CRITICISMS
- The followers of the social evolution theory were referred to as “Arm Chair Anthropologists” by the next generation of anthropologists who emphasised on primary data collection through field work. Sir James Frazers work Golden Bough is set as an example by the later anthropologists of arm chair writing as the work was entirely based on secondary data. Frazer had never conducted fieldwork nor had any direct interaction with the people under study
- Anthropologists like Franz Boas, Margret Mead and others of the American School disapproved of the theory of unilineal evolution based on psychic unity of mankind as it failed to take into account the cultural variations. Herein, Morgan’s theory of evolution based on technological progress came under the scanner as the examples from the Polynesian cheifdoms, showed complex political systems, but with no trace of pottery (Eriksen, 2008).
- Morgan believed that family units became progressively smaller and more self-contained as human society developed. However, his 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. For example, no recent society that Morgan would call savage indulges in group marriage or allows brother-sister mating. In short, a most damning criticism of this early social evolutionary approach is that as more data became available, the proposed sequences did not reflected the observations of professionally trained fieldworkers.
- The evolutionism of Tylor, Morgan, and others of the nineteenth century is rejected today largely because their theories cannot satisfactorily account for cultural variation. Why, for example, are some societies today lodged in “upper savagery” and others in “civilization.” The “psychic unity of mankind” or “germs of thought” that were postulated to account for parallel evolution cannot also account for cultural differences.
- Another weakness in the early evolutionists’ theories is that they cannot explain why some societies have regressed or even become extinct. Also, although other societies may have progressed to “civilization,” some of them have not passed through all the stages. Thus, early evolutionist theory cannot explain the details of cultural evolution and variation as anthropology now knows them
- One of the most common criticisms leveled at the nineteenth century evolutionists is that they were highly ethnocentric – for example E.B Tylor assumed that Victorian England, or its equivalent, represented the highest level of development for mankind.The comparative method used for these theories merely used the encounter with the other societies to enhance the greatness of the anthropologist’s own society. As the reference point was the Civilisation of the Whites, these theories have been condemned as ethnocentric.
- The unilineal evolutionary schemes [of these theorists] fell into disfavor in the 20th century, partly as a result of the constant controversy between evolutionist and diffusionist theories and partly because of the newly accumulating evidence about the diversity of specific sociocultural systems which made it impossible to sustain the largely “armchair” speculations of these early theorists”
Additional Knowledge