Franz Boas - The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology

Introduction

  • Anthropology has revealed common fundamental traits in human societies globally.
  • This suggests laws governing societal development applicable to all societies.
  • Early anthropology focused on historical problems like tracing relationships between people.
  • Modern anthropology focuses on discovering the laws that govern the growth of society.

Change of Method

  • Early views considered similarities in culture as proof of historical connection, or common origin.
  • The new school interprets similarities as results of the uniform working of the human mind.
  • Predominantly, anthropologists view that historical connections are insignificant in results and theoretical importance compared to the uniform laws governing the human mind

Universal Ideas

  • Observations indicate similar ethical phenomena among diverse peoples.
  • Metaphysical notions can be reduced to universal types, similar across societies, laws, and inventions.
  • Complex customs appear among tribes without evidence of common historical origin.
  • Finding analogous traits among distant people doesn't imply a common historical source but independent origins.

Questions to ask

  • What is their origin?
  • How do they assert themselves in various cultures?

Variations

  • Variations are due to external (environmental) or internal (psychological) conditions.
  • Understanding how these factors modify elementary ideas helps understand the laws governing culture.
  • Anthropologists classify variants of ethnological phenomena based on external or internal causes to find correlated conditions.

Influence of External Factors

  • Influence of geographical environment on culture.
  • Effects of population density and simple social causes.

Influence of Psychical Factors

  • Isolation of suggestion and hypnotism in cultures.
  • Studies on mutual relations of tribes reveal cultural element assimilation and rejection.

Origin of Universal Ideas

  • Discovering the causes that have led to the formation of ideas is the most difficult problem of anthropology.
  • Bastian suggest the human mind spontaneously invents or accepts ideas.

Examples

  • The location of the land of shadows in the west suggests localization where the sun vanish.
  • Considering animals as gifted with human qualities suggests that the analogy between animal and human qualities has led to the generalization that all qualities of animals are human.

Development

  • If an ethnological phenomenon develops independently, its development has been the same everywhere.
  • Sameness indicates the human mind obeys the same laws everywhere; however, this assumes different historical developments can't lead to the same results.

Examples of independent development

  • Totemic clans may arise by association of independent clans, disintegration or division.
  • Geometrical designs in primitive art originate from naturalistic forms, technical motives, or symbols.
  • Masks are used for deceiving spirits, personifying a spirit, commemoration, or theatrical performances.

Key point

  • The occurrence of the same phenomenon is not always due to the same causes.
  • Demand investigation of the causes and restrict comparisons to phenomena with the effects of the same causes.
  • Before comparisons, the comparability of the material must be proved.

Evolution of Human Society

  • Universal features of culture imply a grand system, with variations as minor details.
  • This assumes the same features developed from the same causes, leading to the conclusion that there is one grand system according to which mankind has developed everywhere.

Anthropological Research

  • Aims to discover the processes by which certain stages of culture have developed.
  • Customs and beliefs themselves are not the ultimate objects of research.
  • Seeks to learn the reasons why such customs and beliefs exist - the history of their development.

Method

  • Compares variations to find the common psychological cause, but this method has a fundamental objection.

Safer Method

  • Detailed study of customs in relation to the total culture of the tribe and geographic distribution.
  • Reveals environmental conditions, psychological factors, or historical connections shaping culture.
  • Reconstructs the history of growth of ideas more accurately than comparative methods.

Historical Method of Anthropology

  • Demand continuity of distribution as one of the essential conditions for proving historical connection, and the assumption of lost connecting links must be applied most sparingly.
  • Acknowledge the results obtained by comparative studies.
  • There has been a time of isolation during which the principal traits of diverse cultures developed according to the previous culture and the environment of the tribes.

Results of the Historical Method

  • Histories of the cultures of diverse tribes.
  • General laws can be found by comparing histories of growth.
  • Historical inquiry tests the comparability of collected material.

Discoveries from Historical Method

  • Certain phases of culture have sprung from one source, illuminating vast portions of early history.

Comparative and Historical Methods

  • The ability to discover the processes which in definite cases led to the development of certain customs.
  • Compare processes of growth, discovered via studies of small geographical areas, not just results.

Methods of Ethnology

  • During the second half of the last century evolutionary thought held almost complete sway and investigators were under the spell of the idea of a general, uniform evolution of culture in which all parts of mankind participated.