The 5 most important anthropological schools: characteristics and proposals

Anthropology, like almost all scientific disciplines, does not have a single predominant school, but a set of several of them.

In order to get to know them better, we are going to do a tour of the schools of anthropology most representative in order to discover what approaches they make and to be able to compare them among themselves, as well as we will be able to distinguish the points in common that they raise as well as the differences that are characteristic of each a.

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Top 5 Anthropological Schools

These have been the main currents of this science throughout its historical development.

1. The first of the anthropological schools: evolutionism

Anthropology is the science in charge of studying the human being in all its dimensions, especially the cultural one. Within this task, different approaches have historically emerged, which are those represented by the main schools. anthropological, each offering a way of conducting studies on human beings and their different cultures.

It must be taken into account that this is a relatively recent discipline, since It has been considered an independent science since the last decades of the 19th century, driven by Charles Darwin's ideas about the natural selection of species., since these principles were extrapolated to human societies through the so-called social Darwinism that also affirms that only the fittest groups are the ones that survive.

It was precisely in this way that what we could consider one of the first anthropological schools arose, which is that of evolutionism. The highest representative of this school is Herbert Spencer, one of the first anthropologists in history. Spencer was one of the great English intellectuals of the 19th century. He embraced the theory of evolution to try to explain the functioning of human communities.

However, despite using Darwin's theories, he also intertwined them with those of Jean-Baptiste. Lamarck, that is, with Lamarckism, which defended postulates about evolution contrary to those of Charles Darwin. In any case, that of evolutionism is one of the anthropological schools characterized by rejecting the creationism and try to offer a scientific explanation for the origin and modification of societies and cultures human.

Another of the greatest exponents of this anthropological school was Edward Burnett Tylor, British anthropologist who laid the foundations of this discipline. Tylor developed cultural anthropology and comparative methods, being the first to carry out studies of field, that is, on the ground, in a quantitative way to be able to draw conclusions at a level ethnologic.

Lewis Henry Morgan was another of the evolutionary authors and therefore a representative of the first of the anthropological schools. In this case, Morgan focused his efforts on analyzing kinship systems. He developed a scale to classify the degree of social evolution of human cultures, ranging from savage, with three different degrees, up to the barbarians, with three other levels, until finally arriving at modern civilizations as they were. we know.

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2. The American School of Anthropology

Another of the main anthropological schools is the so-called American school, which arose after the independence of the United States in order to analyze the behavior of human groups in this continent. The greatest exponent of this current would be Franz Boas, an American author and one of the greatest opponents of the time to the emerging ideas of scientific racism..

Within the anthropological schools, the American one is characterized by the in-depth study of the culture and the comparison of it between different human groups to evaluate the contact and the transmission. For these authors, the key lay in looking for both the similarities and the differences, since that was the only way to Willingness to carry out a rigorous analysis of cultural areas as well as their expansion and their confluence with others.

An important question raised by the American school is the question of whether there are other species that, like humans, have culture. This branch is known as biological anthropology. To do this, what they do is establish a specific definition of what culture is so that from there they can investigate whether other animals, as perhaps the great apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees) also develop behaviors that could fit within the so-called culture.

Americans also studied the use of language in depth through linguistic anthropology.. It is such an important part of the culture that it becomes its own element. The form and use of language is of vital importance for anthropologists as a means of knowing the cultural history of a certain people. They can even study the way they think thanks to the language structures they use.

Likewise, thanks to this anthropological school, archaeological studies began to be given greater importance as one of the most important for anthropologists as a means of extracting information about the changes that a certain culture has undergone over time. of the years.

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3. Diffusionist anthropological school

The third of the main anthropological schools is diffusionism, an anthropological current based on the principle of cultural diffusion. What does this mean? That all cultures transmit their traits to those close to them, which is why a diffusion is constantly being experienced among all of them. In this way, the use of a certain technique or a specific object, even if it coincides between several cultures, it must come from one of them or from an older one that no longer exists but that was in contact.

In fact, there is a branch of diffusionism known as hyperdiffusionism, which takes this theory to its extreme. Its defenders maintained that there had to be a single primitive culture from which the others emerged, through small changes that cumulatively gave rise to the whole range of cultures so different that we can observe today in the world.

Friedrich Ratzel was one of the main defenders of diffusionism. In fact, he is the father of anthropogeography or human geography, the study of the movements of human societies through different regions. Ratzel wanted, through diffusionism, to put an end to the evolutionary ideas of anthropology, since evolutionism he advocated the simultaneous development between cultures while diffusionism advocated constant exchange between they.

The fact of the diffusion of a specific element from one culture to another is known in anthropology as cultural borrowing. It is a fact that it has happened continuously in human cultures, although obviously some have been more open than others. for this to happen, facilitating more contact with certain cultures to the detriment of others at different times of the history.

4. The French sociological school

Within anthropological schools, we also find the so-called French sociological school. this current It is mainly represented by Émile Durkheim, founder of sociology as an academic science. The basis of this school is that a social phenomenon cannot be studied in isolation, but must be analyzed in perspective, taking into account all the elements related to it.

Therefore, what the French sociological school defends is the interconnection between cultural elements, which must be studied together if we want to draw well-founded conclusions, otherwise we would lack sufficient information to be able to make a proper diagnosis substantiated.

Another of the most important authors of this anthropological school is Marcel Mauss, who is considered by many to be the father of French ethnology. Like Durkheim, Mauss affirms that, as in the rest of the sciences, anthropological concepts cannot be studied in an isolated way, since they need a context that helps the researcher to find the precise causes that underlie each one from them.

Therefore, these authors reject comparison as an anthropological method through which to analyze different human cultures. For them, each one must be studied using the rest of the elements as context.

5. functionalist anthropological school

Finally we find functionalism to close the list of the most important anthropological schools. The most important functionalist authors are Bronislaw Malinowski and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown.

This movement defends the importance of each part of culture for the role it plays for society, finally building a universality in which each element has an importance. It is a response to the postulates of diffusionism that we saw previously.

Functionalism brings the concept of social structure as a key element, since every function must be preceded by a structure that supports it. Therefore it must be one of the elements that functionalism, one of the main anthropological schools, defends as a principle when carrying out the corresponding studies.

Bibliographic references:

• Harris, M., del Toro, R.V. (1999). The development of anthropological theory: history of theories of culture. Twenty-first Century of Spain Editores S.A.
• Restrepo, E. (2016). Classical schools of anthropological thought. cuzco. Publisher Vicente Torres.
• Stagnaro, A.A. (2003). Science and anthropological debate: different perspectives. Social anthropology notebooks.