated by the messy facts of cultural life (1944:31). Lewis Henry Morgan was the great exception. Drawn to ethnography by his personal and professional ties to the Seneca Nation, a tribe of the Iroquois League, Morgan made extensive visits among various Iroquois groups. His notebooks and journals indicate “an acute and resourceful observer” (White 1959:4). Morgan also studied Native American groups in Kansas and Nebraska (1859–1860), the upper Missouri (1862), and the American Southwest (1878)—trips that involved intensive, if not prolonged, fieldwork. Robert Lowie, an anthropologist and expert on the Crow, remarked that Morgan’s description of the Crow kinship system, though based on a brief trip, “was vastly superior to my own original attempt in this direction” (1936:169–170). Lowie admitted that “my error seems the less pardonable because the essential facts had already been grasped by Morgan.” Combining field observations with extensive crosscultural data, Morgan produced masterful compilations of anthropological information. So is there any truth to Malinowski’s criticism? Perhaps—but in Morgan’s case it is misplaced. It is not that Morgan was un18 Lewis Henry Morgan / 19 concerned with ethnographic data, but that Morgan analyzed those data within a single evolutionary framework. Morgan’s evolutionary approach was attacked by Boas, Kroeber, and others, but it also influenced the materialist approaches of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Leslie White. For example, Engels’s 1884 Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is subtitled “which is based on the Findings of L. H. Morgan in his Ancient Society.” Charles Darwin considered Morgan America’s most eminent social scientist, and even a strict antievolutionist such as Lowie could admire Morgan as “not a flashy intellect, but one of unusual honesty, depth, and tenacity” (1936:181). His career, one biographer suggested, “is one of the strangest in American intellectual history” (Resek 1960:vii). Background Born in 1818, Lewis Henry Morgan was raised on the frontier of western New York and lived his life against the backdrop of manifest destiny, economic expansion and collapse, and the American Civil War. Trained as a lawyer, a Whig in personality and politics, an ardent supporter of the market and the Republic, it is hard to imagine a less likely contributor to Marxist theory than Morgan. Educated at Union College in Schenectady, New York, Morgan embodied progress as an inevitable social process and as a personal code. Admitted to the bar in 1842 but unable to find legal work because of a lingering economic depression, Morgan occupied himself by penning lectures and articles on temperance, parallels between ancient Greece and mid-nineteenthcentury America, and other topics. In late 1844, Morgan opened a legal practice in Rochester, New York. Like many men of his time and class, Morgan joined a social club, the Order of the Gordian Knot, which originally drew on Greco-Roman themes. Yet gradually, the association changed to emphasize uniquely American qualities and was renamed the Grand Order of the Iroquois, a change proposed by Morgan. Morgan became consumed with the study of Iroquois culture, incorporating ethnographic facts into the protocols of the 20 / Chapter 2 club. More serious activities soon followed. In the late 1840s, Morgan immersed himself in Iroquois studies. As he devoted more time to ethnology, Morgan’s legal practice suffered, and Morgan decided to summarize his Iroquois research and then turn back to law. In six months, Morgan completed League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or Iroquois. The League summarized Morgan’s studies about Iroquois religion, domestic architecture, government and social organization, material culture, language, and place-names. Richly illustrated with figures and maps, the monograph presented detailed ethnographic data, such as word lists, place-names, and plans; it remains an invaluable source of information. Morgan’s work received generally, but not universally, positive reviews. The American explorer and ethnologist John Wesley Powell described it as “the first scientific account of an Indian tribe given to the world” (1880:114). In contrast, the historian Francis Parkman argued that Morgan overemphasized the uniqueness of the Iroquois regarding “as the peculiar distinction of the Iroquois, that which is in fact common to many other tribes” (cited in Resek 1960:44). Parkman’s criticism had merit: at this point in his studies, Morgan’s anthropological knowledge was profound but provincial. During the next decade, Morgan attended to law and business, developing a modest fortune based on mining, land, and railroad interests. But in the late 1850s, Morgan returned to ethnology, and specifically to studies of Iroquois kinship and social organizations. Morgan discussed Iroquois kinship in the League, but in 1857 he read an expanded paper, “Laws of Descent of the Iroquois,” to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Iroquois kinship system surprised Morgan. For example, collateral kin were classified as lineal kin—the same terms are used for “father” and “father’s brother,” for “mother” and “mother’s sister,” and for siblings and parallel cousins. Descent among the Seneca was reckoned through the mother’s line, and thus a child is a member of his or her mother’s lineage, not his or her father’s. Morgan further observed that Iroquois political organization was an extension of kinship. “In