started as a hobby of wealthy scholars in the 19th century wrote travel diaries

armchair anthropologists – read other peoples accounts of their travels and commented on the other cultural systems

19th century anthropologists constructed stages of cultural progress to explain cultural differences called unilineal evolution (Lewis Henry Morgan)

savagery → barbarism → civilization

Looked for the past influences on a particular culture that shaped its trajectory

Emphasized that each culture has its own unique past and must be understood on its own terms

Need more information and must go out an collect own data, not read others accounts of their experiences because they are incomplete and biased and written by untrained casual observers

Franz Boas

Cultural features should be explained in terms of the function they perform

How ideas and actions contribute to the well being of the individual or the persistence of the society as a whole

Bronslow Malinowski Set forth the rules still followed form doing

fieldwork in the early 20th century – participant observation

Focused on the harnessing of energy Increases in the amount of energy harnessed

would lead to cultural complexity

Leslie White – studied technological progress throughout

human history

Julian Steward – though local environment and technology

together shaped a culture

Modern anthropologist utilize a variety of perspectives in approaching culture

These can be divided into 2 categories – scientific and humanistic

Scientific approaches believe that culture can be explained as an adaptation to the natural and social environment (cultural materialism)

Humanistic approaches emphasize the uniqueness of culture and resist generalizing about human culture as a whole

Focus on description and interpretation instead of explanation

Ideational perspective Focus on ideas, symbols, and mental

structures as driving forces in shaping human behavior.

Adaptive perspective Isolates technology, ecology,

demography, and economics as the key factors defining human behavior.

This perspective emphasizes ideas, thoughts, and shared knowledge and sees symbols and their meanings as crucial to shaping human behavior.

According to the ideational view of culture, one cannot comprehend human behavior without understanding the symbolic code for that behavior.

An adaptive perspective is primarily concerned with “culture as a system.”

Social and cultural differences are viewed as responses to the material parameters of life, such as food, shelter, and reproduction.

Human behaviors are seen as linked systemically, such that change in one area (technology) will result in change in another area (social organization).

The End