What is the significance of the “Cultural Ecology and Neo-Evolutionary Thought” tradition?
How was it “neo-evolutionary”?
-Julian Steward, “The Patrilineal Band” (1955)
-Leslie White, “Energy and the Evolution of Culture” (1943)
-George P. Murdock, “Family Stability in Non-European Cultures” (1950)
-Leslie White, “Energy and the Evolution of Culture” (1943)
-George P. Murdock, “Family Stability in Non-European Cultures” (1950)
10 responses so far ↓
Merrily // March 11, 2009 at 6:05 pm |
Neo evoluntionary theory is a resurgence of defining evolution by explanation of “general principles of evolionary process. It, “neo-evolutionary” emerged in the 1930’s and these thinkers, Julian Steward, Leslie White, and George Peter Murdock, brought back evolutionary thought, developing its acceptability to contemporary anthropology, giving intellectual thinkers a basis for cross-cultural analysis. (www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/anthropology/neoevolutionism.html)
Leslie White: White’s most reknowned work positions itself on the topic of culture, which means “the sum of all human cultural activity on the planet was and is evolving.” White broke these cultural aspects into three groups – technological, sociological, and ideological. He believed, “the technological componet was the determing factor responsible for cultural evolution.”
White’s idea is that technology being the most important driver in the system provides these agrument to support his beliefs:
1. Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival.
2. This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and diverting it for human needs.
3. Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently have an advantage over other societies.
4. Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an evolutionary sense
Therewith White’s these is based on the idea of “harness and control of energy” and this becomes the primary function of culture. The more energy consumption acquired by a particular culture the greater its evolutionary status, and survivability. (leslie White, Wikipedia.)
Jessica // March 12, 2009 at 3:57 am |
When he began teaching at the University of Buffalo, Leslie White read the work of nineteenth century evolutionists such as Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan. Boas and his students vilified such works because of their racist content. White had a different reaction. He thought that much of what Morgan wrote was correct. Morgan agreed that cultural evolution did exist and that this evolution was in the direction of increasing complexity. Morgan failed to develop a nonethnocentric, scientific method of accurately assessing cultural complexity. Although the nineteenth century evolutionists’ general ideas were correct, many of their specific examples were wrong. White remedied the situation by developing a quantifiable, universal standard of measurement. He proposed that the control of energy was a key factor in cultural evolution and could serve as the standard by which to measure evolutionary progress. White believed changes in technology were evidence of evolution at work. He defined culture as the means by which people adapted to their environment. Societies that utilized energy made their lives increasingly secure, and culture advanced. He even made his theory into a formula: Culture advances as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year increases, or as the efficiency with which energy is utilized increases. White split culture into three analytical levels: technological, sociological, and ideological. Out of these three, technology played the largest role in social evolution, since changes in technology affected a society’s institutions and value systems. America needed men like Boas to rid anthropology of the ethnocentrism that had characterized its past. However, I believe that many of Boas’ students rejected these earlier works because of the pressure they faced from their teachers and fellow students. It was brave of Leslie White and George Peter Murdock to give these works more consideration and appreciate the quality of the ideas they contained. Personally, I think it doesn’t matter what standard is used to measure social complexity. It still implies that some societies are more advanced than others, which is a racist idea.
Felicia // March 12, 2009 at 7:31 am |
The significance of neo-evolutionary thought is that it was not unilineal. Instead, culture is multilinear, meaning that “cultures could evolve in any number of distinct patterns depending on their environmental circumstances.” It was neo-evolutionary in the sense that the anthropologists were interested and researched the causes for cultural evolution. Past anthropologists did not develop an accurate assessment of cultural complexity because of their own ethnocentrism. Therefore later anthropologist, such as Leslie White, proposed a universal standard of measurement showing an understanding that culture is as “the means which humans adapted to nature.” The significance of cultural ecology tradition is that it has demonstrated that environments do shape culture. Culture development has a lot to do with the way humans meet the challenges posed by their surrounding or environment.
caseyc // March 12, 2009 at 9:08 pm |
So from reading Im gathering that the ecology approach was important because it represented a shift from the culture and personality school popular at the time. Environment was no longer a passive backdrop but an active and shaping force on cultural evolution. White did believe that ecology could be a standard but other criticized White and his followers “had great trouble actually providing agreed-on, concrete, quantitative measures of the variables they discussed”. Pg 231 White was heavily influenced by Marx which is evident in his adoption of the concept of evolution as a “struggle”. In general, White believed society is progressing to a more advanced state, with humans exerting more control on their environment, tools, animals etc. but lacks the blatant ethnocentrism of earlier evolutionism. White believed that there was in fact “a biologically based drive to use culture to make life more rich, more full”….
