1 Introduction to Theories in Anthropology

Prof. S.M. Patnaik

Contents of the unit

• Introduction
• What is theory?
• Elements of a theory
• Hypothesis
• Theory, Facts and Concepts
• Anthropology before theory
• Major Theoretical Traditions
• Theories with in national tradition of India
• Evolutionism
• Diffusionism
• Structure-functionalism
• Structuralism
• Post-structuralism
• Postmodernism

Learning objectives

By the end of this unit, you will be able to

• Concept of theory
• Body of knowledge
• Set of propositions or postulates
• Nature of society, culture and human relationship
• Heuristic scheme or blue print of theories in Anthropology

Introducing Anthropological Theory

This module is going to introduce anthropological theories to you the way it developed in different national traditions. Fredrik Barth et.al (2005) in the book ‘One discipline ,Four ways’ have traced the theoretical development of the discipline of Anthropology in four different national traditions of Great Britain, Germany, France and United States. Alan Barnard (2000) also traced the link between anthropological theories and national traditions especially highlighting the British, American and French traditions. The module is divided in to four sections. First one deals with the interface between theory and method in the discipline, second one discusses the relationship between the facts and different logics of drawing inferences and generalizations, the third section introduces the emergence and nature of various anthropological theories that we are going to discuss in the remaining modules of the whole course and finally we shall attempt to situate the manner in which anthropological theories consolidated with in the Indian national tradition.

What is a Theory?

Every discipline is grounded on its own set of theories which develop over a particular point of disciplinary history. Unfolding of the discipline can be better understood in terms of its (i) theoretical rigor and (ii) methodological orientation. It’s the theory that provides the broad frame work or orientation for interpretation of facts and the methodology provides specific rules, the logical guidelines for collection and analysis of the data in this regard. Theory provides the template of ideas to think, methodology provides the techniques for collection of ideas so that they can be logically connected to one another in form of a theoretical frame work. Thus theory and methodology are two important basis for sustaining the edifice of the discipline.

The most important question remains before us – what is a theory? Theory is a set of propositions or postulates explaining the nature of ‘society’, ‘culture’, ‘human behavior’ and ‘social relationships’. Theories, in simpler terms, are statements that use various concepts and ideas as analytical tools or heuristic devices to explain social phenomena of different scale and magnitude. Theories are generally able to explain a wide range of phenomena through a limited set of central and significant thought categories. Thus concepts constitute the basic elements and logics cement them together. The relationships among these concepts are weaved together in such a manner giving rise to a series of propositions or a grand proposition which is a theoretical explanation of the phenomena. Theory is thus a body of knowledge that explains a wide range of phenomena from different cultural back ground.

Elements of a theory

Every theory comprises of certain elements. These elements are interconnected each giving rise to the others and each shaping the other. Thus a meaningful set of ideas logically interconnected and capable of explaining other phenomena come up. Anthropological theory, like any other social science theory, comprises of the following elements: (i) Questions (ii) Assumptions (iii) Methods and (iv) Evidence.

Questions are the gaps in the system of knowledge. Many of our understandings are not perfect or complete. The existing theories may explain the phenomena partly and therefore many questions remain unanswered and that marks the beginning of the search for the new theories. The new theories are sought through answering these questions. In other words, search for these questions may give rise to new theories. But the point remains that how are this search carried out? Is there any specific manner in which it should be done? What should mark the beginning of this search? What should be the point of departure?

The search for finding answer to these inexplicable phenomena often begins with some assumptions. The anthropologists come up with certain probable or possible explanations. These are mere assumptions and not the final statements. The assumptions are not accepted from the beginning. They are scrutinized, questioned and verified before getting accepted. Assumptions if formulated systematically, takes the shape of a hypothesis.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a broad statement pointing out a relationship between two variables under study. Variables are social or biological phenomena whose value vary or differ from time to time or in different situations. The variables can be measured with accuracy and precision. Some kind of relationship can be posited between two seemingly unconnected variables. The relationship can be direct or inverse. If increase in one leads to increase in other variable, the relationship is directly proportional. Similarly if decrease in one variable leads to decrease in the other, then the relationship is also of directly proportional type. If increase in one variable leads to decrease in the other (or the vice versa), then the relationship is of inversely proportional type.

