German Diffusionist School
The scholars of the German Diffusionist School were of the opinion that culture traits and complexes emerged independently in many areas and then dispersed to other parts of the world. ‘Kulturkries’ or Culture-Circle school of thought as it is known, differs from the British school of diffusionism in its basic concept of origin of culture. Kulturkries School attributed development of cultures not to one particular place but to several places at several different times. Culture traits and culture complexes were believed to have originated independently at several parts of the world from where it was imitated and diffused to other places due to migration. Thus, according to the German Diffusionist School each culture trait or culture complex had a circle or district leading to the concept of culture circles. Thus, we see that the German School of Diffusion did not completely negate the theory of evolution. The roots of the Kulturkries School can be traced to the founder of anthrogeography Friedrich Ratzel.
Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904), Leo Frobrnius (1873-1938), Fritz Graebner (1877- 1934) and Wilhelm Schmidt (1868-1954) the bignners of the German Diffusionist School had followed in the lines of the propagators of the theory of evolution emphasizing the uniqueness of each cultural heritage. While at the same time argued that cultural evolution was not unilineal thereby denouncing Tylor’s psychic unity of mankind and reflected that technological development alone cannot judge the complexity of a particular culture. The diffusionist aimed at a comprehensive survey of the spread of cultural traits from the earliest times.
In this regard Ratzel using the comparative method traced the similarities of the bow and arrow in his work The History of Mankind (1896). He studied the similarities in the cross section of the bow shaft, the material and fastening of the bow string and the feathering of the arrow of different societies. Based on the study Ratzel concluded that the bow and arrow of Indonesia and West Africa were related.
According to him, the most important consideration was to discover from where cultural traits came and where they went. He was of opinion that there were no spatial limits to the pathways they might take single cultural items usually diffused, but whole cultural complexes were transplanted by migration. Yet, in every case, adaptation to environment would cause variations in culture traits to take on somewhat different one outward shapes. How then could their relationship be recognised. Ratzel warned that not every similarities could be taken as a proof of historical connection because objects of material culture, in order to have any utility at all, must possess certain features. For example, a canoe paddle needs a blade, and an arrow head or a spear must have a point. If, however, there were other similar qualities, unrelated to use, they must evidence historical relationship. So if paddles have similar incised ornamentations, or spears have feathers attached to their shafts, this cannot be accidental, must certainly imply borrowing or migration, even though respective cultures may be widely separated in time and space.
Ratzel called this principle as ‘Criterion of form’. Applying this principle to African bow and arrow, he observed that cross section of bow shaft, the fastenings of bow strings and the feathering of Indonesia. Thus, he assumed that the arrows were quite like those in borrowing must have taken place.
Leo Frobenius a student and colleague of Ratzel, took this idea of diffusion several steps further. He observed that historical connections usually implied much more than transmission of single culture traits, because often enough whole culture complexes were involved. He, thus concluded that migration was more important factor of explanation than diffusion in explanation of cultural similarities. Finding that not only the forms of bow and arrows were similar in West Africa and Indonesia, but areas also resembled each other in form of house, shields, masks and drums, which indicate that migration had taken place. He introduced term called Geographical Statistics. His geographical statistics meant that one should count the number of similarities. Further he developed an another criterion namely, biological criterion or developmental criterion. By this he meant that internal changes have to be taken into account.
Because, when people migrate into a different environment, their cultures would have to be adjusted. Some traits would change and some would disappear becoming useless. In this way, not only similarities but significant differences related to ecological adaptation could become indicators of historical connections.
He did not confine his research to only material culture like Ratzel, he also took into consideration, the study of mythology. Comparing similarities between traditional stories in Africa and Indonesia, he observed that in latter area myths were all related and formed an epic, while in Africa, the stories appeared singly. Indonesia, thus, must have been the homeland. He was also of opinion that higher cultures were always the originators and lower ones the imitators.
Ratzel’s criterion of forms and Leo Frobenius geographical statistics, were vigorously combined in the strategy of Kulture Kreise School. Whose main figures were Graebner and Father Wilhelm Schmidt.