fact,” Morgan wrote, “their celebrated League was but an elaboration of these Lewis Henry Morgan / 21 relationships into a complex, and even stupendous system of civil polity” (1858:132). In 1859 Morgan discovered that similar kinship systems were used by the Ojibwa of upper Michigan and possibly among the Dakota and Creek (White 1959:6–7). This led Morgan to a new approach to ethnographic data. Rather than solely document the folklore of the Iroquois, Morgan began to explore the relationships between different societies as reflected in shared systems of kinship. Morgan’s greatest discovery, as anthropologist Leslie White put it, was “the fact that customs of designating relatives have scientific significance” (1957:257).That discovery was documented in Morgan’s (1871) magnum opus, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Kinship and Evolution Morgan began a global inquiry about kinship systems. Supported by the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. State Department, Morgan sent a printed questionnaire requesting information about kinship terms to consular officials, missionaries, and scientists around the world. This cross-cultural survey, combined with Morgan’s own field research, resulted in kinship data from 139 different groups in North America, Asia, Oceania, and ancient and modern Europe. (Africa, South America, and Australia remained essentially unknown.) Morgan’s goal was to trace the connections between systems of kinship and to explore their “progressive changes” as man developed through “the ages of barbarism” (Morgan 1871:vi). At this point, Morgan had not outlined the evolutionary scheme that forms the explanatory structure of his Ancient Society. Rather, Morgan approached kinship systems as if they were languages and modeled his analysis on the comparative method (see pp. 11–12). Just as scholars had demonstrated the development and historical relationships between different language families based on linguistic similarities, Morgan argued that “in the systems of relationship of the great families of mankind some of the oldest memorials of human thought and experience are deposited and preserved” (1871:vi). 22 / Chapter 2 Morgan argued that all kinship systems could be divided into two large groups—descriptive systems and classificatory systems. Descriptive systems, such as that used in English, distinguish between lineal relatives and collateral kin; “father” and “father’s brother” are not given the same term. In descriptive systems, there are fewer special kin terms, and these terms are applied to kin who are relatively close to the speaker, referred to as “Ego” (Morgan 1871:468–469). In contrast, classificatory systems treat lineal and collateral kin as if they were the same, distinguishing generation (Ego’s father versus Ego’s father’s father) and gender (Ego’s male cousins versus Ego’s female cousins), but using the same term for “father” and “father’s brother,” for “mother” and “mother’s sister,” and so on, similar to the pattern Morgan first identified among the Iroquois. In his survey, Morgan identified six families of kinship systems—three descriptive ones (Semitic, Aryan, and Uralian) and three classificatory ones (Malayan, Turanian, and Ganowanian). Semitic kin systems were found among Arabs, Hebrews, and Armenians; Aryan systems were used by speakers of Persian, Sanskrit, and all the European language groups, modern and ancient; and Uralian kin systems were found among Turk, Magyar, Finn, and Estonian populations. Of the classificatory systems, “Ganowanian” was a term Morgan invented (after the Seneca words for “bow and arrow”) to cover all native North Americans; Turanian included Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, and other groups of the Indian subcontinent; while Malayan subsumed Hawaiians, Maoris, and all the other Oceanic groups in the sample. These six families of kinship systems may be divided, Morgan wrote, “into two great divisions. Upon one side are the Aryan, Semitic, and Uralian, and upon the other the Ganowanian, the Turanian, and Malayan, which gives nearly the line of demarcation between civilized and uncivilized nations” (1871:469; emphasis added). This is a startling conclusion: the difference between classificatory and descriptive kinship systems marks the distinction between uncivilized and civilized. How could Morgan conclude this? How could he link differences in kinship systems to the levels of cultural advancement? Lewis Henry Morgan / 23 Morgan’s logic was subtle but flawed. First, Morgan argued that kinship systems were based on “natural suggestions,” primitive ruminations “which arise spontaneously in the mind with the exercise of normal intelligence” (1871:472), a point similar to Tylor’s emphasis on the mental construction of culture (see pp. 9–11). Descriptive systems were natural inferences about descent when marriage was based on monogamy. Kinfolk, Morgan argued, would attempt to explain their relationships by referring to a series of married ancestors (1871:472). Like Tylor, Morgan viewed culture as rationalizations about reality made by “savage philosophers,” rationales that could be reconstructed by the ethnographer. But then how do classificatory systems develop? Classificatory systems, Morgan argued, are also inferences from social relationships, but those where marriage is either polygamous, communal, or promiscuous. For example, Morgan discussed the Hawaiian kin classification in which Ego uses the same kin term for “father,” “father’s brother,” and “mother’s brother” and another term for “mother,” “mother’s sister,” and “father’s sister.” Morgan interpreted Hawaiian kinship as reflecting promiscuous intercourse within prescribed limits. The existence of this custom necessarily implies an antecedent condition of promiscuous intercourse, involving the cohabitation of brothers and sisters, and perhaps of parents and child; thus finding mankind in a condition akin to that of the inferior animals, and more intensely barbarous than we have been accustomed to regard as a possible state of man. (1871:481) The classification systems are reasonable inferences based on promiscuous sex and indeterminate parentage (Morgan 1871:482–483). (I refer to my brothers’ children as my children because I have intercourse with my brothers’ wives, and how can I tell whose kid is whose? We’re just one big happy family.) Morgan inferred different social relations from distinct kinship systems and then arranged them on a continuum from “most primitive” to “most civilized,” from promiscuous intercourse to monogamy. But given the “natural stability of domestic institutions” (Morgan 1871:15), why would one system give 24 / Chapter 2 rise to another? Why would classificatory systems evolve into descriptive ones? Why would kinship ever change? Morgan offers a mix of explanations, each envisioning the “reform” of a previous state of society. When communal husbands defend their communal wives from other men, promiscuous society is partially “reformed.” This begins a process that ultimately leads to “the family as it now exists” (Morgan 1871:481), that is, the independent nuclear family based on monogamous marriage. But the real change follows the invention of private property; at this point, Morgan dramatically expands the implications of his study: There is one powerful motive which might under certain circumstances tend to the overthrow of the classificatory form and the substitution of the descriptive, but it would arise after the attainment of civilization. This is the inheritance of estates. Hence the growth of property and the settlement of its distribution might be expected to lead to a more precise discrimination of consanguinity. (1871:14) With the “rise of property, . . . the settlement of its rights, and above all, with the established certainty of its transmission to lineal descendants,” descriptive kin systems evolve, and the nuclear family eventually develops. The family “became organized and individualized by property rights and privileges” (Morgan 1871:492). Social structure and economy are thus linked. The British social anthropologist Meyer Fortes has written of Morgan’s “combination of insight and confusion,” arguing that Morgan’s appeal to the role of private property was “pure guesswork—a projection of his private values as an American of his day in a society undergoing rapid economic expansion” (1969:32). Rife with assumption and reliant on conjectural history, Morgan had no evidence that Hawaiian kin terms were remnants of a promiscuous horde or that “barbarous nations” were ignorant of inherited property (Morgan 1871:492). Yet, Morgan was among the first to explore the importance of kin systems and their relationship to other aspects of human life, such as economy and politics. What began as a method for understanding the historical connections between societies was Lewis Henry Morgan / 25 transformed into a scheme for understanding the development of all human society, the framework he elaborated in Ancient Society. Ancient Society The central tenets of Morgan’s classic are stated in the opening paragraph: The latest investigations respecting the early condition of the human race are tending to the conclusion that mankind commenced their career at the bottom of the scale and worked their way up from savagery to civilization through the slow accumulation of experimental knowledge. As it is undeniable that portions of the human family have existed in a state of savagery, other portions in a state of barbarism, and still other portions in a state of civilization, it seems equally so that these three distinct conditions are connected with each other in a natural as well as necessary sequence of progress. (1877:3) Thus the different portions of humanity—whether in Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, or the Americas—represented different points along a common line of progress. “The history of the human race,” Morgan observed, “is one in source, one in experience, and one in progress” (1877:vi). Savagery in one culture, barbarism in another, and civilization in a third were not the result of different races being genetically condemned to backwardness or development; they were simply societies perched at different stages on a common progression of cultural evolution. Morgan writes, It may be remarked finally that the experience of mankind has run in nearly uniform channels; that human necessities in similar condition have been substantially the same; and that the operations of the mental principle have been uniform in virtue of the specific identity of the brain of all the races of mankind. (1877:8) For Morgan the terms “savagery,” “barbarism,” and “civilization” represented well-defined stages of progress measured 26 / Chapter 2 by four sets of cultural achievements: (1) inventions and discoveries, (2) the idea of government, (3) the organization of the family, and (4) the concept of property. The lines of progress were clearest in the field of inventions