Anthropology in Theory

Issues in Epistemology

Henrietta L. Moore, Todd Sanders

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118780596
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This second edition of the widely praised Anthropology in Theory: Issues in Epistemology, features a variety of updates, revisions, and new readings in its comprehensive presentation of issues in the history of anthropological theory and epistemology over the past century.

• Provides a comprehensive selection of 60 readings and an insightful overview of the evolution of anthropological theory
• Revised and updated to reflect an on-going strength and diversity of the discipline in recent years, with new readings pointing to innovative directions in the development of anthropological research
• Identifies crucial concepts that reflect the practice of engaging with theory, particular ways of thinking, analyzing and reflecting that are unique to anthropology
• Includes excerpts of seminal anthropological works, key classic and contemporary debates in the discipline, and cutting-edge new theorizing
• Reveals broader debates in the social sciences, including the relationship between society and culture; language and cultural meanings; structure and agency; identities and technologies; subjectivities and trans-locality; and meta-theory, ontology and epistemology

PART I

SECTION 1

Culture and Behavior

1

The Aims of Anthropological Research

Franz Boas

The science of anthropology has grown up from many distinct beginnings. At an early time men were interested in foreign countries and in the lives of their inhabitants. Herodotus reported to the Greeks what he had seen in many lands. Caesar and Tacitus wrote on the customs of the Gauls and Germans. In the Middle Ages Marco Polo, the Venetian, and Ibn Batuta, the Arab, told of the strange peoples of the Far East and of Africa. Later on, Cook’s journeys excited the interest of the world. From these reports arose gradually a desire to find a general significance in the multifarious ways of living of strange peoples. In the eighteenth century Rousseau, Schiller and Herder tried to form, out of the reports of travelers, a picture of the history of mankind. More solid attempts were made about the middle of the nineteenth century, when the comprehensive works of Klemm and Waitz were written.

Biologists directed their studies towards an understanding of the varieties of human forms. Linnaeus, Blumenbach, Camper are a few of the names that stand out as early investigators of these problems, which received an entirely new stimulus when Darwin’s views of the instability of species were accepted by the scientific world. The problem of man’s origin and his place in the animal kingdom became the prime subject of interest. Darwin, Huxley and Haeckel are outstanding names representing this period. Still more recently the intensive study of heredity and mutation has given a new aspect to inquiries into the origin and meaning of race.

The development of psychology led to new problems presented by the diversity of the racial and social groups of mankind. The question of mental characteristics of races, which at an earlier period had become a subject of discussion with entirely inadequate methods – largely stimulated by the desire to justify slavery – was taken up again with the more refined technique of experimental psychology, and particular attention is now being paid to the mental status of primitive man and of mental life under pathological conditions. The methods of comparative psychology are not confined to man alone, and much light may be thrown on human behavior by the study of animals. The attempt is being made to develop a genetic psychology.

Finally sociology, economics, political science, history and philosophy have found it worth while to study conditions found among alien peoples in order to throw light upon our modern social processes.

With this bewildering variety of approaches, all dealing with racial and cultural forms, it seems necessary to formulate clearly what the objects are that we try to attain by the study of mankind.

We may perhaps best define our objective as the attempt to understand the steps by which man has come to be what he is, biologically, psychologically and culturally. Thus it appears at once that our material must necessarily be historical material, historical in the widest sense of the term. It must include the history of the development of the bodily form of man, his physiological functions, mind and culture. We need a knowledge of the chronological succession of forms and an insight into the conditions under which changes occur. Without such data progress seems impossible and the fundamental question arises as to how such data can be obtained.

Ever since Lamarck’s and Darwin’s time the biologist has been struggling with this problem. The complete paleontological record of the development of plant and animal forms is not available. Even in favorable cases gaps remain that cannot be filled on account of the lack of intermediate forms. For this reason indirect proofs must be resorted to: These are based partly on similarities revealed by morphology and interpreted as proof of genetic relationship, partly on morphological traits observed in prenatal life, which suggest relationship between forms that as adults appear quite distinct.

Caution in the use of morphological similarities is required, because there are cases in which similar forms develop in genetically unrelated groups, as in the marsupials of Australia, which show remarkable parallelism with higher mammal forms, or in the white-haired forms of the Arctic and of high altitudes, which occur independently in many genera and species, or in the blondness and other abnormal hair forms of domesticated mammals which develop regardless of their genetic relations.

As long as the paleontological record is incomplete we have no way of reconstructing the history of animals and plants except through morphology and embryology.