The two variables we are talking of are also different nature. Depending on the phenomena in question one set of variables may have independent existence and can manifest themselves without any support or help of the other. Such variables are known as ‘Independent Variables’. While the second set of variables need the inputs of the previous set of variables for their manifestations. The expressions of these variables are very much connected to the other variables who determine the magnitude of the former. Thus they do not have any independent existence; rather their manifestation depends on the magnitude of other variables. Therefore these set of variables are called ‘Dependent Variables’. A good hypothesis is one which clearly makes a statement about the relationship between independent variable and dependent variable which can be measured following certain methods.

This takes us to the third important component of theory i.e. methods. We follow certain methods not only to collect data but also to analyse them. Anthropology is a field science. Fieldwork is an important method in anthropological research. There are other methods used in anthropology too. At this juncture it is important to distinguish between technique and method. A technique is a tool or apparatus, verbal or mechanical, used for eliciting information in the field .For example, observation, interview, questionnaire, case study, life histories and genealogy etc. On the other hand method is a combination of various techniques. It is not only a mere combination various techniques, but it refers to a complete set of rules and procedures for collection and analysis of data .For example, comparative method, historical method, fieldwork method and survey or census method.

The methods are used for collection and analysis of evidences. These are facts of social life grounded in the empirical world. These evidences are analysed through certain logical procedure. Inferences are drawn following two types of logical principles-inductive logic and deductive logic. When one moves from particular to general i.e. after observing one instance moves to the second and third instance before generalizing about the phenomena is called inductive method of generalization following inductive logic. In the second case if one begins with the whole or the broad generalization and moves to verify it from particular instances then it is called deductive method of generalizations based on deductive logic.

Theory, Facts and Concepts

There is a continuous feedback mechanism between theory and facts in the social world. The empirical world has several social phenomena which can be regarded as facts. Facts are evidences that are relatively unproblematic to understand or have more empirical reference in relation to other social phenomena which may be based on confluence of facts. These may be regarded as building blocks of social theory or the basic elements of generalizations. Existing theories, sometimes dated and obscure are basis for further questions or some ethnographic work done earlier, or previously known possibilities or inductions based upon observations may give rise to theory building. But finding of new facts on the basis of deductive or inductive method may give rise to discovery of new facts from the empirical world or fresh interpretation of facts leading to modifications in the existing theory.

In addition to facts, the concepts are also regarded as building blocks of theory. If facts are closer to the empirical world’s concepts are derivations from it. At a very broad level we can say that if facts constitute the empirical world, the concepts explain them. Concepts take us to the domain of abstraction linking theory and facts. However, this generalization may appear too simplistic but points towards important analytical possibilities.

Concepts are analytical tools or categories using which a variety of phenomena can be explained. Concepts get weaved together in a grand scheme giving rise to a theory. These are mental constructs logically related to one another giving rise to explanations in form of theories which are either of universal or of middle range nature. In such cases theories explain a wide range of phenomena from a diversified cultural background. There are also theories which can explain a phenomena occurring in the context of a given culture and hence they are called as culture bound or culture specific theories.

Anthropology before theory

The early years of anthropology was marked with colonial writings on the non-western other mainly by the travelers, missionaries and administrators. These writers tried to project a particular image of the non-western societies which was based on their colonial agenda of establishing their racial linguistic and cultural superiority. It was highly ethnocentric and reflected the colonial bias towards the ‘orient’. The cultural practices that appeared to be odd in western standards constituted the subject matter of study. Cultural practices such as head hunting, polyandry, tribal dormitories, sexual laxity among tribal communities became point of attraction for colonial administrators, travelers and missionaries. Orient was painted in inferior hues in terms of race language and culture. Thus the initial years of the discipline was marked with engagement with non-western other with a specific agenda to show them in poor light. It hardly followed any logical principle for conducting research. Anthropology as a discipline has also been criticized for playing in to the hands of its colonial masters going against the interests of poor and marginalized. However, professional anthropologists of orient and global south are trying hard to come out of colonial hangover by developing anthropology in their own national tradition with indigenous theory.