Fritz Graebner who was a museum curator in Germany worked on the culture circle and culture strata in Oceania and Africa and further developed the idea and tried to give it a global perspective. In his famous book Methodder Ethnology(1911) he tried to explain the criteria for identifying affinities and chronologies (similarities and historical relationships). Based on the reconstruction of chronology Graebner could identify as many as six historically similar cultural developments which had counterparts in other parts of the world.
i) Tasmanian culture > ancient culture
ii) Australian boomerang culture
iii) Totemic Hunter culture > Africa
iv) Two-class horticulturist culture
v) Melanesian bow culture > Neolithic Age of central Europe
vi) Polynesian Patrilineal culture > recent culture > imported from America
Of these six cultural layers, Graebner suggested that only the Tasmanian culture is ancient one, while the Polynesian culture is very recent. Graebner further pointed out that these primitive people evolved a number of distinctive cultures while living in isolated places and without any means of communication as well as developed methods of transportation.
Graebner was of opinion that as the method of travel improved, the influence of these cultural centres began to radiate more or less, in the aggregate form. However, when two systems clashed, one either destroyed the other or absorbed it to a great extent. He related the “Malenesian Bow Culture” to the Neolithic age of Central Europe. He argued that people of both the areas shared pile-dwellings, a rectangular ground plan, a special mode of hafting adzes, spoons etc., but the lack of cattle and other traits in Oceania, as pointed out by Graebner was due to geographical deterrents.
Graebner conceded that some Polynesian traits may have been imported from America, but the residual (what is left over) parallels of the New and the Old world, are net derived from a single source. While writing in his famous book “Ethnologie” in 1923, Graebner pointed out that the African distribution of totemism, head-rests as well as conical roofs etc., should not be explained by one early disseminations, but is partly ascribed to fairly recent diffusion. Hence, one of the important charactristics of this school of diffusion is this that under the leadership of Graebner they believed that during thousand years of culture history, people have been exposed to varied alien trait – was one of the fair judgements that they conclude!
Graebner also talked about the type of diffusion. He said that there are two types of diffusion viz. Primary diffusion and Secondary diffusion As discussed earlier, Graebner listed six successive centres of culture and further pointed out that the Tasmanian culture is the oldest one, and according to him this is the typical example of Primary diffusion. He admits, on one hand, that tile Tasmanian culture, being the ancient one, may be called a centre of Primary diffusion, but on the other hand, he suggests that the element of the complex occur probably all over Australia because of Secondary diffusion.
While writing in his famous book “Ethnologie” (1923) on the secondary source of transmission of cultural traits, which had also been termed as Secondary diffusion, Graebner points out that in some cultural areas of Oceania, Totemism was very rare, but it has now diffused widely through secondary transmission. However, Graebner does not throw light empirically on the mode of Primary and Secondary diffusion and, therefore, Lowie has rightly said that “this is not pure empiricism, but empiricism largely diluted with a perior speculation” (1937).
Graebner, taking into consideration the prevailing “Moiety complex”, said that moieties are primarily matrilineal and go with the cultivation of the soil. He further said that when the matrilineal and totemic circle fuse, the totemic groups are arranged in complementary moieties. Thus, according to Graebner, some Malenesians have totemic moieties as well as multiple totem groups of the matrilineal type. On this point also Graebner has been highly criticised by Lowie, who argues (1937) that it is of the fallacies of the Graebnarian’s theory to treat totems as primarily patrilineal and moieties as matrilineal and then to say that deviations have occurred due to blending. Lowie points out that there are several exceptions to this explanation. North America alone presents so many formidable exceptions. The Southern Siouans have patrilineal moieties; the Hopi lack moieties, but have multiple clans and totemic names and matrilineal descent. Parsons reported (1924) that the Peublo Indians have moieties but with patrilineal descent. Thus, Graebner failed to understand that the moiety system need not be conceptually the same in Australia as well as in New York and that it can development independently in distant regions. Then it is also argued that if moiety can develop independently at number of places, this may also happen with a number of other traits.
