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Theories of anthropology

By NFCV
  • 10 BCE

    Medieval

    Medieval
    Medieval scholars and explorers, who traveled the world to develop new trading partnerships, continued to keep accounts of cultures they encountered.
  • 5 BCE

    First exercises in ethnography

    First exercises in ethnography
    Herodotus traveled to these places to understand the origins of conflict between Greeks and Persians. focused on using reason and inquiry to understand societies.
  • Period: 1524 to

    Colonial

    Colonial scholars studied these cultures as “human primitives,” inferior to the advanced societies of Europe.
  • Period: to

    Modern period

    Modern anthropology as an outgrowth of the Age of Enlightenment (1715–89)
  • Period: to

    Evolutionist school

    Societies should pass through different states of development to stay in one of them, being the highest level of development associated with the European societies of the time. Main representatives:
    Edward B. Tylor:
    Primitive culture (1871), anthropology (1881) Lewis H. Morgan:
    Primitive Society (1877)
  • Period: to

    Historical particularism

    Every culture or society is consequence of their own process through their history, being the sum of the aspects built through the time. Evolution is not a simple process. Main representatives:
    Franz Boas:
    Race, language and culture (1910), the mind of primitive man (1911)

  • The 20's

    By 20th-century, ethnographic work has been conducted on a wider variety of human societies, from university hierarchies to high-school sports teams to residents of retirement homes.

  • Scientific discipline

    Scientific discipline
    Anthropology emerged as a serious professional and scientific discipline beginning in the 1920s

  • Functionalism

    Society can be studied by their social institutions, that maintain the social cohesion. Main representatives: Bronislaw Malinowski:
    The Argonauts of the western pacific (1922), a scientific theory of culture.
  • Period: to

    Culture and personality, the influence of Freud in anthropology

    Topics like childhood and sex education forms the adult personality, when this is studied we can access to the knowledge of the society. Main representatives: Margaret mead:
    adolescence, sex and culture in samoa (1928), People and places (1959) Ruth Benedict:
    Patterns of culture (1934), The men and the culture (1934)

  • Neoevolutionism

    Neoevolutionism
    Cultural evolution is determined by the amount of energy that can be captured and put in execution by person. Main representatives: Leslie white:
    The evolution of culture (1959) Julian Steward:
    Theory of culture change (1955)

  • French structuralism

    French structuralism
    Based on crux lies in the existence of a general structure (symphony) that is the same for every culture but among them there are different melodies, the particular interpretations. Main representatives: Levi-Strauss:
    Structural anthropology (1958)

  • Diffusionism

    Diffusionism
    Cultures adquieres their elements by imitation, being the most ancient cultures the centers of origin that have been imitated or adapted.