Major Theoretical Traditions

There are many anthropological theories within the national traditions of Great Britain and USA. The British School mainly emphasized on the issues of society, social institutions and relationships. While the American tradition focused on culture, cultural beliefs, practices and ideologies. The French tradition explored the intricacies of human mind and its functioning following a universal principle. The anthropological theories we are going to discuss here are:

• Evolutionism
• Diffusionism
• Historical Particularism
• Structure-Functionalism
• Neo-evolutionism
• Structuralism
• New-ethnography
• Post-structuralism
• Post modernism

Theories with in national tradition of India

Needless to mention here that this is not an exhaustive list of anthropological theories that the unfolding of the discipline has witnessed so far. There are many other theories either independent or subsumed under the ones mentioned above. However, other modules of this course will outline in detail all the available theories with in the discipline of anthropology. The theories chosen here because they provide the major shifts in the theoretical and methodological orientation of the discipline.

Evolutionism

Evolutionism in anthropology was inspired by writings of Hebert Spencer and Charles Darwin. Evolutionists tried to study evolution or emergence of social institutions in pre-literate society who never had any written history. Henry Maine, L H Morgan, E B Tylor, James Frazer and Mc Lennan were some of the scholars who contributed to this school of thought. Henry Maine’s work on evolution of law connected it to various social practices such as authority of father and ideas associated with patria potesta. These were called legal fictions which constituted the very basis of study of evolution of law. Tylor studied the manner in which early forms of religion evolved in to the modern ones. He examined the logic used by the primitive mind to arrive at an understanding of soul as different from body. Animism, the belief in soul gave rise to ancestor worship and polytheism and finally to monotheism. Morgan’s scheme of Savagery, Barbarism and Civilization is an explanation of the evolution of technology and associated socio economic formations. However, all these efforts were made to arrive at an understanding of the evolution of social phenomena in societies about which there was no written records. Thus these societies were devoid of authentic history. This was one of the reasons for which these scholars were criticized. They were critiqued also for being speculative, unscientific and highly conjectural and imaginary pursuits.

Diffusionism

Parallel to evolutionism came up another theoretical tradition which investigated the culture change through the process of migration and diffusion. Migration takes place when the carriers of culture move from one place to another there by bringing out diffusion of culture traits. But diffusion per se implies that culture traits move either by imitation or borrowing from one culture to another culture. Here the people do not move but the culture traits and practices get transmitted or get diffused over a larger area. There are different schools of diffusion (i) British School of diffusion believed that Egypt is the source of all civilizations. On the fertile banks of river Nile the seeds sprouted spontaneously, agriculture came up leading to a well-developed hydraulic system followed with invention of wheel and alphabets. The people who invented it were worshippers of Sun. From Egypt civilization spread to different corners of the world. (ii) The German School or Kulturkreise school explains the process of diffusion by examining its spread in different culture circles. Kulturkreise in Germany means culture circle. The culture traits get diffused from one region to another in terms of concentric culture circles. The older the culture trait, larger is the area of its spread. This formula to determine the origin and spread of culture traits came to be known as age-area hypothesis. (iii) The American School of diffusion came up with the idea of culture areas, each having a set of culture traits distributed with in a particular geographical area. A L Kroeber classified the different culture areas in North America on the basis of occurrence of particular set of culture traits.

Historical Particularism

While the scholars of diffusion came up with grand theories explaining the intricacies of the process of diffusion, Franz Boas, an American anthropologist severely critiqued the theories propounded by various schools of diffusion. He believed that theorization should be done only after adequate data has been generated on the phenomena in question. He argued that for the understanding of human history and migration we need to understand it in the context of a particular culture by emphasizing on a four fold approach to study race, language, culture and history. This is what came to be known in anthropology as historical particularism.

Structure-functionalism

As histories of these preliterate communities were not available some anthropologists felt that there is no need to run after something which does not exist. At the same time these anthropologists were trying to make anthropology more and more scientific. Structure-functionalism brought out a scientific orientation to the discipline. The pioneers of this theory argued that anthropology is a science of humanity and therefore it should move away from being conjectural and speculative. As a science it needs to come up with laws governing human societies and laws can be deciphered through comparison and generalization. In a humanity which is characterized by highly variable culture, comparison becomes problematic. Therefore, Radcliffe-Brown came up with concept of ‘social structure’ which, he claimed, facilitates comparison. Social structure is understood as a particular mode of arrangements of parts. The parts can be interpersonal or dyadic relationship between person and person (Radcliffe-Brown) or relationship between enduring groups such as lineages and clans (Evans-Pritchard) or critical/cardinal relationship (Firth). It is only through comparison and generalization that we arrive at generation of law. The idea of function was intricately connected to the idea of structure. Every structure carries out its activities in such a manner that it fulfills certain needs of the individual or the social system. This is the function of the social institutions. Malinowski identified seven basic needs that culture fulfills in all known human societies. Culture is a vast apparatus or instrument which satisfies the basic human needs. Ideas of structure and function have given rise to an empirical understanding of culture and society known as structure-functionalism.