In short the author of the Kultur-historische (culture-historitcal school) laid too much emphasis on trait complex and their historical evidences. However, Graebner pointed out in most of his writings that when historical evidence are lacking, mere superficial resemblance is not enough to conclude that diffusion had taken place. Along with the similarity of form there should be the sameness of the number, and arrangement of constituent elements of a trait or a complex.
Some of the criticism of the Graebnerian’s theory of diffusion may be summarised in the following way:
- (i) It is not clear from Graebner’s analysis of cultural traits that how the fundamental complexes are established as historical realities.
- (ii) The component traits—including such vital elements as the moiety principle—are in part classificatory devices without historical reality.
- (iii) Some of the elements may very well have arisen independently.
- (iv) As Graebner was a museum curator for a long time, he was concerned with the classification of material culture for the purpose of meaningful exhibition, and thus, he laid too much emphasis on material culture for throwing light on diffusion.
- (v) The complexity of actual events is too great to be described by the interaction of a small number of cultures.
These are some of the criticism levelled against the Graebnerian’s theory, but we must not follow the skepticism blindly. It is further alleged that Graebner is mechanical in his outlook or excluded the psychological aspect of social life. But this is also not true. Graebner and Schmidt were avowedly interested, above all, in;the sequence of events, but this does not automatically exclude them from the ambit of psychological approach and principle. When we look into Graebner’s later researches we find him facing the process of contact metamorphosis, as pointed out by Lowie (1937). Graebner shows that mechanical juxtaposition does not show similarities with the elements of distinct categories. He argues that some phenomena may have an inherent affinity for others, pre-disposing to assimilation, while other traits are negatively correlated and hinder adoption.
Finally graebner indicated that how borrowed acquired novel significance among the recipents and he cites the examples from Oceania where he demonstrates how the lunar myths turn in vegetation myths? Thus, it is wrong to comment that he was very mechanical in his approach. Goldenweiser, writing in his famous book “History, Physchology and Culture”, published from New York in 1933, pointed out that “the interrelations of associated traits is quite beyond Graebner’s horizon”, and by contrast he praises Rivers for observing “the psychological interplay of cultural factors”.
However, these are precisely the points made by the Graebner himself, and Goldenweiser’s criticism rests on ignorance of the Ethnologie (1923), written by Graebner, as suggested by Lowie (1937). All that can be argued is this that Graebner himself evinced a disproportionate preference for historical reconstruction, but that is purely a matter of taste.At the end it can be boldly said that Graebner recognised an interrelation of cultural phenomena, which is of great anthropological significance.
Father Wilhelm Schmidt born in Australia was a self proclaimed follower of Graebner. To understand the cultures of the world, both Graebner and Schmidt applied two rules as discussed below and divided the world into different strata and circles (Upadhyay & Pandey).
i) Criteria of Form as called by Graebner and Criteria of Quality as stated by Schmidt reflected that similarities between two culture elements which do not automatically arise out of nature, material purpose of traits or objects, should be interpreted as a result of difussion irrespective of the distance that might separate the two instances.
ii) Criteria of Quantity stated that the probability of historical relationship between two items increases as the number of additional articles/items/artifacts showing similarities increases.
Schmidt distinguished four major grades of culture circles which are till date referred to;
i) Primitive culture circle
ii) Primary culture circle
iii) Secondary culture circle
iv) Tertiary culture circle
- Primitive or hunting and gathering grade we find: (i) the central or exogamous kreis, corresponding to the Pygmy people of Africa and Asia, distinguished by their exogamous hordes and their monogamous families; (ii) the Arctic kreis (Eskimo, algonkins etc.) exogamous with sexual equality and (iii) the Antarctic kreis ( South-eastern Australians, Bushmen, Tasmanians etc.) exogamous with sex totems.
- Primary grade there are also three culture circles: (i) Patriarchal cattle-raising nomads (ii) exogamous patrilineal totemic hunters, (iii) exogamous matrilineal village-dwelling horticulturalists.
- Secondary grade: Free patrilineal system (Polynesian, the Sudan, India, Western Asia etc.)
