The rise of social anthropology

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: A SCIENCE OF ANTHROPOLOGY? Social anthropology studies the construction and mechanisms of social systems, as well as the interactions among these systems, their members, and the larger environment. Social anthropology embraces a spectrum of theoretical approaches, including but not limited to evolutionism, diffusionism, and functionalism. The evolutionary approach of early social anthropologists differs from the evolutionary theory that today’s biologists espouse. Contemporary biologists reject the view that evolution is progressive, whereas nineteenth-century evolutionists believed that human societies evolve from ‘primitive’ forms to those represented in their own ‘advanced’ European civilisations. Diffusionists, in contrast to evolutionists, see new social forms arising, either spontaneously or in response to internal or external pressure, in the context of a particular social and environmental setting. Once a new form takes hold, it may spread to other groups. The diffusionist research programme emphasises locating the original source of an idea and tracing its spread. Functionalism eschews the historical (or pseudohistorical) character of the other two approaches, and focuses on the functions served by various social institutions or the functional interrelationships among the constituent parts of a larger social system. Social anthropology as understood in this chapter is one of the four main fields of anthropology, and includes what is often called ‘cultural anthropology’. The other fields are physical anthropology, which studies how modern humans came to assume their present physical form and how their biological characteristics determine their relationships to the rest of their environment; archaeology, which studies humans by examining the remains of their material culture; and linguistic anthropology, which studies human development and diversity by investigating the history and structure of languages.