ANTH 2020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Lewis H. Morgan, Franz Boas, Evolutionism
8 Jan 2018
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Age of discovery : contact and conquest of the non-west spurs interest in understanding human difference and generality. Enlightenment: order, reason, and progress vs. the noble savage . Colonialism: the birth of anthropology as a science: the beginnings of anthropology. 1800"s: unilineal evolutionism humanity moves in a single line from simple to complex. Tylor, lewis henry morgan: 3 stages = savage, barbarian, civilization: franz boas and the birth of americanist anthropology. Historical particularism: cultures are the products of particular historical situations and context; boas uses this instead of unilineal evolutionism. Salvage anthropology: groups are breaking apart; need to capture culture before it disappears: british social anthropology. Bronislaw malinowski: establishes participant observation: structuralism claude levi-strauss. The structure of cultural forms through which we gain meaning. Binary opposites: contrasting opposites (beauty/ugly; order/disorder) organizes the way we think: the origins of the world .
