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The World Before Anthropology

The World Before Anthropology. The Social Milieu that Gave Shape to the Discipline. Precursors. 16 th C. – Age of discovery European world view Europeans favored by God “Savages” lacked Christianity, lived in a state of nature Concept of “Natural Order”

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The World Before Anthropology

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  1. The World Before Anthropology The Social Milieu that Gave Shape to the Discipline

  2. Precursors • 16th C. – Age of discovery • European world view • Europeans favored by God • “Savages” lacked Christianity, lived in a state of nature • Concept of “Natural Order” • World understood in terms of religious beliefs • Galileo threatened with torture for supporting Copernicus’ idea of a heliocentric universe • Archbishop Ussher: the world was created 4004 B.C.

  3. 18th C. Enlightenment • Concern for freedom from religious authority • Shift from ideas influenced by theology & supernatural causation to empirical inquiry & scientific objectivity • Scientific method & universal laws of human behavior • Rationality & natural law

  4. Philosophers contribute concept of humanism • Hobbes: the condition of man in a state of nature is a condition of war against everyone • Rousseau: humans in a state of nature are essentially good, but ruined by civilization • Locke: humans born as a tabla rasa, experience makes them what they are

  5. Montesquieu: cultural differences explained by environmental causes, concept of cultural relativism • Turgot: human diversity attributed to cultural, rather than biological causes • Condorcet: belief in perfectibility of human beings

  6. PROGRESS • All peoples, including “savages” capable of progress to civilization • Idea of the “noble savage” • Psychic unity of human kind • 1800 Society for the Observation of Man: comparative anatomy, languages, ethnography

  7. The Comparative Method • To determine degrees of civilization & assign each group to its stage on a universal evolutionary scale of progress • Comparative method substitutes for lack of historical knowledge

  8. Citizen Degérando • “Small wonder that most travel accounts transmit to us Bizarre descriptions which amuse the idle curiosity of the vulgar, but which furnish no information useful for the scientific spirit” • Human nature is fundamentally the same everywhere, attributed abstract ideas to natives • Positive method, live among natives, learn language

  9. Degérando differs from 19th C • “If the savage had not climbed the scale of civilization, there was no question of his capacity to do so” • One thing was missing —the concept of race • He represents the egalitarian humanitarianism of the Enlightenment

  10. 18th vs 19th Centuries • 18th: Civilization was the destiny of all humankind • 19th: Civilization was the achievement of certain races

  11. 19th C. Evolutionary Theory • Re: Debates on monogenism, polygenism, degeneration • Religious reaction to Enlightenment = resurgence of theological interpretations • Conservative political reaction to egalitarian optimism of the French Revolution • Laissez-faire economics linked to industrial capitalism

  12. Darwin: Origin of Species • Materialist theory challenged theologians • New ideas about the age of the earth (Lyell’s Uniformitarianism) • Return to a doctrine of progress • Spencer: “Survival of the Fittest” • the application of biological evolution to human societies

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