Evolutionism In Cultural Anthropology: A Critical History

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- 1 The Early History of Evolutionism -- Herbert Spencer and the Concept of Evolution -- The Evolutionary Views of Tylor and Morgan -- 2 The Reconstruction of Cultural Evolution -- The Comparative Method -- The Possibility of a Social Science -- The Uniformity of Nature -- The Principle of Continuity -- From Simplicity to Complexity -- The Objective Rating of Cultures -- Evolution Not an Inherent Tendency -- The Psychic Unity of Man -- Differential Evolution -- Contemporary Primitives and Ancestral Cultures -- Modern Primitives Not Primeval -- Primal Human Society -- Survivals -- 3 The Characteristics of Cultural Evolution -- Rectilinearity -- Unilinearity -- The Skipping of Stages -- The Law of Evolutionary Potential -- Rates of Evolution -- Diffusion and Evolution -- 4 The Determinants of Cultural Evolution -- Inherent versus External Determinants -- Psychic Unity as an Active Agent -- Racial Determinism -- Human Perfectibility -- Individuals as Determinants -- The Influence of Great Men -- Ideas as Prime Movers -- Historical Materialism -- Environmental Factors -- Subsistence as a Determinant -- Economic Determinants -- Social Determinants -- War as a Determinant -- Natural Selection -- Conclusion -- 5 Anti-Evolutionism in the Ascendancy -- The Boasian Backlash -- Diffusionism in British Anthropology -- The Functionalist Reaction -- Malinowski -- Radcliffe-Brown -- Anti-Evolutionism in Later British Social Anthropology -- Remaining Islands of Cultural Evolutionism: James G. Frazer -- Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg -- Sumner and Keller -- George P. Murdock -- The Barren Landscape -- Theorizing Disavowed -- Historical Particularism -- 6 Early Stages in the Reemergence of Evolutionism -- Leslie A. White -- Diffusion versus Evolution -- The Derivation of Evolutionary Formulas