Culture & Ethnology

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D.C. McMurtrie, 1917 - 185 páginas

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Página 67 - ... may, perhaps, to some extent be a matter of personal taste. Cultural phenomena of striking similarity may develop independently in different areas. But when we find a certain cultural element distributed over a continuous area, we have the right and the obligation to search for a center of origin. It is and has always been much easier to borrow an idea from one's neighbors than to originate a new idea; and transmission of cultural elements, which in all ages has taken place in a great many different...
Página 25 - The cultural facts, even in their subjective aspect, are not merged in psychological facts. They must not, indeed, contravene psychological principles, but the same applies to all other principles of the universe; culture cannot construct houses contrary to the laws of gravitation nor produce bread out of stones. But the principles of psychology are as incapable of accounting for the phenomena of culture as is gravitation to account for architectural styles.
Página 5 - CIVILIZATION, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
Página 95 - What are the determinants of culture? We have found that cultural traits may be transmitted from without and in so far forth are determined by the culture of an alien people. The extraordinary extent to which such diffusion has taken place proves that the actual development of a given culture does not conform to innate laws necessarily leading to definite results, such hypothetical laws being overridden by contact with foreign peoples.
Página 83 - ... consideration. A given culture is, in a measure, at least, a unique phenomenon. In so far as this is true it must defy generalized treatment, and the explanation of a cultural phenomenon will consist in referring it back to the particular circumstances that preceded it. In other words, the explanation will consist in a recital of its past history; or, to put it negatively, it cannot involve the assumption of an organic law of cultural evolution that would necessarily produce the observed effect.
Página 62 - Lowie very well sums up his standpoint by saying that environment cannot explain culture because the identical environment is consistent with distinct cultures; because cultural traits persist from inertia in an unfavorable environment; because they do not develop where they would be of distinct advantage to a people; and because they may even disappear where one would least expect it on geographical principles.
Página 107 - relationships, which, under the descriptive system, are < distinct, and enlarges the signification both of the ' primary and secondary terms beyond their seemingly
Página 6 - ... 1896, Brinton disavowed the narrow scope of ethnology (1896a, p. 7) and in 1917 Lowie said: For purely practical reasons, connected with the minute subdivision of labor which has become imperative with modern specialization, ethnology has in practice concerned itself with the cultures of the cruder peoples without a knowledge of writing. But this division is an illogical and artificial one. As the biologist can study life as manifested in the human organism as well as in the amoeba, so the ethnologist...
Página 66 - The biologist, whatever metaphysical speculations he may indulge in as to the ultimate origin of life, does not depart in his workaday mood from the principle that every cell is derived from some other cell. So the ethnologist will do well to postulate the principle, Omnis cultura ex cultura. This means that he will account for a given cultural fact by merging it in a group of cultural facts or by demonstrating some other cultural fact out of which it has developed. The cultural phenomenon to be...
Página 96 - Aits past history. However, there is not merely discontinuity and ' diversity but also stability and agreement in the sphere of culture. '• The discrete steps that mark culture history may not determine one another, but each may involve as a necessary or at least probable consequence other phenomena which in many instances are simply new aspects of the same phenomenon, and in so far forth one cultural element as isolated in description is the determinant or correlate of another. As for those phenomena...

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