This is equally true of man, and for this reason the eager search for early human and prehuman forms is justified. The finds of the remains of the Pithecanthropus in Java, the Sinanthropus in China, of the Heidelberg jaw and of the later types of the glacial period are so many steps advancing our knowledge. It requires the labors of the enthusiastic explorer to furnish us with the material that must be interpreted by careful morphological study. The material available at the present time is sadly fragmentary. It is encouraging to see that it is richest in all those countries in which the interest in the paleontology of man has been keenest, so that we may hope that with the increase of interest in new fields the material on which to build the evolutionary history of man will be considerably increased.

It is natural that with our more extended knowledge of the evolutionary history of the higher mammals certain points stand out that will direct the labors of the explorer. Thus on the basis of our knowledge of the distribution of ape forms, nobody would search for the ancestors of humanity in the New World, although the question when the earliest migration of man into America took place is still one of the problems that is prominent in researches on the paleontology of the glacial period of America.

The skeletal material of later periods is more abundant. Still it is difficult to establish definitely the relation of early skeletal remains and of modern races, because many of their most characteristic traits are found in the soft parts of the body that have not been preserved. Furthermore, the transitions from one race to another are so gradual that only extreme forms can be determined with any degree of definiteness.

On account of the absence of material elucidating the history of modern races, it is not surprising that for many years anthropologists have endeavored to classify races, basing their attempts on a variety of traits, and that only too often the results of these classifications have been assumed as expressions of genetic relationship, while actually they have no more than a descriptive value, unless their genetic significance can be established. If the same metric proportions of the head recur in all races they cannot be a significant criterion of fundamental racial types, although they may be valuable indications of the development of local strains within a racial group. If, on the other hand, a particular hair form is a trait well-nigh universal in extensive groups of mankind, and one that does not recur in other groups, it will in all probability represent an ancient hereditary racial trait, the more so, if it occurs in a geographically continuous area. It is the task of the anthropologist to search out these outstanding traits and to remember that the exact measurement of features which are not exclusive racial characteristics will not answer the problems of the evolution of fundamental types, but can be taken only as an indication of independent, special modifications of late origin within the large racial groups.

From this point of view the general question of the occurrence of parallel development in genetically unrelated lines assumes particular importance. We have sufficient evidence to show that morphological form is subject to environmental influences that in some cases will have similar effects upon unrelated forms. Even the most skeptical would admit this for size of the body.

Changes due to environment that occur under our eyes, such as minute changes in size and proportion of the body, are probably not hereditary, but merely expressions of the reaction of the body to external conditions and subject to new adjustments under new conditions.

However, one series of changes, brought about by external conditions, are undoubtedly hereditary. I mean those developing in domestication. No matter whether they are due to survival of aberrant forms or directly conditioned by domestication, they are found in similar ways in all domesticated animals, and because man possesses all these characteristics he proves to be a domesticated form. Eduard Hahn was probably the first to point out that man lives like a domesticated animal; the morphological points were emphasized by Eugen Fischer, B. Klatt and myself.

The solution of the problem of the origin of races must rest not only on classificatory studies and on those of the development of parallel forms, but also on the consideration of the distribution of races, of early migrations and consequent intermingling or isolation.

On account of the occurrence of independent development of parallel forms it seems important to know the range of variant local forms that originate in each race, and it might seem plausible that races producing local variants of similar types are closely related. Thus Mongoloids and Europeans occasionally produce similar forms in regions so wide apart that it would be difficult to interpret them as effects of intermingling.

The biological foundations of conclusions based on this type of evidence are, to a great extent, necessarily speculative. Scientific proof would require a knowledge of the earliest movements of mankind, an intimate acquaintance with the conditions under which racial types may throw off variants and the character and extent of variations that may develop as mutants.

The solution of these problems must extend beyond morphological description of the race as a whole. Since we are dealing to a great extent with forms determined by heredity, it seems indispensable to found the study of the race as a whole on that of the component genetic lines and of their variants, and on inquiries into the influence of environment and selection upon bodily form and function. The race must be studied not as a whole but in its genotypical lines as developing under varying conditions.

In the study of racial forms we are too much inclined to consider the importance of races according to the number of their representatives. This is obviously an error, for the important phenomenon is the occurrence of stable morphological types, not the number of individuals representing each. The numerical strength of races has changed enormously in historic times, and it would be quite erroneous to attribute an undue importance to the White race or to the East Asiatics, merely because they have outgrown in numbers all other racial types. Still, in descriptive classifications the local types of a large race are given undue prominence over the less striking subdivisions of lesser groups. As an example, I might mention Huxley’s divisions of the White race as against his divisions of other races.

