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30 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Why was Darwin’s theory extraordinarily important?
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-It was scientifically convincing explanation of the ways in which life-forms could change over time and new species emerge. (Therefore it is the basis of much of modern biology).
-Darwin’s theory was a powerful social metaphor (it was capable of explaining how it was possible to have both progress and social disruption: progress achieved through struggle and conflict). |
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Natural Selection
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-More organisms were born than survived to adulthood and speculated about the factors that determined which individuals survived and which did not.
-Hypothesized that some variations better than others (they led those who possessed them to more successfully compete for food, shelter, and mates). -Individuals would produce more offspring who themselves survived and reproduced. |
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What analogy did Spencer use?
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Organic analogy
-Spencer compared human societies to biological organisms. Used this analogy to link biological and social evolution, implying both followed the same processes and direction. -Suggested that social evolution could be studied in the same way as biological evolution. -It implied that society was composed of an interconnected set of organs. These organs could be accurately identified and their role and function in maintaining society described. -These ideas, in various forms, set the agenda for much of anthropology in the century following the publication of “The Social Organism”. |
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What famous phrase did Spencer coin?
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"Survival of the Fittest"
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Social Darwinism
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-Social Darwinists interpreted natural selection to mean that if evolution was progress and only the fittest survived, then it was the right of Western powers to dominate those who were less technologically advanced.
-The domination of one society by another proved its superiority and its advanced level of fitness. Conquest of an inferior society by a superior one was the result of the action of natural law and hence was not only moral but imperative. -Convenient philosophy for the rapidly expanding European powers and was used to justify their imperialism, colonialism, and racism. |
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What aspects of culture did Tylor focus on?
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-(Both Morgan and) Tylor were known as unilineal evolutionists because of the belief that there were universal evolutionary stages of cultural development that characterized transition from primitive to complex societies.
-Tylor’s work concentrated on the idea that one could trace the evolution of a society by studying “survivals,” a form of cultural remnant. He is best known for his theory of the evolution of religion. |
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What are Morgan’s 3 grand stages?
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He divided human cultural development into three stages:
-Savagery -Barbarism -Civilization •Each stage being divided again into lower, middle, and upper phases -Morgan accepted Spencer’s idea that evolution proceeded from simple to complex and, in Ancient Society, outlined this progress by correlating his states of social evolution with specific developments in family structure, subsistence, and technology. |
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What are Tylor’s two key ideas?
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-He argued that one could reconstruct earlier stages of cultural evolution by studying “survivals.”
-Tylor believed that virtually everything in contemporary society that did not have a function he understood was a survival from a previous stage of cultural evolution. • Therefore, one could learn something about past stages of a society’s development through the study of these cultural leftovers. -Second idea concerned the evolution of religion, Tylor’s special interest and the subject of the second volume of Primitive Culture. He postulated that the most basic concept underlying the invention of religion was animism. He outlined a developmental sequence for religion that began with animism, evolved into polytheism, and finally progressed into what he viewed as the highest form of religious belief, enlightened monotheism. |
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Psychic unity of humankind
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-Both Morgan and Tylor believed in the fundamental similarity of human thought around the world a concept known as the psychic unity of humankind.
-This belief was the foundation for their unilineal evolutionary views and supported their contention that societies progressed through parallel (but independent) evolutionary stages. |
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Comparative method as it relates to 19th Century thinking?
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-Unilineal evolutionary perspective of the late nineteenth century revolves around several related themes. Generally supposed that all societies evolved through the same stages and were progressing toward civilization in its highest currently extant form but would be surpassed by future societies.
-The whole perspective was rooted in the comparative method. In the nineteenth century the term comparative method referred to the belief that contemporary “primitive” cultures were like “living fossils,” similar to early stages of current advanced cultures. -Beliefs in the comparative method, psychic unity, parallel evolution, and progress were woven together to support the unilineal view of social evolution. |
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What are the stages of transition for the history of Europe, according to Marx and Engels?
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-Marx and Engels viewed social change as an evolutionary process marked by revolution in which new levels of social political and economic development were achieved through class struggle. They viewed history as a sequence of evolutionary stages, each marked by a unique mode of production. Just as unilineal evolutionary theorists traced the social evolution of humans from savagery to civilization, Marx and Engels saw the history of Europe in terms of the transition from feudalism, to capitalism, and on to communism-which they believed was the next inevitable step in the process.
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Founder of anthropology as a distinct academic discipline.
