Historical Particularism: Culture and Theory, Part One

This article will explore varying concepts of culture, including historical particularism, neomaterialism, and postmodernism. Each theoretical framework will be analyzed and explained. Franz Boas, Marvin Harris, and Michel Foucault will be used as a focus. An argument will be made against the benefits of postmodern thought in anthropology. Before beginning, it is necessary to provide a definition of culture. This definition is as follows:

"Cultures are traditions and customs, transmitted through learning, that govern the beliefs and behavior of people exposed to them. [...] A culture produces a degree of consistency and thought among the people who live in a particular society. [...] Culture is not itself biological, but it rests on certain features of biology" (Kottak, 2004).

Franz Boas (1858-1942) is often considered the father of American anthropology. During his post-graduate years, Boas developed a strong interest in geology and was influenced by the works of Immanuel Kant. He received his doctorate in physics in 1881 but later turned toward the social sciences. Boas is credited with single handedly separating American anthropology into "a four-field perspective that included studying prehistory, linguistics, and physical anthropology in addition to observing culture" ("Historical Particularism," p. 129). This separation continues to the present day. In his natural and anthropological studies - it appears Boas viewed both interchangeably - Boas rejected deductive reasoning in favor of empiricism.(1) Under the umbrella of historical particularism, a phrase later coined by Marvin Harris in 1968, Boas argued that cultural change is not subject to orthogenetic development, which implies a unilineal progression increasing toward greater complexity, but that the progression of culture is dependent on the uniqueness of its own history. A culture's historical uniqueness is further defined and determined by psychological factors:

"The activities of the individual are determined to a great extent by his social environment, but in turn his own activities influence the society in which he lives, and may bring about modification in its form" (Methods of Ethnology," p. 136).

According to Boas, a culture could "progress" or "digress" toward any direction that the historical and psychological climate dictated or allowed. Boas felt that cultures across the globe could be studied by anthropologists independently of others and that not all societies had been subject to radical diffusionism, nor did all necessarily need to be categorized by comparative methods. Boas' critique of the comparative method, earlier championed by the teleological stances of Herbert Spencer and Lewis Morgan, is as follows:

"The historical method [particularism] has reached a sounder basis by abandoning the misleading principle of assuming connections whenever similarities of culture were found. The comparative method [...] has been remarkably barren of results, and I believe it will not become fruitful until we renounce the vain endeavor to construct a uniform systematic history of the evolution of culture" ("Limits of the Comparative Method," p. 280).

In sum, historical particularism is a theoretical framework that rejects orthogenetic development and stresses the diversity and uniqueness of societies, both past and present. It states that cultures can be studied on their own terms, in relation to both their history and psychology, and that the advance to civilization, however one might define it, is not determinate upon a particular progression...

(1) "An a posteriori or empirical concept or idea is one that is derived from experience, via a process of abstraction or ostensive definition. In contrast, an a priori concept or idea is one that is not derived from experience and thus presumably does not require any particular experience to be realized" (Audi, 1999).

References

Audi, R. (1999). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. New York: Cambridge Press.

Kottak, C. (2004). Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

McGee, R. & R. Warms. (2007). Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw-Hill