- Tertiary grade: Earliest higher civilization of Asia, Europe and America as discussed by Schmidt(1939).
The most striking feature of this scheme is its evolutionism. The succession of “grades” is nothing less than the familiar sequence of “stages” leading from hunting and gathering types of sociocultural systems through horticultural and pastoral types and on to complex stratified civilizations. The evolutionary significance of the Kreise is further strengthened by the fact that Schmidt attempted to associate the sequence of grades with the main European archaeological divisions of prehistory: With the numerous parallels in points of detail between prehistoric cultures and ethnological spheres of culture, we may establish a two fold parallelism in the classification of these two series of results: ( 1) the ethnological division into primitive and primary cultures is in fairly complete agreement with the prehistorical division into the earlier and later paleolithic period; ( 2) the ethnological division into primitive and primary cultures on the one hand and secondary and tertiary cultures on the other, corresponds with the prehistoric division into the paleolithic and the neolithic periods.
Schmidt’s evolutionism was by no means confined merely to the generalities of the hunting, gathering civilization sequence. His notion of a matrilineal-horticultural Kreis was heavily in debt to the evolutionary logic of Bachofen, Morgan, and Eduard Hahn. According to Schmidt, during the hunting and gathering stage, women specialized in the collection of wild plants. This led women to invent horticulture and thus to become the owners of the products of the soil and of the land itself. On the basis of their economic ascendancy, women insisted on matrilocal residence and matrilineal descent.
The supreme deity was given feminine attributes, girls’ puberty rites were stressed, and the couvade instituted: full gynecocracy reigned. Schmidt (1935:253) called this the “classical phase of mother-right.” Since this phase is no longer found in existence, Schmidt had to explain what had happened to it. Gradually, he claimed, the brothers of the ruling women began to take over “duties and tasks which could be better performed by men than by women” (ibid.: 2 54). This trend eventually resulted in the usurpation of female rights, with males administering the family property and passing their authority on to their sisters’ sons-what Schmidt called a “masculinized mother-right.” Thus, despite the absence of examples of the “classic phase,” there is no reason, Schmidt argued, for “the astounding conclusion that matriarchy nowhere exists, merely motherright”(ibid.:255).
It is true that Schmidt made no attempt to arrange the three Kreise of the Primary Stage in an evolutionary order; i.e., he did not propose that the matrilineal Kreis had evolved before the two patrilineal Kreise. All three Kreise of the Primary Stage apparently existed side by side, having evolved out of the Primitive hunting-gathering stage along separate lines. Nonetheless, the evolutionary sequence which Schmidt outlined for the matrilineal-horticultural Kreis covered extensive series of transformations. Property rights, for example, were supposed to have gone from equality in the Primitive stage, to female-dominated in classic mother-right, to male-dominated under masculine mother-right. The highly speculative nature of these reconstructions did not fail to impress Lowie with their close resemblance to Morgan’s privileged insights into sociocultural systems which no one had ever seen. Said Lowie ( 1933b:290) of Schmidt: “His discussion of the matrilineal Kulturkreis … is wholly evolutionistic, schematic, unhistorical, and full of a priori psychologizing.” Actually, he only difference between Morgan’s and Schmidt’s evolutionistic schemes is that Schmidt’s main sequence was supposed to have happened only once, whereas aspects of Morgan’s sequence were supposed to have happened over and over again. Yet, as Lowie was quick to grasp, as soon as Schmidt began to argue that there was an “organic” (i.e., causal) relationship between farming and mother right, the claim that the sequence had happened only once became ludicrous. Since agriculture was supposed to have been invented only once, its appearance all over the world had to be a result of diffusion. \Vhat happened, Lowie wanted to know, if it diffused before mother-right had evolved?
Let women invent horticulture in tribe A. What prevents its spread to B, C, D, before any matriarchal institutions have time to develop in A? Evidently nothing whatsoever. Now, ex hypothesi, feminine ascendancy results from feminine tillage. Hence, in each recipient tribe adoption of the latter sets up a parallel sequence of maternal descent, girls’ puberty rites, female deities, …. There would still be a single origin for farming, but the social correlates would arise independently over and over again in parallel series [ LOWIE 19 3 3 b: 291].
