Historical particularism (coined by Marvin Harris in 1968)[1] is widely considered the first American anthropological school of thought.
Closely associated with Franz Boas and the Boasian approach to anthropology, historical particularism rejected the cultural evolutionary model that had dominated anthropology until Boas. It argued that each society is a collective representation of its unique historical past. Boas rejected parallel evolutionism, the idea that all societies are on the same path and have reached their specific level of development the same way all other societies have.[2] Instead, historical particularism showed that societies could reach the same level of cultural development through different paths.[2]
Boas suggested that diffusion, trade, corresponding environment, and historical accident may create similar cultural traits.[2] Three traits, as suggested by Boas, are used to explain cultural customs: environmental conditions, psychological factors, and historical connections, history being the most important (hence the school's name).[2]
Critics of historical particularism argue that it is anti-theoretical because it doesn't seek to make universal theories, applicable to all the world's cultures. Boas believed that theories would arise spontaneously once enough data was collected. This school of anthropological thought was the first to be uniquely American and Boas (his school of thought included) was, arguably, the most influential anthropological thinker in American history.
^Harris, Marvin: The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. 1968. (Reissued 2001) New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company
^ abcdBoas, Franz (December 1920). "The Methods of Ethnology". American Anthropologist. 22 (4): 311–321. doi:10.1525/aa.1920.22.4.02a00020. JSTOR 660328.
and 29 Related for: Historical particularism information
Historicalparticularism (coined by Marvin Harris in 1968) is widely considered the first American anthropological school of thought. Closely associated...
Particularism may refer to: Epistemological particularism, one of the answers to the problem of the criterion in epistemology Historical particularism...
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics...
complexities to be the outcome of particularhistorical processes and circumstances—a perspective described as historicalparticularism. Another important aspect...
person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas...
Revolution Emotivism Ethnocentrism Emic and etic Global justice Historicalparticularism Intercultural competence Moral relativism Multiculturalism Political...
technocratic, mechanistic means of understanding cultures, organizations, and historical settings. Influenced by Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Weber,...
structures are themselves products of historical practices and are constantly reproduced and transformed by historical practices whose productive principle...
historical records. It is also the study of the history of various ethnic groups that may or may not exist today. Ethnohistory uses both historical and...
Constructivists view national and ethnic identities as the product of historical forces, often recent, even when the identities are presented as old. Essentialists...
L. (1972). "Simulating the Past: A Method for Using Ethnosemantics in Historical Research". American Quarterly. 24 (5): 626–642. doi:10.2307/2711663. JSTOR 2711663...
contemporaneous peoples and nations, but also in relation to all peoples of the historical past." Subsequently, in the 20th century, American social scientist William...
Historical negationism, also called historical denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. This is not the same as historical...
just highlighting the fact that they did, therefore emphasizing historicalparticularism. In the early 20th century, many archaeologists who studied past...
The term "historical Jesus" refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to what are traditionally...
subject to neuroplasticity and depends on both, contextual (cultural) and historically dependent (previous experience) mechanisms to shape the neural system...
understand and make history. Of central concern in this work is the problem of historical transformation, which structuralist approaches could not adequately account...
law. Whether social norms were accepted or not was for Parsons simply a historical question. As behaviors are repeated in more interactions, and these expectations...
of William Graham Sumner, a quite different emphasis from the historicalparticularism promulgated by Franz Boas at Columbia. In 1925, he received his...
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the setting of particular real historical events. Although the term is...
anthropology—Mead has been characterized as a "humanist" heir to Franz Boas's historicalparticularism—hence, associated with the practices of interpretation and reflexivity...
Some scholars of history have observed that there are no particular standards for historical fields such as religion, art, science, democracy, and social...
ethnography from various locations, see essays in Prem Poddar et al, Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures--Continental Europe and its Empires...
historians to ensure accountability. Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular blocks of time. Historians give these...
ideas such as historical vs. non-historical people and societies, focusing on the relationship between European expansion and historical processes in the...
its slant is toward institutional development rather than particular non-repeatable historical events. According to Harris, the 19th-century anthropologists...
theories of social and historical change emerged: sociocultural evolutionism the social cycle theory the Marxist theory of historical materialism. These theories...
sciences which study the past, historicism has a different meaning. HistoricalParticularism is associated with the work of Franz Boas. His theory used the...
anthropology is the comparative study of politics in a broad range of historical, social, and cultural settings. Political anthropology has its roots in...
Global Information