the Contribution of any two Theorist of Anthropology to the Development of the Discipline.

INTRODUCTION

Historians of anthropology often trace the birth of the discipline to the 16thcentury encounters between Europeans and native peoples in Africa and the Americas. For Europeans, these peoples and their practices often seemed bizarre or irrational, yet to live and work with them, it was important to understand their cultures. This need for cross-cultural understanding was one of the roots of anthropology. The other was the emerging focus on evolution.

Anthropologists should have been at the forefront of public debate about multiculturalism and nationalism, the human aspects of information technology, poverty and economic globalization, human rights issues and questions of collective and individual identification.

Generally recognized as the founding fathers of modern anthropology, are Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward B. Tylor.

Two 19th-century anthropologists whose writings exemplified the theory that culture
generally evolves uniformly and progressively were Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917) and Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881).

This Assignment is going to discuss on the Contribution of two theorists to the development the discipline of anthropology these theorists are Edward B. Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan that give tremendous contribution to the development of anthropology. It is an introduction to the principal theorists and theories that shaped and continues to influence the modern anthropology.

Anthropology may have been born out of its largely colonialist background, anthropologists are now overwhelmingly inclined to support the value of other ways of life and try to support the needs of peoples formerly colonized or dominated by powerful nation-states.

Anthropology is the study of people throughout the world, their evolutionary history, how they behave, adapt to different environments, communicate and socialize with one another. The study of anthropology is concerned both with the biological features that make us human (such as physiology, genetic makeup, nutritional history and evolution) and with social aspects (such as language, culture, politics, family and religion)

Anthropology is the scientific study of the origins, the behavior and the physical, social, cultural development of humans. It is the study of humankind, past and present, in all it s aspects especially human culture or human development.

Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917, Great Britain)

Tylor maintained that culture evolved from the simple to the complex and that all societies passed through three basic stages of development: from savagery through barbarism to civilization.

“Progress” was therefore possible for all. To account for cultural variation, Tylor and other early evolutionists postulated that different contemporary societies were at different stages of evolution. According to this view, the “simpler” peoples of the day had not yet reached “higher” stages. Tylor believed there was a kind of psychic unity among all peoples that explained parallel evolutionary sequences in different cultural traditions. In other words, because of the basic similarities common to all peoples, different societies often find the same solutions to the same problems independently. But Tylor also noted that cultural traits may spread from one society to another by simple diffusion—the borrowing by one culture of a trait belonging to another as the result of contact between the two

Edward B. Tylor (1832-1817) established the theoretical principles of Victorian anthropology, in Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom (1871), by adapting evolutionary theory to the study of human society. Written at the same time as Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (1869), Tylor defined culture in very different terms: “Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. Here culture refers to the learned
attributes of society, something we already have.

While Tylor focused on the insular, subjective life of “primitives,” Arnold thought that Victorians displayed a similar incapacity. Notwithstanding the evident differences between Arnold’s treatise on Victorian Britain and Tylor’s on human prehistory, both works focus on the problem of overcoming a narrow subjectivism and learning to comprehend the social body as a whole.

For Tylor, Anthropology was a “science of culture,” a system for analyzing existing elements of human civilization that are socially created rather than biologically inherited. His work was critical to the recognition of anthropology as a distinct branch of science in 1884, when the British Association for the Advancement of Science admitted it
as a major branch, or section, of the society, rather than a subset of biology, as had previously been the case.

While a foundational figure in cultural anthropology, Tylor thought about culture in radically different terms than we do today. He accepted the premise that all societies develop in the same way and insisted on the universal progression of human civilization from savage to barbarian to civilize.

Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) is considered the founding father of British anthropology. Tylor was the first professor of anthropology at Oxford; he was active in establishing anthropological associations and institutions; and his ideas contributed to
the intellectual debates of the late nineteenth century sparked by Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.

Tylor is representative of cultural evolutionism. In his works Primitive Culture and Anthropology, he defined the context of the scientific study of anthropology, based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Lyell. He believed that there was a functional basis for the development of society and religion, which he determined was universal. Tylor maintained that all societies passed through three basic stages of development: from savagery, through barbarism to civilization. Tylor is considered by many to be a founding figure of the science of social anthropology, and his scholarly works helped to build the discipline of anthropology in the nineteenth century. He believed that "research into the history and prehistory of man... could be used as a basis for the reform of  society."

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881, the United States)

Lewis Henry Morgan is a unilineal evolutionist who claimed that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution.

Morgan In his Theory, believed in a hierarchy of evolutionary development from “savagery” to “barbarism” to “civilization.” According to Morgan, the crucial distinction between civilized society and earlier societies is private property. He described “savage”
societies as communistic, contrasting with “civilized” societies, which are based on private property.

Although Morgan’s theory has been criticized for being speculative and ethnocentric, his evolutionary theory influenced the development of anthropology. First, Morgan outlined the importance of the study of social evolution and kinship systems for understanding the social organizations. Second, Morgan conducted cross-cultural research that attempted to be systematic and large-scale. Finally, Morgan organized anthropological data and formulated the evolutionary theory rather than simply collecting cultural data.

Lewis Henry Morgan, in his best-known work, Ancient Society, Morgan postulated several sequences in the evolution of human culture. For example, he speculated that the family evolved through six stages. Human society began as a “horde living in promiscuity,” with no sexual prohibitions and no real family structure. Next was a stage in which a group of brothers was married to a group of sisters and brother sister mating were permitted. In the third stage, group marriage was practiced, but brothers and sisters were not allowed to mate. The fourth stage was characterized by a loosely paired male and female who still lived with other people. Then came the husband-dominant family, in which the husband could have more than one wife simultaneously. Finally, the stage of civilization was distinguished by the monogamous family, with just one wife and one husband who were relatively equal in status. However, Morgan’s postulated sequence for the evolution of the family is not supported by the enormous amount of ethnographic data that has been collected since his time. No recent society generally practices group marriage or allows brother-sister mating.

Conclusion

Conclusively, the theory of Nineteenth-century Evolutionism claims that societies develop according to one universal order of cultural evolution. The theorists identified the universal evolutional stages and classified different societies as savagery, barbarian
and civilization.

The Nineteenth-century Evolutionists had two main assumptions that form the theory. One was psychic unity, a concept that suggests human minds share similar characteristics all over the world. This means that all people and their societies
will go through the same process of development. Another underlying assumption was that Western societies are superior to other societies in the world. This assumption was based on the fact that Western societies were dominant because of their military and economic power against technologically simple societies.

Reference

Moore, J.D. (2009) “Visions of culture: an introduction to anthropological theories and theorists” - 3rd edition, United Kingdom: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

Franz, B. (1896): “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology.” Science

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Raymond, W.  (1988) “History of Anthropological Theory” New York: Oxford University 

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