Schmidt answered this charge with memorable elan. Noting that Lowie had taunted him with being an evolutionist, he expressed his regrets at not being able to afford his critics any such consolation. His sequence of mother-right is not to be confused with evolutionism, because it is “one of the most firmly established results of modern historical ethnology” (scHMIDT 193 5:2 50). Evolutionism is aprioristic, and its sequences are unnatural and illogical. The culture-historical method, however, deals with “logical” and “natural” sequences.
The male response to female dominance was “to such a degree a natural, almost an inevitable one, that it is not aprioristic evolutionism, but quite logical deduction from the very nature of things and men, to arrange them in a certain series of phases of development” (ibid.). This was, of course, precisely the defense given by the nineteenth-century evolutionists on behalf of their own reconstruction of evolutionary sequences.
USE OF THE COMPARATIVE METHOD
Even Lowie failed to grasp the full extent of Schmidt’s commitment to evolutionary schema. Lowie apparently regarded the sequence of the matrilineal Kreis as some sort of anomaly. He seemed to believe that “in general tendency Father Wilhelm Schmidt’s position is unquestionably anti-evolutionary” (Lowm 1933b:290). But exactly the contrary is true, for both Schmidt and Graebner were fundamentally and inextricably dependent upon the central feature of nineteenth-century evolutionism: the comparative method. It was not the vaunted criteria of form and quantity, but the comparative method, upon which the German “historical” school rested. For their task was precisely the same as that of the evolutionists: they sought to derive from an inspection of contemporary peoples a knowledge of origins and of the successive modifications which cultures had experienced. The Kreise were not only “Circles” but they were “Strata” -a part of a universal chronological scheme, which rested entirely on the assumption that contemporary cultures could be arranged according to degree of primitiveness. Schmidt made no attempt to conceal his dependence on the comparative method. Indeed, he called it the “crown” of ethnology and attributed its discovery to Pere Lafitau, an association which no doubt enhanced its appeal to the faithful. Criticizing the tendency among ethnologists and sociologists in Britain and America who limit themselves to a purely synchronic interest, Schmidt (1933:9-10) wrote: I think that such a scholar would deprive ethnology of its crownby his disbelief in the axiom established already by Pere Lafitau in his famous work Moeurs des sauvages americains comparees aux moeurs des premiers temps (Paris, 1724), that primitive peoples are stages of the past of humanity and living witnesses of them. And if ethnology should despair of establishing objectively and trustworthily the succession of these stages, it seems to me that it would abdicate its prerogative to be our guide into those first ages of humanity from which sprang the deepest roots of all its institutions, of religion and of ethics, of the family and the state.
It is clear that the culture-historical method was as remote from the methodological reforms of the historical particularists as were Lubbock and McLennan. Yet Lowie (1938:193), for all of his trenchant criticism, went out of his way to declare that in the “final balancing of the books,” the German diffusionists are left “with very considerable assets.” Lowie was undoubtedly prepared to go to greaterlengths to find words of praise for Graebner and Schmidt than he was willing to do for Morgan. He asserted that the diffusionists were “by no means so intransigent” as might appear from some of their writings, and that “a reconciliation with the views of many contemporary and supposedly hostile colleagues is not at all barred” (ibid.: 191).
Criticisms of the German Diffusions School
- Diffusionist school focused on what is diffusion but never explained the causes of diffusion and how it takes place. The methodology did not take into account the dynamics of culture change. i. e analysis of reasons behind their acceptance, rejections and modifications.
- Despite the identification of 4-5 bands with their own migration patterns being reflected upon yet nothing concrete on culture circles could be established. They talked about the “multiple development of culture”, but did not elaborate each one in detail.
- Diffusionist school also relied heavily on the museum methodologies. The main component of this school was thus, typology of culture traits rather than on the explaination of the causes of spread of diffusion.
- They emphasised too much on material culture and did not take into consideration other aspects of human culture.