Current Anthropological Literature, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Current Anthropological Literature, Vol. 1

Methode der Ethnologie; by Ankerniann in his address before the congress of German and Austrian anthropologists at Heilbronn (Archiv fur Anthropologic, X, Heft 4, Korrespondenz-Blatt, pp. 156-162) and in previous publications; and by Foy, in his Fhrer durck das Rautenslrauck-Joest-Museum, 1910, Introduction, as well as in his introduction to Graebner's Methode. Dr Rivers enthusiastically embraces the doctrines of the German ''ethnological" school and tells the story of his "conversion," a result of his studies of relationship terms and secret societies in Melanesia. From one point of view Dr Rivers is, no doubt, right in contrasting the two schools. Similarities in culture may be ascribed to independent developments under similar environments on the basis of the psychic unity of mankind; or they may be interpreted as indicating cultural diffusion and, ultimately, genetic relationship. The two schools adopt these alternative explanations of ethnic phenomena. Dr Rivers forcibly represents this contrast. Referring to the conventionalization of realistic designs, he says: "The transitions which have been taken to be evidence of independent processes of evolution based on psychological tendencies common to mankind are by the modern German school ascribed to the mixture of cultures and of peoples" (p. 888); or again: "In every case where British anthropologists see evolution, either in the forms of material objects or in social and religious institutions, the modern German school sees only the evidence of mixture of cultures, either with or without an accompanying mixture of the races to which these cultures belonged" (p. 888). Now, apart from their adoption of these alternative explanations, is there such an "immense divergence of thought and method" between the two schools In no way. On the contrary, we see here one and the same methodological procedure and, from a wider point of view, a tendency of human thought common enough in the history of science; namely, the dogmatic application of an interpretative principle, with no regard to the merits of the individual case to which the principle is applied. Thus, the method pursued by both schools must be characterized as uncritical. (For a further elaboration of this topic see Boas' review of Graebner's Methode in Science, vol. 34, No. 884; and Lowie's forthcoming article in the Journal of American Folk-Lore.)

Dr Rivers' own position is radically different from that of Gracbner. Notwithstanding his confessed "conversion," he may have adopted the practice of the "ethnological" school in his Melanesian work, but he has not embraced its spirit.

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