and discoveries because certain inventions necessarily preceded others (fire before pottery, hunting before pastoralism). Therefore, Morgan chose technological developments as the primary but not sole “test of progress” marking the different stages of cultural evolution. Morgan divided the earliest stage, or “ethnical period,” into “Lower Status of Savagery,” which began with the earliest humans and ended with knowledge of fire and fishing; “Middle Status of Savagery,” which began with fire and fishing and lasted until the invention of the bow and arrow; and “Upper Status of Savagery,” which began with the bow and arrow but ended with the development of pottery. The invention of pottery marked the divide between savagery and barbarism. Lower Status of Barbarism began with pottery and ended with the domestication of animals in the Old World and the irrigated agriculture and substantial architecture in the New World. Those developments marked the Middle Status of Barbarism, which lasted until the invention of smelting iron ore. The Upper Status of Barbarism began with iron smelting and continued until the development of a phonetic alphabet, which marks the development of “Civilization,” a stage that continues, without additional subdivisions, to this day. Morgan argued that the “successive arts of subsistence” were the foundation on which “human supremacy on the earth depended,” suggesting that “the great epochs of human progress have been identified, more or less directly, with the enlargement of the sources of subsistence” (1877:19). This materialist basis of cultural evolution has been considered Morgan’s principal legacy by subsequent evolutionists such as Marx, Engels, Leslie White (chapter 13), Marvin Harris (chapter 15), and Eleanor Leacock (chapter 16). And yet, Ancient Society is not a coherently materialist theory since it incorporates mentalistic explanations for changes in other arenas, such as government, family, and property (see Service 1985:48–53). Morgan’s discussion of “Growth of the Idea of Government” comprises 60 percent of Ancient Society. By “government,” Mor- Lewis Henry Morgan / 27 gan referred to what modern anthropologists call social organization and political organization. Morgan explicitly distinguished social order based on kin ties (societas) from social order based on political ties (civitas): The experience of mankind . . . has developed but two plans of government, using plan in its scientific sense. Both were definite and systematic organizations of society. The first and most ancient was social organization, founded upon gentes, phratries and tribes. The second and latest in time was a political organization founded upon territory and upon property. Under the first a gentile society was created, in which the government dealt with persons through their relation to a gens and tribe. These relations were purely personal. Under the second a political society was created, in which the government dealt with persons through their relations to territory, e.g. the township, the county, and the state. These relations were purely territorial. The two plans were fundamentally different. One belongs to ancient society, the other to modern. (1877:62) Morgan briefly described the organization of society based on sex, reprising his reconstruction of the communal and brother-sister families, and then proceeded to his principal concern: the nature of the gens or, in modern anthropological terms, the lineage. In Morgan’s terms, the gens is a named social group of consanguineal kin (that is, kin related by “blood,” not marriage) descended from a common ancestor (1877:63). Whether matrilineal or patrilineal, the gens (plural: gentes) was the “fundamental basis of ancient society” found in cultures around the world and spanning the ethnical periods from savagery to civilization (Morgan 1877:64). When bound together into groups of two or more gentes—which Morgan called “phratries,” but today are known as “clans”—such kin-based social institutions provided the structure for the distribution of rights, property, and political offices. When a group of gentes or phratries also had a single name for the entire group, spoke a single dialect, and had a supreme government and an identified territory, then social order had reached the level of the tribe (Morgan 1877:102–103). In turn, when tribes coalesced into a single entity, a nation existed. Thus, Morgan argued that government evolved 28 / Chapter 2 from promiscuous horde to brother-sister group families, from group families to gens, and then progressively through stages of phratry, tribe, and nation. Morgan’s scheme for the evolution of the family largely restates his discussions in Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family, but his treatment of property is more developed in Ancient Society. Arguing that the growth of property would “keep pace with the progress of inventions and discoveries” and that the possession and inheritance of property was regulated by progressive forms of social organization, Morgan directly linked concepts of property with technological and social evolution (1877:525–526). During the stage of savagery, property was minimal and not inherited since it was buried as grave goods when the owner died. In the Lower Status of Barbarism, property increased in quantity but was distributed among the gens on a member’s death without specific inheritance by spouses (Morgan 1877:530–531). By the Middle Status of Barbarism and with the development