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-Tylor is considered by many a founding figure of the science of social, or cultural, anthropology, and his scholarly works are seen as important and lasting contributions to the discipline of Anthropology that was beginning to take shape in the 19th century. He believed that research into the history and prehistory of man could be used as a basis for the reform of British society.
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Tylor is a unilineal evolutionist.
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-Unilineal evolutionism generally supposed that all societies evolved through the same stages and were progressing toward civilization in its highest currently extant form but would be surpassed by future societies.
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Tylor’s definition of culture
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-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.
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Did Tylor believe there were laws of human thought and actions analogous to those in physical sciences?
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I think he does believe that there are laws of human thought and action. He seems to dislike the thought that there are scientists who base everything off of free will.
-“Other obstacles to the investigation of laws of human nature arise from considerations of metaphysics and theology. The popular notion of free human will involves not only freedom to act in accordance with motive but also a power of breaking loose from continuity and acting without cause…None will deny that, as each man knows by the evidence of his own consciousness, definite and natural cause does, to a great extent, determine human action.” |
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Doctrine of survivals.
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These are processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved.
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Morgan is...
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a unilineal evolutionist.
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What is Morgan's view on degenerationism (theory of degradation)?
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-Degenerationsim: provided Europeans with a biblically based explanation of cultural diversity. In this view, prior to the destruction of the Tower of Babel, all people belonged to a single civilization. When God destroyed the Tower, creating differences in language and dispersing the people, however, some degenerated, losing their civilization and eventually becoming savages.
-Morgan writes, “The theory of human degradation to explain the existence of savages and of barbarians is no longer tenable. It came in as a corollary from the Mosaic cosmogony, and was acquiesced in from a supposed necessity which no longer exists. As a theory, it is not only incapable of explaining the existence of savages, but it is without support in the facts of human experience”. |
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Did Durkheim believe human society followed laws?
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-Durkheim believed that human society followed laws, just like the natural laws of physics or biology that could be discovered by empirical observation and testing. In 1885-1886, Durkheim took a leave of absence from high school teaching to do research in Germany, in the psychological labs of Wilhelm Wundt. His experiences convinced him that a scientific study of society was possible.
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Superorganic
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The collective conscience was not contained within any individual organism
-Collective conscience: shared system of beliefs and values, which molded and controlled individual behavior. |
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Social facts
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-How the collective conscience is scientifically studied.
-Units of analysis -The social and behavioral rules and principles that exist before an individual is born into a society and which that person learns and observes as a member of that society. |
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How can social facts be recognized?
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Social facts can be recognized by their pervasiveness within a society (they are not individualistic) and because they are coercive. People feel obligated to observe their constraints.
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Mechanical solidarity
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-Primitive societies are held together by these
-Durkheim believed that in such societies, there are no individuals in the modern sense. Rather, “collective conscience completely envelopes [individual] conscience and coincides with it at every point” -Lack internal differentiation; parts are interchangeable -Therefore parts can break away without disrupting the functioning of the entire society. Kinship forms the primary bond between people. |
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Organic solidarity
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-Industrial societies are held together by these
-Collective conscience is at least partially differentiated from individual conscience. -One result is occupational specialization-people need each other to function. -Primary ties between people come from economic and occupational interdependence and cooperation rather than from kinship. |
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What is Durkheim’s view of primitive societies as “living fossils”?
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Primitive societies are not simply living fossils but rather simplified versions of more complex societies in which universal social processes can be seen more clearly.
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Durkheim believed the process of human thought was binary (dualistic).
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-In all human societies, people have a tendency to classify by dividing everything into things and their opposites (good/bad, day/night, right/left, etc). Further, he proposed that the most fundamental of these divisions was into the categories of sacred and profane.
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What does Durkheim propose as the most fundamental binary division?
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He proposed that the most fundamental of these divisions was into the categories of sacred and profane.
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What does Mauss show in his analysis of gift-giving?
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In this essay, Mauss shows that gift-giving in primitive societies is often a part of political and social obligations, reflecting or expressing the society’s underlying social structure. He also proposes a special class of social facts called total social phenomena and illustrates this concept in his discussion of the potlatch.
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What is Weber’s position on the role of the individual?
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The ultimate base of social action is individual behavior a person undertakes in relation to others; that behavior is best judged by whether the action is rational or not.
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What does Weber believe can cross-cut class lines?
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Unlike Marx, he believed that classes, in and of themselves, could not act and that status (or honor) and party could also cut across class lines.
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