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The Comparative Method of Anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Kenneth E. Bock
Kenneth E. Bock
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The basic operation in the comparative method is an arrangement of social or cultural conditions observed among existing peoples into a series that is then taken to represent a process of evolution. This procedure has been used to depict the whole sweep of human history, a limited period of development, or the growth of a particular social or cultural element or group of elements. The method has been applied most commonly, perhaps, in a search for origins of specific cultural items.

Type
Comparative Methods
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , April 1966 , pp. 269 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1966

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References

1 Edward Burnett Tylor's didactic presentation and defense of the thesis that “the savage state in some measure represents an early condition of mankind, out of which the higher culture has gradually been developed or evolved” is rare in the nineteenth century literature. Primitive Culture, 2d ed. (New York, 1873), I: 32Google Scholar.

2 Sikes, E. E., The Anthropology of the Greeks (London, 1914), p. 10Google Scholar.

3 See, e.g., Politics, I: 2, II: 8.

4 Lovejoy, A. O. and Boas, George offer an impressive body of evidence in their Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935)Google Scholar.

5 Myres, J. L., The Influence of Anthropology on the Course of Political Science (University of California Publications in History, 4) (1916)Google Scholar.

6 For an account of some of these early reactions to cultural differences see Bock, Kenneth E., The Acceptance of Histories (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1956), pp. 68–74Google Scholar, and references cited there.

7 For some late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century reactions of this type, see Kendrick, T. D., British Antiquity (London, 1950), pp. 110, 121–125Google Scholar. It should be noted, of course, that this comparison sometimes proceeded with the judgment that savages were superior to present Europeans; in either case it was a matter of finding the past in the present. Hobbes and Locke made casual reference to the American savage for evidence of an early or orginial “state of nature”.

8 Lafitau, , Mceurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, Comparees aux Mceurs des Premiers Temps (Paris, 1724)Google Scholar.

9 Turgot, , “Tableau Philosophique des Progrès Successifs de l'esprit Humain”, “Plan d'un Ouvrage sur la Geographic Politique”, “Plan de Deux Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle”, in Œuvres de Turgot, Schelle, Gustav, ed. (Paris, 1913)Google Scholar. vol. I.

10 Ferguson, Adam, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 8th ed. (Philadelphia, 1819), pp. 143–144, 146Google Scholar.

11 Pauw, Cornelis De, Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américans, ou Mémoires Intéressantes pour Servir à l'Histoire de I'Espèce Humain (Berlin, 1768–1769Google Scholar); Home, Henry (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man (Edinburgh, 1774)Google Scholar; Robertson, William, The History of America (London, 1777)Google Scholar; Condorcet, , Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progrès de l'Esprit Humain in his Œuvres Complètes (Paris, 1804)Google Scholar. Bryson's, GladysMan and Society (Princeton, 1945)Google Scholar, provides a discerning account of the Scottish moral philosophers’ use of the comparative method.

12 Comte, Auguste, Cours de Philosophie Positive, 4e ed. (Paris, 1877)Google Scholar, IV: 318, et passim.

13 J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, Book VI.

14 Spencer, Herbert, Descriptive Sociology; or Groups of Sociological Facts, Classified and Arranged (London, 1873)Google Scholar, Division III, No. 1, Part 1-C, “Provisional Preface”, pp. iii-iv; An Autobiography (London, 1904), II: 172–173Google Scholar.

15 Tylor, op. cit., 1: 2, 25, 32.

16 Morgan, Lewis Henry, Ancient Society (Chicago, 1877), pp. v-vii, 3, 8, 39, 262, 273, 390, 455Google Scholar, et passim.

17 McLennan, John Ferguson, Studies in Ancient History, Second Series, Comprising an Inquiry into the Origin of Exogamy, ed. by McLennan, Eleanora A. and Platt, Arthur (London, 1896), pp. 8–10Google Scholar.