of agriculture, property increased in quantity and variety. New relationships developed between people and land, such as forms of communal land ownership in which individuals had the right to use, but not sell, it (Morgan 1877:535–536). By the end of the Upper Status of Barbarism, two forms of land tenure evolved—state ownership and individual ownership—which became well established by the ethnical period of Civilization (Morgan 1877:552). But how did Morgan determine the relationship between ethnical periods, essentially defined by technological inventions, and forms of government and property? Basically in two ways. First, he proposed a plausible but conjectural history, arguing that different forms of social organization or of property were necessarily based on earlier, simpler forms in the same way that metallurgy presumed the prior invention of fire. Second, Morgan assumed that primitive societies were representative of earlier stages of social evolution, producing a relative ordering of social and property forms. With the exception of the Lower Status of Savagery, for which “no exemplification of tribes of mankind in this condition remained to the historical period,” primitive, non-Western societies represented the stages in cultural evolution, a point Tylor also made (see pp. 9–11) and Lewis Henry Morgan / 29 that was later echoed by the French social theorist Émile Durkheim (see chapter 4). Morgan held that the domestic institutions of the barbarous, and even of the savage ancestors of mankind, are still exemplified in portions of the human family with such completeness that, with the exception of the strictly primitive period [i.e., Lower Savagery], the several stages of this progress are tolerably well preserved. They are seen in the organization of society upon the basis of sex, then upon the basis of kin, and finally upon the basis of territory; through the successive forms of marriage and of the family with the systems of consanguinity thereby created; and through house life and architecture; and through progress in usages with respect to the ownership and inheritance of property. (1877:7) Thus, an ethnographic study of the Australian aborigines or the Iroquois or ancient Romans was not a study of different cultures, but of representatives of specific stages of cultural evolution. Civilized nations had progressed through similar stages and profited by the “heroic exertions and the patient toil” of barbarian and savage ancestors, which was “part of the plan of the Supreme Intelligence to develop a barbarian out of a savage, and a civilized man out of this barbarian” (Morgan 1877:554). Conclusion In many ways Ancient Society was Morgan’s most important work and least convincing; it was influential and enraging. As noted above, Morgan’s statements about the relationships between property relationships and social order were developed by Engels, and through Engels’s work Morgan’s ideas were spread worldwide. In response, Franz Boas would mount a severe critique of Morgan’s and Tylor’s “comparative method,” attacking the idea that humanity had passed through unilineal, progressive stages (see pp. 40–42). In the 1940s, Morgan’s emphasis on the technological realm was recast by Leslie White (see chapter 13) into a theory of cultural evolution; in fact, Morgan never seemed certain that “the arts of subsistence” were the causal determinants that White 30 / Chapter 2 proposed, nor does White’s work contain the mentalist elements found throughout Ancient Society suggesting that cultural developments were produced by individual will and rational choice (Colson 1974:10–11). Though not without flaws, Morgan’s contributions to anthropology remain essential and permanent. First, Morgan outlined the importance of the study of kinship systems, recognizing the significance of classificatory systems, the role of lineal descent groups in social organization, and the complementary patterns of kin-based political orders and those based on non-kin relationships. Second, Morgan conducted research that attempted to be systematic and global, anticipating by a century large-scale cross-cultural studies such as the Human Relations Area Files. Finally, Morgan attempted to organize anthropological data in terms of an explicit framework of cultural evolution rather than simply treat cultural differences as ethnographic curios. Morgan died on December 17, 1881; he was sixty-three years old. His longtime friend, the Reverend Joshua McIlvaine (to whom Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family is dedicated), delivered the benediction, but only after first presenting an analysis of the classificatory kinship system. It was a fitting tribute to Morgan’s lifework, a body of work in which his confidence in reason’s ability to discover the laws of nature is present on every page. References Colson, Elizabeth 1974 Tradition and Contract: The Problem of Order. Chicago: Aldine. Fortes, Meyer 1969 Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan. Chicago: Aldine. Lowie, Robert 1936 Lewis H. Morgan in Historical Perspective. In Essays in Anthropology: Presented to A. L. Kroeber in Celebration of His Sixtieth Birthday, June 11, 1936. R. Lowie, ed. Pp. 169–181. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lewis Henry Morgan / 31 Malinowski, Bronislaw 1944 A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Morgan, Lewis H. 1858 Laws of Descent among the Iroquois. Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for August 1857 11:132–148. Cambridge, Mass. 1871 Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 17. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. [Facsimile reprint 1970. The Netherlands: Anthropological Publications.] 1877 Ancient Society; Or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. New York: Henry Holt. [Facsimile reprint 1978. Palo Alto: New York Labor News.] 1901 League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee or Iroquois. Edited and annotated by H. Lloyd. New York: Dodd, Mead. [Originally published 1851; facsimile reprint 1966. New York: Burt Franklin.] 1959 The Indian Journals, 1859–1862. Edited and with an introduction by Leslie White. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1965 Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Originally published in 1881 in Contributions to North American Ethnology. Vol. 4. Washington, D.C.] Powell, John Wesley 1880 Sketch of Lewis Henry Morgan. Popular Science Monthly 18:114–121. Resek, Carl 1960 Lewis Henry Morgan: American Scholar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Service, Elman 1985 A Century of Controversy: Ethnological Issues from 1860 to 1960. New York: Academic Press. White, Leslie 1937 Extracts from the European Travel Journal of Lewis H. Morgan. Rochester Historical Society Publications 16:221–390. 1942 Lewis H. Morgan’s Journal of a Trip to Southwestern Colorado and New Mexico, 1878. American Antiquity 8:1–26. 1944 Morgan’s Attitude toward Religion and Science. American Anthropologist 46:218–230. 1951 Lewis H. Morgan’s Western Field Trips. American Anthropologist 53:11–18. 32 / Chapter 2 1957 How Morgan Came to Write Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity. Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 42:257–268. 1959 Lewis Henry Morgan: His Life and Researches. In The Indian Journals, 1859–1862. L. White, ed. Pp. 3–12. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 3 Franz Boas Culture in Context X Franz Boas (1858–1942) shaped the direction of twentiethcentury American anthropology. His former student, Alfred Kroeber, wrote shortly after Boas’s death that “the world lost its greatest anthropologist and America one of its most colorful intellectual figures” (1943:5). Echoing this assessment thirty years later, George Stocking Jr. wrote, “There is no real question that [Boas] was the most important single force in shaping American anthropology in the first half of the 20th century” (1974:1). Boas’s influence was institutional, intellectual, and personal. Like Tylor and Durkheim, Boas played a pivotal role in moving anthropology into academia, in establishing associations and journals, and by creating essential networks of institutional support from the public, policy makers, and other scientists. Boas defined the principal fields of inquiry that American anthropologists would pursue. His wide interests—spanning from biological anthropology to linguistics—gave American anthropology a topical breadth that is not really present in Great Britain or France, where anthropology is preeminently social anthropology, and archaeology and biological anthropology are separate fields. The fact that American anthropology has included sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, physical anthropology, and archaeology—the so-called four fields approach—is partly a reflection of Boas’s broad interests. Boas created an anthropology very different from those of Morgan, Tylor, or Durkheim. Rather than assuming that cultural practices were explicable only in reference to broad evolutionary 33 34 / Chapter 3 stages, Boas argued that they were understandable only in specific cultural contexts. For example, Boas and the anthropologist O. T. Mason engaged in a spirited debate about the organization of ethnographic materials in museum displays; it is an unlikely subject for a fierce debate, but it produced an illuminating exchange. Mason, an evolutionist, proposed organizing ethnographic displays in the Smithsonian Institution by artifact classes—pottery, stone tools, musical instruments—regardless of their place of origin, displaying what Mason called “similarities in the products of industry.” Mason wanted to illustrate the evolutionary parallels in human nature, arguing that cultural products stemmed from similar, universal causes. Boas’s response was quick and telling. Boas contended that cultural traits first must be explained in terms of specific cultural contexts rather than by broad reference to general evolutionary trends. “In the collections of the national museum,” Boas wrote, “the marked character of the North-West American tribes is almost lost, because the objects are scattered in different parts of the building and are exhibited among those from other tribes” (1887:486). Instead of being presented in technological “stages,” ethnographic collections should be “arranged according to tribes, in order to teach the peculiar style of each group. The art and characteristic style of a people can be understood only by studying its productions as a whole.” Over the next decade, Boas expanded this critique into a larger-scale attack on the theories of Morgan, Tylor, and other evolutionists. Boas’s basic approach (culture was to be understood from detailed studies of specific cultures) was passed on to the first cohort of professional American anthropologists, individuals who would literally shape the field of anthropological inquiry: Alfred Kroeber (chapter 5), Ruth Benedict (chapter 6), Edward Sapir (chapter 