Cultural Relativism and International Politics by Derek Robbins

Author:Derek Robbins [Robbins, Derek]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General, Political Science, History & Theory, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781473910966
Google: FGCJCwAAQBAJ
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 2014-12-11T03:37:14+00:00

The only fact that a collection of implements used for the same purpose, or made of the same material, teaches, is, that man in different parts of the earth has made similar inventions, while, on the other hand, a collection representing the life of one tribe enables us to understand the single specimen far better. Our objection to Mason’s idea is, that classification is not explanation. (Stocking, 1974: 62)

According to Stocking, ‘Franz Boas more than any other man defined the “national character” of anthropology in the United States’ (Stocking, 1974: 1). The passage from his response to Mason already indicates the essence of Boas’s influence on that national character. In opposing the extrapolation of universal characteristics of objects, Boas was outlining an approach which would be termed ‘cultural relativism’. The meaning of objects is not to be found in their intrinsic evolution, but relative to their situation within a whole culture at a particular historical moment. Still adhering to an empirical orientation, Boas was in pursuit of an explanation of phenomena, and this involved an understanding of the dynamics of change rather than the articulation of a static classification. This meant that Boas was interested in the diffusion of meanings between cultures, interested in the processes whereby unlike causes generate effects cross-culturally.

Boas was active in establishing anthropology as a discipline through involvement with learned societies and the journal American Anthropology. In 1904, he gave an address on ‘The History of Anthropology’ at the International Congress of Arts and Science, held in St. Louis. He at once ruled out consideration of the ‘speculative anthropology’ of the 18th and early 19th centuries. He placed the beginnings of anthropology from about the middle of the 19th century. The methods of study were historical, classificatory, and geographical. He argued that ‘principally through Darwin’s powerful influence’, ‘the historical view of the natural sciences became irresistible’ (Stocking, 1974: 25–6). While recognizing the achievement of Darwin, Boas immediately showed his hand. He commented that ‘The oft-observed change from simple forms to more complex forms, from uniformity to diversity, was interpreted as a change from the less valuable to the more valuable, and thus the historical view assumed in many cases an ill-concealed teleological tinge’ (Stocking, 1974: 26). He proceeded to suggest that the legacy of the evolutionary method was now most apparent in respect of ‘universal traits of culture’ in ‘the long-continued controversy between the theory of their independent origin and that of their transmission from one part of the world to another’ (Stocking, 1974: 30). Boas’s interest in ‘transmission’ was obvious but he simply commented that the truth can only be established through ‘actual investigation into the individual history of such customs to discover the causes of their present distribution’ (Stocking, 1974: 31), emphasizing therefore the need to carry out historical and geographical analyses of whole cultures rather than of individual objects, practices or words.

During his long employment at Columbia University, many of Boas’s publications reflected the technical precision of his analyses of languages and of

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