18 It is a grand and rich literature. Some examples: Lang, Andrew, Modern Mythology (London, 1897)Google Scholar; Westermarck, Edward, The History of Human Marriage (London, 1891)Google Scholar; Ch. Letourneau, , Property: Its Origin and Development (London, 1892)Google Scholar; Frazer, James George, The Golden Bough (London, 1911–1915)Google Scholar, and Psyche's Task, 2d ed. (London, 1913)Google Scholar; Brinton, Daniel G., “The Aims of Anthropology”, in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 44th meeting, 1895 (Salem, 1896), pp. 1–17Google Scholar; Moore, George F., “The History of Religions in the Nineteenth Century”, in Congress of Arts and Sciences, St. Louis, 1904 (Boston, 1906), II: 432–442Google Scholar; A. C. Haddon, “Ethnology: Its Scope and Problems”, Ibid., V: 549–570; Forrest, J. Dorsey, The Development of Western Civilization (Chicago, 1907)Google Scholar; Marett, R. R., The Threshold of Religion, 2d ed. (London, 1914)Google Scholar; Harrison, Jane Ellen, Ancient Art and Ritual (New York, 1913)Google Scholar; Gummere, F. B., Beginnings of Poetry (New York, 1901)Google Scholar; Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York, 1899)Google Scholar, and The Instinct of Workmanship (New York, 1914)Google Scholar; Dealey, James Quayle, The Development of the State (New York, 1909)Google Scholar; Briffault, Robert, The Mothers: A Study of the Origins of Sentiments and Institutions (New York, 1927)Google Scholar; Pitt-Rivers, A. Lane-Fox, The Evolution of Culture and Other Essays, ed. by Myres, J. L. (Oxford, 1906)Google Scholar.

19 A clear understanding of social or cultural evolutionism and its relation to the comparative method is completely obscured by an effort to attribute this viewpoint in social theory to Darwin's influence. For a discussion of the issue, see Bock, Kenneth E., “Darwin and Social Theory”, Philosophy of Science, 22 (1955): 123–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Leslie A. White has maintained that the early evolutionists, Tylor in particular, did not suggest that every tribe or nation passed through identical stages of development. White argues that Tylor's objective was a description of culture evolution. See White's, “‘Diffusion vs. Evolution’: An Anti-Evolutionist Fallacy”, American Anthropologist, 47 (1945): 339–356CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Primitive Culture, op. cit., I: 5.

22 Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization, 3d ed. (New York, 1878), p. 373Google Scholar; “On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions”, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 18 (1889), p. 269Google Scholar.

23 Ancient Society, as cited above.

24 Principles of Sociology (New York, 1910), III: 331; I: 555–556Google Scholar.

25 Researches, op. cit., p. 1; Primitive Culture, op. cit., I: 19. Italics added.

26 The argument that anthropologists were forced into this position by the fact that they were dealing with peoples who had no recorded history of events is not convincing. Tylor, for example, was dissatisfied with what historians were doing in general (Primitive Culture, op. cit., I: 2). It was not a case of leaving recorded history to historians and unrecorded history to anthropologists.

27 For Tylor's discussion of this crucial operation, see Primitive Culture, op. cit., I: 26–31.

28 Ibid., I: 1.

29 “On a Method of Investigation of the Development of Institutions”, op. cit., p. 269; Researches, op. cit., p. 373.

30 “Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for Reorganizing Society”, in Positive Polity, trans, by Bridges, John H., et al. (London, 1875–1877), IV: 537, 556–557Google Scholar.

31 Ancient Society, op. cit., pp. 262, 273.

32 Cours de Philosophic Positive, op. cit., V: 6–7. See also Tylor, Researches, op. cit., p. 372.

33 I have tried to deal with some of the details of this background in The Acceptance of Histories, op. cit., part two.

34 Cours de Philosophic Positive, op. cit., TV: 321–323.

35 Researches, op. cit., pp. 1–4, 275. Italics added.

36 “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology”, Science, 4 (1896): 901–908CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 See Nisbet, Robert A., “Social Structure and Social Change”, Research Studies of The State College of Washington, 20 (1953): 70–76Google Scholar.

38 For a revealing discussion of this point, see Dore, Ronald Philip, “Function and Cause”, American Sociological Review, 26 (1961): 843–853CrossRefGoogle Scholar.