Neo- evolutionism

While the classical evolutionism was severely criticized for being speculative, a renewed interest in the idea of evolution was witnessed in the writings of few American anthropologists such as Gordon Childe, Julian Steward and Leslie White. These scholars felt that there is nothing wrong in examining the evolutionary process in case of preliterate societies where there is no written history. But it is important to select the appropriate units for study. The classical evolutionists selected units like religion, family, marriage study of which became problematic. Instead they selected units such as time, energy, technology, environment and the associated social variables. Thus several schemes of evolution, unilinear and multilinear, were propounded explaining how harnessing of natural resources and energy has given rise to a particular form of social adaptation which is an evolved form from the earlier ones.

Structuralism

Structuralism investigates how human mind perceives things through the principle of ‘binary opposition’. This was influenced by the theoretical tradition of structural linguistics. The principles of binary contrast such as raw – cooked, left – right and man-woman are important in providing a structure to the phenomena. Structuralism is often regarded as a method which is neither scientific nor humanities. Structuralism was deeply inspired by the intellectual revolution in the field of structural linguistic which wanted understand the unconscious linguistic infrastructure and not the surface structure of the linguistic phenomena. Likewise the structuralists are interested in the deeper structure of the social phenomena which can be deciphered by using a structural method which is a middle path between science and humanities.

New ethnography

In early 1960s, an intellectual current in America started studying the mental processes of actors belonging to different cultures. Every culture has its own mechanism of perceiving, classifying and understanding phenomena around itself. They started to collect folk classifications of color, animals, seasons, plants, soils and human relationship. All these classifications have a logical underpinning in accordance with the cultural grammar. They believed that every culture has its own logic and reason. To unravel this cultural logic is the task of new ethnographer. They are called new ethnographers because they did not remain confined to the study of behavior but explored human cognition and are also known as cognitive anthropologists. Therefore, If structuralism focusses on one cultural rule of binary opposition to understand how human mind functions , new ethnography tries to arrive at multiple rules for unraveling the cultural grammar of different cultures .David Schneider and victor Turner are the pioneers in the field.

Post-structuralism

Post-structuralists attempt to synthesize the binarity between objective and subjective phenomena. Theory of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu is one of the examples of post structuralist theory along with that of Michael Foucault .These scholars explore body, mind and culture interface. Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus, doxa and the field are important concepts of theory of practice.

Postmodernism

Postmodernist scholars believe that truth is not singular. Most of the social science theories came up during a particular period of human history and in a particular world region. Singularity of social voice is critiqued. Multiple voices and contested versions find legitimate place in post modernism.

In India these theories find different manifestations. Concepts and theories given by Indian scholars such as sanskritizations, westernization, dominant caste, sacred complex and nature man sprit complex are in connection with the major theoretical developments of world anthropology. Indian anthropology has also developed the innovative way of combining Indological sources with the Empirical insights for building up an ingenious theory with in the national tradition of India.

References

• Barnard, Alan. 2000. History and theory in Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
• Barth, Fredrik; Andre, Gingrich; Robert, Parkin; Sydel, Silverman. 2005. One Discipline, Four Ways:
• British, German, French, and American Anthropology. US: The Chicago University Press.
• Evans Pritchard, E.E. 1981. A History of Anthropological Theory
• Harris, Marvin 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York: Crowell.
• Kuper,A.   1983[1973]. Anthropology    &   Anthropologists:   the   Modern   British   School.     London: Routledge.
• Manners, R.A.and D.Kaplan( eds). Theory in Anthropology: A Sourcebook. Chicago: Aldine.
• Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1924. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Glencoe, I1, The Free Press, 1952.