Key Anthropological Theories

Why This Matters

Anthropological theories aren't just abstract ideas you need to memorize for an exam—they're the lenses through which anthropologists have tried to answer fundamental questions about human existence. Why do people do what they do? How do cultures change? Who gets to define what's "normal"? Each theory you'll encounter represents a different answer to these questions, shaped by the historical moment in which it emerged and the assumptions its creators held about human nature, progress, power, and meaning.

You're being tested on your ability to recognize how these theories differ in their core assumptions, their methods of analysis, and their political implications. Don't just memorize names and dates—know what question each theory is trying to answer and what it assumes about culture in the process. When you can explain why a Marxist anthropologist would analyze a ritual differently than a symbolic anthropologist, you've mastered the material.

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Theories of Social Order and Function

These theories share a common question: How does society hold together? They treat culture as a system where different parts work together to maintain stability, much like organs in a body.

Functionalism

• Society as organism—cultural practices exist because they serve specific purposes that help the group survive and maintain equilibrium
• Interdependence is the key concept: religion, kinship, economics, and politics all connect and support each other
• Malinowski pioneered this approach through his Trobriand Islands fieldwork, asking "what need does this practice fulfill?"

Structural-Functionalism

• Institutions maintain social order—family, education, religion, and law each play defined roles in keeping society stable
• Social norms and values act as the glue binding individuals to the collective, creating cohesion across generations
• Radcliffe-Brown developed this framework, focusing less on individual needs and more on structural requirements of society

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Theories of Cultural Change and Development

These theories tackle a different question: How do cultures change over time, and where do new practices come from? They disagree sharply on whether change follows universal patterns or unique historical paths.

Evolutionism

• Linear progression from "simple" to "complex" societies—all cultures supposedly pass through similar developmental stages
• 19th-century origins tied this theory to colonial ideologies that ranked societies on a scale of "civilization"
• Major critique: oversimplifies cultural change, ignores historical context, and reflects ethnocentric bias rather than scientific observation

Historical Particularism

• Each culture is unique—shaped by its own specific historical events, environmental conditions, and cultural borrowings
• Franz Boas developed this approach as a direct rejection of evolutionism, demanding rigorous fieldwork over armchair theorizing
• Anti-generalization stance argues that broad evolutionary schemes ignore the actual complexity of how cultures develop

Diffusionism

• Cultural traits spread through contact, trade, migration, and conquest rather than independent invention
• Innovation often originates in one place and then diffuses outward through networks of exchange
• Challenges both evolutionism (change isn't internal and inevitable) and extreme particularism (cultures aren't isolated units)

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Theories of Deep Structure and Meaning

These theories ask: What underlying patterns or meanings organize human thought and culture? They look beneath surface behaviors to find hidden structures or symbolic systems.

Structuralism

• Universal mental structures shape how humans think and organize culture—binary oppositions like nature/culture, raw/cooked, male/female
• Claude Lévi-Strauss borrowed from linguistics to argue that myths, kinship systems, and rituals all follow similar deep patterns
• Relationships matter more than elements—structuralists analyze how things relate to each other, not what they are in isolation

Symbolic Anthropology

• Symbols create social reality—people live in webs of meaning they themselves have spun
• Victor Turner studied rituals as symbolic dramas; Mary Douglas analyzed how purity symbols organize social boundaries
• Myths, rituals, and language aren't just reflections of culture—they're the building blocks through which culture is constructed

Interpretive Anthropology

• Culture as text—anthropologists should "read" cultural practices like literary critics interpret literature
• Clifford Geertz championed "thick description," capturing the layers of meaning behind even simple actions like a wink
• Subjective understanding matters more than objective measurement; the goal is grasping what things mean to people

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Theories of Power and Inequality

These theories center a critical question: Who benefits from cultural arrangements, and whose perspectives have been ignored? They analyze how power shapes both culture and the study of culture itself.

Marxist Anthropology

• Economic base shapes culture—material conditions and class relations determine religious beliefs, family structures, and political systems
• Capitalism transforms social relations, commodifying labor and creating new forms of exploitation across the globe
• Power and inequality are central analytical categories; culture isn't neutral but serves dominant class interests

Feminist Anthropology

• Gender as critical variable—traditional anthropology often ignored women's experiences or filtered them through male informants
• Challenges androcentric bias in both the cultures studied and the discipline itself
• Intersectionality increasingly matters: gender intersects with race, class, and colonialism to shape experience

Postcolonial Theory

• Colonialism's lasting effects continue to shape cultures, identities, and global power relations long after formal independence
• Critiques anthropology itself for historically serving colonial interests and representing non-Western peoples as exotic "Others"
• Amplifies indigenous voices and challenges Western authority to define and interpret other cultures

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Theories of Practice and Agency

These theories respond to a tension in earlier approaches: If culture is a system or structure, where do individual choices fit in? They focus on what people actually do in everyday life.

Practice Theory

• Everyday actions matter—routine practices both reproduce and gradually transform social structures
• Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus describes how social structures become embodied in individuals as dispositions and habits
• Structure and agency interact—people aren't cultural robots, but they're not entirely free either; they improvise within constraints

Actor-Network Theory

• Non-human actors count—technologies, objects, and environments actively shape social phenomena alongside humans
• Networks over categories—ANT dissolves traditional boundaries between society/nature, human/technology, subject/object
• Bruno Latour developed this approach, arguing we can't understand culture without tracing connections between human and non-human elements

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Theories of Knowledge and Representation

These theories turn the lens back on anthropology itself: How do we know what we claim to know, and who has the authority to represent whom?

Cultural Relativism

• Understand cultures on their own terms—suspend judgment and avoid imposing your own cultural standards
• Methodological principle rather than moral philosophy: you can't understand a practice if you're busy condemning it
• Challenges ethnocentrism but raises difficult questions about universal human rights and moral judgment

Postmodernism in Anthropology

• Questions anthropological authority—who gave ethnographers the right to represent other peoples?
• Writing is never neutral—ethnographies are literary constructions shaped by the author's position, not transparent windows onto reality
• Rejects grand narratives about human progress or cultural evolution; embraces multiple, partial perspectives instead

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Quick Reference Table

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Self-Check Questions

1. Both Functionalism and Structural-Functionalism view culture as a system—what is the key difference in what each theory emphasizes about how that system works?

2. Why did Franz Boas develop Historical Particularism as a direct challenge to Evolutionism, and what methodological changes did this require?

3. Compare how a Marxist anthropologist and a Symbolic anthropologist would analyze a religious ritual differently. What questions would each prioritize?

4. Postcolonial Theory and Postmodernism both critique traditional anthropology—how do their critiques differ in focus and emphasis?

5. If you were asked to explain how Practice Theory resolves the tension between "structure" and "agency" in earlier theories, what key concepts would you use, and how does this differ from Structural-Functionalism's approach?