7), Margaret Mead (chapter 8), and many others. In turn, Boas’s students, as anthropologist Marvin Harris wrote, “set forth the main lines of development of anthropological research and instruction at crucial institutions around the country” (1968:251). Thus Boas’s personal contacts with his students extended his intellectual influence and shaped the institutions of American anthropology. Franz Boas / 35 And yet, as Kroeber noted, “It has long been notoriously difficult to convey the essence of Boas’ contribution in anthropology to non-anthropologists” (1943:24; a task at which Kroeber also failed). This difficulty, and the fact that Boas played a pivotal role in the establishment of American anthropology, requires an examination of Boas’s essential contribution. Background The founder of American anthropology was born in northwestern Germany into a prosperous Jewish family that was committed to progressive education and politics. He wrote that he was raised “in a German home in which the ideals of the Revolution of 1848 were a living force,” referring to the European revolutions that fought for universal suffrage, freedoms of press and assembly, and other liberal democratic reforms—revolts ultimately repressed by the military and monarchy. Of his parents’ Judaism, Boas wrote, “My father had retained an emotional affection for the ceremonial of his parental home, without allowing it to influence his intellectual freedom,” and concluded, “My parents had broken through the shackles of dogma” (1939:19). By his own account, these influences shaped Boas’s anthropology and his social activism. Boas was educated in his hometown and then went off to study physics, mathematics, and geography in a string of universities. “My university studies were a compromise,” Boas recalled, between an “emotional interest in the phenomena of the world,” which led to geography, and an “intellectual interest” in the formal analyses of mathematics and physics (1939:20). His doctoral dissertation was on the color of water, a topic emphasizing physics over geography; he received his doctorate in 1881 at the age of twenty-three. Kroeber contended that Boas’s education “as a physicist heavily determined his whole intellectual career,” creating his “gifts for dealing with abstract form or structure and of intellectual precision and rigor” (1943:7). After a year of military service, Boas was at loose ends; he wanted to study human societies but lacked financial support. After a string of setbacks, in June 1883 Boas joined a German 36 / Chapter 3 expedition to the Arctic to pursue research on the Inuit in order “to discover how far one can get, by studying a very special and not simple case, in determining the relationship between the life of a people and environment” (Boas 1974:44). Supported by writing freelance articles for a Berlin newspaper, Boas spent a year on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Traveling by dogsled during the Arctic winter in !50-degree temperatures, Boas charted the Baffin coastline, collected Inuit legends, and observed rites and ceremonies. Ultimately, Boas was unsatisfied with his ethnographic research, calling it “shallow” and a “disappointment”; nevertheless, he recognized that the year in the Arctic “had a profound influence upon the development of my views . . . because it led me away from my former interests and toward the desire to understand what determines the behavior of human beings” (1939:20–21). Boas returned from the Arctic to uncertain prospects, unsuccessfully applying for jobs and fellowships in the United States, then working in Germany for eighteen months before returning to America. In the fall of 1886 he worked for the Canadian Geological Survey in southern British Columbia conducting a brief ethnographic survey in the vicinity of Vancouver Island (Rohner and Rohner 1969). Returning to New York in 1887, Boas accepted a job as assistant editor of Science, and with some financial security, married and became an American citizen. From his position at Science, Boas extended his influence almost immediately. In 1888 the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) asked Boas to collect ethnographic data on the Northwest Coast. After a successful trip, the BAAS supported a second field trip to the Northwest Coast in 1889 in which Boas studied native languages, made anthropometric measurements, and investigated social organizations of the Kwakiutl and Tsimshian (Boas 1974). In 1889 Boas obtained a teaching position at the newly founded Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where the first American Ph.D. in anthropology was granted under his leadership in 1892 (Kroeber 1943:12). In 1892 financial turmoil at Clark University led to a massive faculty resignation. Boas also left to join the anthropological staff at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition who were working on displaying Native American materials. A Franz Boas / 37 short-term position at the newly established Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago was followed by part-time work for the Smithsonian, another field trip to the Northwest Coast sponsored by the BAAS, and unfulfilled hopes of a position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. This professional turmoil was deepened by the death of his child (Hyatt 1990:33). It was a dark and difficult time. Boas’s letters from the field oscillate from quick descriptions of research accomplished to depressed accounts of financial