Although culture-area classifications may be regarded as essential at the initial fact-gathering and fact-ordering levels of ethnography, the concept has been as much of a deterrent to the growth of nomothetic theory as it has been an asset.
Steward (1955:82) has discussed the consequences of a reliance upon culture-area typologies with respect to three problems:
- ( 1) center and boundary change with passage of time;
- ( 2) culture within the area may change so that it resembles cultures in different areas at different times;
- ( 3) portions of the area may be regarded as containing radically different cultures despite sharing of many features.
All of these problems are well illustrated in the case of Kroeber’s Greater Southwest Area.
- First, archaeological studies of the Southwest do not confirm the notion of a single stable center, nor a small number of climaxes.
- Second, there are known to be at least two principal developmental sequences: one, the Hohokam sequence, running from the hunting and gathering Cochise through the agricultural but pre-historic Hohokam; the other, the Anasazi sequence, connecting pre-ceramic Basket Maker peoples with the modern Pueblos.
- Third, the area, despite widespread similarities in culture “content,” was inhabited in historic times by peoples whose social organization was as widely contrastive as that of the sedentary Pueblos, the pastoral Navaho, and the marauding Apaches.
- This concept, is very selective in the kinds of traits on which it focuses. As a result, local and regional differences are virtually ignored, and the concept of independent invention was often discarded.
- Anthropologists cannot agree on the number of culture areas and how groups should be classified within those divisions. The current division of culture areas tends to be the most popular; however, there are certainly variations on this scheme: Arctic, Subarctic, Pacific Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, Great Plains, Southwest, Plateau, Great Basin, and California.
WHY DID ‘CULTURE AREA CONCEPT’ LOSE ITS STEAM?
Culture area theories were criticised for the tendency to portray people in a static and environmentally deterministic way. It was also pointed out that the theorists were selective about which and how many traits were focused on. In case of Kroeber (and through his own admission) the criteria for cultural comparison are found to be descriptive and subjective in nature.
The culture area concept lost its steam because it did not necessarily account for sudden culture contact and influence such as the colonial forces. The so-called vanishing cultures either perished or acculturated and changed due to exposure with the western world. The cultures had too many stimuli and influence to be understood in their so called pristine or original form. This is not to say that cultures changed overnight, or that the cultural association (with neighbouring cultures) and practices suddenly changed, but the heterogeneity among them became prominent and pronounced. Further, over time the tribes being considered within cultural area gained a voice of their own, and spoke up about their representation/mis-representation. As culture area often created a geo-political identity of the tribe as well. In today’s times culture still finds geographical (as was given in the introduction with the reference of Punjabi culture) references.
However, one realised that cultural identity itself has many social forces at play. In that a geographic-historical perspective and association with neighbouring communities might play a significant role in understanding a culture, however a superimposed categorisation of researcher’s perspective (of cultural distribution), devoid of communities’ inputs, cannot remain free of critique.