Josh AKA "Marky Mark" // March 12, 2009 at 10:09 pm |
It is plain as day to see that, as Felicia points out, evolution is multilineal. When people think of evolution, they typically think of the physical body changing, but there seems to definately be plenty to say about the change of cultures. It is fascinating that even in today’s world, where the everything has the potential to be connected and streamlined through satelites, the internet, tv broadcasting, and cell phones, each region of the world still maintains its cultural differences. There are so many ideas out there that say, “this is the way people should live and be happy,” that it would be impossible for a world full of individual thinkers to become one unilineal species, physically and culturally.
Mark // March 12, 2009 at 11:31 pm |
Not really sure what to say on this one to be quite honest. I agree with a lot of the statements made by White and Steward to an extent but, like most have already stated above, I don’t agree with the notion that they consider some societies to be less advanced than others.
The legacy left behind, once again as stated above, is that societies are indeed multilineal. This simple statement speaks volumes. Such a common sense notion that has become the basis of how an anthropologist approaches different cultures. The idea that attempting to understand a culture from your own point of view (ethnocentrism) is a flawed one was a concept that most people were already grasping (boas of course was probably one of the leaders to start the move away from ethnocentric ideology) however the works of White and Steward helped to solidify this idea more thoroughly.
Not really sure how this can be classified as “neo-evolutionism”. From my point of view, the only reason why the theories of White and Steward differed from their predecessors was because of the knowledge that was available to them. In the end, the goal of attempting to quantify civilization into stratified hierarchies was still trying to be achieved, the only difference now was: 1) The pressure to remain culturally sensitive from Boasians 2) The introduction of Field Research (which meant no more “arm chair” anthropology 3) The gift of retrospect. They were able to not only avoid the same mistakes as their predecessors, but they were able to build off their theories and hone them as they saw fit.
brandi // March 13, 2009 at 12:18 am |
Cultural Ecology and Neo-Evolutionary is not simply a revival of evolutionary thought but it is a reworking of it. The standard that cultures where compared by was technological and environmentally based. Instead of having a unilineal thought, White stated that people moved “from simple to complex, with increasing specialization of parts”. It looked at how an individual culture would adapt to the issues presented by the surrounding environment. Thus, significantly showing that culture is influenced by enviornment. It also meant that cultures could be grouped into multiple generalities because according to Steward, people living in similar environments would possibly “follow the same developmental sequences and formulate similar responses to their environmental challenges”.
empfresnostate // March 13, 2009 at 12:23 am |
As humans progress in time new ideas for our development and what some may call progress, emerge and question theories already in existence. The neoevolutionary ideas by White and Steward can be seen as the products of societies evolving. White believed that societies evolve unilineally and their stage in development can be gauged by its consumption of energy. Steward on the other hand rejected the unilineal view and felt that societies evolve in mulitlineally. He proposed that a society’s level of evolution could be gauged by the consumption of energy. I think it is seen as neo-evolution because it uses modern reasons for the progression of a society. I think societies do evolve in a multilineal pattern. Not all do it down the same path, but all do arrive to a higher level.
Selena Farnesi // March 13, 2009 at 1:17 am |
I’m taking an anthropology class currently that talks about multilinear evolution is pre-history, and I was surprised to find there is very little supporting evidence for it. I think it’s interesting that there would be so little evidence for it in the past, and yet such an abundance of evidence and a general consensus that evolution is multilinear.
Secondly, something I found interesting was that Julian Steward (Patri-lineal Band) put societies into hierarchies based on their complexity. I feel like this has become a social norm, the more complex societies seem to be on the top of America’s social latter and even if it isn’t an issue of complexity, those of us in middle and higher social classes seem to deem our systems more complex – our lives more complicated.
Merrily // March 14, 2009 at 12:00 am |
http://www.experientia.com/blog/category/ethnography/
check this out. It is fully loaded!