Overview

In the 19th century, anthropologists believed in “Cultural Evolution”—that all societies progress from Savagery -> Barbarism -> Civilization (with Victorian England at the top). Franz Boas destroyed this idea. He argued that you can’t compare the Kwakiutl to the Romans. They are not “behind” us; they are just on a different path.

Core Idea

The core idea is uniqueness. Every culture is the result of a complex, unique history of migration, borrowing, and invention. There are no universal laws of cultural development. Therefore, the job of the anthropologist is not to theorize, but to collect facts—to document the specific history of specific groups.

Formal Definition

An approach to anthropology that emphasizes the detailed study of specific cultures and their histories, rejecting the comparative method and the search for universal laws of cultural evolution.

Intuition

Imagine two people: one is a CEO, one is a monk. A cultural evolutionist might say the CEO is “more evolved” because he has more money. Boas would say: “No. The monk isn’t a failed CEO. He is playing a different game with different rules and a different history. You have to understand his life from his perspective, not yours.”

Examples

  • Totemism: Evolutionists thought totemism was a “stage” all humans went through. Boas showed that totemism in America was totally different from totemism in Africa. They looked the same, but had different histories. You can’t lump them together.
  • Race: Boas used historical particularism to fight scientific racism. He showed that differences between races were due to culture and history, not biology.
  • Museums: Before Boas, museums arranged objects by type (all spears together) to show “evolution” from simple to complex. Boas argued objects should be arranged by tribe (all Kwakiutl things together) to show the context.

Common Misconceptions

  • It’s anti-science: Boas was a physicist by training. He was very scientific (collecting massive amounts of data). He just believed the theories of the time were bad science because they were based on prejudice, not evidence.
  • It ignores similarities: It acknowledges that cultures borrow from each other (Diffusion), but it denies that they all march in the same direction.
  • Cultural Relativism: Historical Particularism is the theoretical basis for Cultural Relativism.
  • Diffusionism: The idea that cultural traits spread from one group to another (rather than being invented independently). Boas emphasized this to explain similarities.
  • Salvage Anthropology: The urgent drive to record cultures before they disappeared (a major motivation for Boas).

Applications

  • History: It aligned anthropology closer to history than to biology.
  • Anti-Racism: By decoupling culture from race, Boas laid the intellectual groundwork for the civil rights movement.

Criticism / Limitations

  • Atheoretical: Critics argued Boas was so obsessed with collecting facts (“shreds and patches”) that he refused to make any generalizations at all. It’s hard to have a science if you can’t make laws.
  • Antiquarianism: It focused so much on the past (reconstructing “pure” culture) that it often ignored the present reality of colonial oppression.

Further Reading

  • Boas, Franz. Race, Language, and Culture. 1940.
  • Stocking, George W. Race, Culture, and Evolution. 1968.
  • Harris, Marvin. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. 1968. (Contains a famous critique of Boas).