We are interested not only in the bodily form of races but equally in the functioning of the body, physiologically as well as mentally. The problems presented by this class of phenomena present particular difficulties on account of the adjustability of function to external demands, so that it is an exceedingly precarious task to distinguish between what is determined by the biological make-up of the body and what depends upon external conditions. Observations made on masses of individuals in different localities may be explained equally well by the assumption of hereditary racial characteristics and by that of changes due to environmental influences. A mere description of these phenomena will never lead to a result. Different types, areas, social strata and cultures exhibit marked differences in physiological and mental function. A dogmatic assertion that racial type alone is responsible for these differences is a pseudo-science. An adequate treatment requires a weighing of the diverse factors.

Investigators are easily misled by the fact that the hereditary, biologically determined endowment of an individual is intimately associated with the functioning of his body. This appears most clearly in cases of bodily deficiency or of unusually favorable bodily development. It is quite a different matter to extend this observation over whole populations or racial groups in which are represented a great variety of hereditary lines and individuals, for the many forms of bodily make-up found in each group allow a great variety of functioning. Hereditary characteristics are pronounced in genetic lines, but a population – or to use the technical term, a phenotype – is not a genetic line and the great variety of genotypes within a race forbids the application of results obtained from a single hereditary line to a whole population in which the diversity of the constituent lines is bound to equalize the distribution of diverse genetic types in the populations considered. I have spoken so often on this subject that you will permit me to pass on to other questions.

While paleontological evidence may give us a clue to the evolution of human forms, only the most superficial evidence can be obtained for the development of function. A little may be inferred from size and form of the brain cavity and that of the jaw, in so far as it indicates the possibility of articulate speech. We may obtain some information on the development of erect posture, but the physiological processes that occurred in past generations are not accessible to observation. All the conclusions that we may arrive at are based on very indirect evidence.

The mental life of man also can be studied experimentally only among living races. It is, however, possible to infer some of its aspects by what past generations have done. Historical data permit us to study the culture of past times, in a few localities, as in the eastern Mediterranean area, India, China as far back as a few thousand years – and a limited amount of information on the mental life of man may be obtained from these data. We may even go farther back and extend our studies over the early remains of human activities. Objects of varied character, made by man and belonging to periods as early as the Quaternary, have been found in great quantities, and their study reveals at least certain aspects of what man has been able to do during these times.

The data of prehistoric archeology reveal with progress of time a decided branching out of human activities. While from earliest periods nothing remains but a few simple stone implements, we see an increasing differentiation of form of implements used by man. During the Quaternary the use of fire had been discovered, artistic work of high esthetic value had been achieved, and painted records of human activities had been made. Soon after the beginning of the recent geological period the beginnings of agriculture appear and the products of human labor take on new forms at a rapidly accelerating rate. While in early Quaternary times we do not observe any change for thousands of years, so that the observer might imagine that the products of human hands were made according to an innate instinct, like the cells of a beehive, the rapidity of change becomes the greater the nearer we approach our time, and at an early period we recognize that the arts of man cannot be instinctively determined, but are the cumulative result of experience.

It has often been claimed that the very primitiveness of human handiwork of early times proves organic mental inferiority. This argument is certainly not tenable, for we find in modern times isolated tribes living in a way that may very well be paralleled with early conditions. A comparison of the psychic life of these groups does not justify the belief that their industrial backwardness is due to a difference in the types of organism, for we find numbers of closely related races on the most diverse levels of cultural status. This is perhaps clearest in the Mongoloid race, where by the side of the civilized Chinese are found the most primitive Siberian tribes, or in the American group, where the highly developed Maya of Yucatan and the Aztecs of Mexico may be compared with the primitive tribes of our western plateaus. Evidently historic and prehistoric data give us little or no information on the biological development of the human mind.

How little the biological, organic determinants of culture can be inferred from the state of culture appears clearly if we try to realize how different the judgment of racial ability would have been at various periods of history. When Egypt flourished, northern Europe was in primitive conditions, comparable to those of American Indians or African Negroes, and yet northern Europe of our day has far outdistanced those people, who at an earlier time were the leaders of mankind. An attempt to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Notes on the Editors
• General Introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Anthropology and Epistemology
• PART I
• PART II
• PART III
• PART IV
• Index