Evolution of Philosophical and Anthropological Trends
Positivism
A contemporary philosophical trend, founded by 19th-century French philosopher Auguste Comte, argues that there is only one acceptable method for knowing reality: the scientific method, whose mission is to describe facts.
Anthropological Trends
Linear Evolution
Franz Boas, Morgan, and Tylor adopted the Darwinian evolution theory as an explanatory model. They argue that just as nature has evolved to develop current living species, human cultures have also evolved before converging into Western civilization. Cultural development stages:
a) Savagery: Nomadic gatherer societies with an economy based on hunting and gathering fruit. Preliterate cultures, i.e., without writing.
b) Barbarism: The first sedentary societies that practice agriculture and livestock, and a rudimentary treatment of metals. Also preliterate.
c) Civilization: Beginning with the first urban cultures and the emergence of writing. Hierarchy between different human cultures: the more developed and the less developed, using the comparative method.
Diffusion and Historical Particularism
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this trend appeared in England, the USA, and Germany. Its main representatives are Schmidt and Boas. Diffusionism researchers attempt to explain cultural diversity from the dissemination and contacts that cultures have had throughout time. They distinguish between donor cultures (which have spread their culture) and host cultures (which have been influenced by the donors).
They argued that there were several expansion outbreaks but failed to establish them unanimously. The study of cultural diffusion seeks to clarify these three fundamental aspects:
a) Origin of the geographical and chronological cultures.
b) Economic, political, religious, climatic, and other factors giving rise to cultural diffusion.
c) Specific cultures resulting from the expansion, the routes, and timing of the different periods.
Boas’ historical particularism also rejects linear evolution and diffusion, believing that there were a few civilized centers from which cultures spread. Boas believes that each culture is unique in the sense that each society assimilates cultural elements but adapts them in a peculiar form.
Functionalism
An anthropological trend from the 1950s, represented by Radcliffe-Brown. It views the function of a cultural element in different cultures. Each culture is a way to satisfy the biological and psychological needs of members of a society. Cultural diversity is explained as different ways of responding to those needs. Malinowski summarizes those biological needs in seven: metabolism, reproduction, physical well-being, security, movement, growth, and health.
Structuralism
Lévi-Strauss in anthropology holds that cultural differences are manifestations of unconscious mental structures. The structures of a culture are ways of interpreting and ordering reality. The structures are a code that the anthropologist has to decipher, but they are unconscious and rational, having a logic.
Neoevolutionism
White and Kroeber in North America began to prevail after World War II. They took as their main theme the evolution and cultural development, but unlike Tylor and Morgan, they argue for a multilateral cultural development. They see that just as organic evolution has developed in different ways, culture has also followed different evolutionary lines. The two forms of evolution (natural and cultural) are determined by external factors. They argue that although there are various cultural branches, all originate from a common culture and are understood by another form of adaptation to the environment of man in his struggle for survival, so all cultural patterns have a biological basis: Degradation of genotype → Ban → Increase Population → Violence → Territoriality → Aggression and war.
Cultural Materialism
Steward and Harris emphasize the material causes of the forms and lines of cultural evolution. The main cause is the techno-environmental nature: man invents and manufactures technologies. There are some common environmental features that determine common cultural traits. Harris also distinguishes between:
a) Infrastructure: What people do (ethics).
b) Superstructure: What people think (emic).
Three basic assumptions:
a) Food: Must produce material goods to survive.
b) Reproduction: Prevents demographic imbalance.
c) Maintenance: Maintain a balance among all groups that comprise and with other societies.
Harris thinks this way cultural regularities are generally responsive to these three issues seen before.