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Medieval scholars and explorers, who traveled the world to develop new trading partnerships, continued to keep accounts of cultures they encountered. -
Herodotus traveled to these places to understand the origins of conflict between Greeks and Persians. focused on using reason and inquiry to understand societies. -
Colonial scholars studied these cultures as “human primitives,” inferior to the advanced societies of Europe.
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Modern anthropology as an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment (1715–89)
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Societies should pass through different states of development to stay in one of them, being the highest level of development associated with the European societies of the time. Main representatives:
Edward B. Tylor:
Primitive culture (1871), anthropology (1881) Lewis H. Morgan:
Primitive Society (1877) -
Every culture or society is consequence of their own process through their history, being the sum of the aspects built through the time. Evolution is not a simple process. Main representatives:
Franz Boas:
Race, language and culture (1910), the mind of primitive man (1911) -
By 20th-century, ethnographic work has been conducted on a wider variety of human societies, from university hierarchies to high-school sports teams to residents of retirement homes.
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Anthropology emerged as a serious professional and scientific discipline beginning in the 1920s -
Society can be studied by their social institutions, that maintain the social cohesion. Main representatives: Bronislaw Malinowski:
The Argonauts of the western pacific (1922), a scientific theory of culture. -
Topics like childhood and sex education forms the adult personality, when this is studied we can access to the knowledge of the society. Main representatives: Margaret mead:
adolescence, sex and culture in samoa (1928), People and places (1959) Ruth Benedict:
Patterns of culture (1934), The men and the culture (1934) -
Cultural evolution is determined by the amount of energy that can be captured and put in execution by person. Main representatives: Leslie white:
The evolution of culture (1959) Julian Steward:
Theory of culture change (1955) -
Based on crux lies in the existence of a general structure (symphony) that is the same for every culture but among them there are different melodies, the particular interpretations. Main representatives: Levi-Strauss:
Structural anthropology (1958) -
Cultures adquieres their elements by imitation, being the most ancient cultures the centers of origin that have been imitated or adapted.