insecurities, underscored by a deep longing for his wife and surviving children. But in 1895 things began to change. John Wesley Powell offered Boas an editorial position at the Smithsonian’s Bureau of American Ethnology, which galvanized the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) into making a counterproposal that Boas accepted. Appointed to the AMNH in December 1895, Boas finally obtained a permanent position. “No longer concerned with economic survival,” Hyatt writes, “he began to concentrate on the science of anthropology and its many applications” (1990:35). From his base in New York, Boas began to influence American anthropology. In May 1896 he was hired as lecturer in physical anthropology at Columbia College and was appointed professor in 1899. He maintained his position at the AMNH throughout this period and became curator of anthropology in 1901, weaving close ties between the AMNH and Columbia. Boas seized his opportunity with extraordinary energy and expertise. Harris, a prolific scholar in his own right (see chapter 15), wrote, Boas’ accomplishments as a teacher, administrator, researcher, founder and president of societies, editor, lecturer, and traveler are exhausting to behold. To anyone who has ever worried about publishing or perishing, the fact that all this activity was accompanied by the publication of a torrent of books and articles is well nigh terrifying. (1968:252) From 1895 till his death in 1942, Boas’s résumé becomes a blur of publications and accomplishments, almost as if he wanted to compensate for the frustrations of his early career. 38 / Chapter 3 Boas became full professor at Columbia University in 1899 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1900. He helped establish the American Anthropological Association and revived the journal American Anthropologist. Boas founded the International Journal of American Linguistics in 1917, which continues to be published; helped establish an archaeological field school in Mexico; and presided over a series of field research projects, particularly in the Northwest Coast, while continuing to publish constantly. Boas authored six books and more than seven hundred articles; his bibliography records his diverse research (Andrews 1943). Most numerous are his articles and reports on his investigations in the Arctic and Northwest Coast; Boas’s publications on the Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, and other Northwest Coast societies total over ten thousand printed pages (Codere 1959). Boas made major contributions in the study of language. For four decades Boas taught two seminars at Columbia University: one on statistical methods, the other on North American Indian languages. Boas published extensively on Northwest Coast Indian languages and established a research agenda for recording Native American languages (Boas 1966d). Third, Boas’s work in anthropometry was a major field of endeavor with significant implications for public policy. In Boas’s time, race was considered a fixed biological category; individual races were thought to have specific properties—physical, mental, and cultural. Many formal studies defined racial variation based on cranial measurements rather than “obvious” characteristics like skin color. Skull form, it was thought, was a more stable property and thus a better basis for defining racial categories, yet the stability of cranial form had been assumed, never demonstrated. In 1911 Boas published the results of a massive study of the head form of 17,821 immigrants and conducted sophisticated statistical analyses of the data (remember, this was done without computers). Boas showed that cranial form was anything but stable, with significant differences between immigrant parents and their American-born children (Boas 1966b; Gravlee, Bernard, and Leonard 2003). Boas demonstrated that traits thought to be fixed (genetically inherited) traits were actually modified by environment. And if such a stable racial trait as cra- Franz Boas / 39 nial form was influenced by environment, then all other racial classifications and characterizations became suspect. In 1931 Boas gave his presidential address, entitled “Race and Progress,” to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Boas summarized four decades of research, applying it to America’s most cancerous social problem, racism. Throughout his career, Boas attacked racist pseudoscientific studies linking race and intelligence (Baker 1998:120–126). Arguing that variations among individuals were greater than those between races, Boas concluded that “biological differences between races are small. There is no reason to believe that one race is by nature so much more intelligent, endowed with great will power, or emotionally more stable than another” (1931:6). Not only was Boas offended by bad science, but he drew on his personal experience of anti-Semitism; these factors produced an informed and fervent rejection of racism. Boas was involved in the establishment of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and wrote about race in popular magazines as well as in scientific journals (Hyatt 1990:83–99). His 1931 speech was a central statement about a long battle against racism. Boas argued that because of intermarriage and mating, there were no biologically “pure” races and that, contrary to a then common view, the “mixture” of races had no harmful consequences. Further, variations between individuals withi...
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