人类学比较方法的局限

简介

Boas read “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology” to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1896, and it appeared in Science the same year. It is directed against the evolutionist anthropology of the time, which arranged the customs of all peoples in one sequence of stages and explained similar customs by the same causes. Boas argued that like phenomena can have unlike origins: masks, clan organisation or geometric ornament may arise independently, through borrowing or from different starting points. Comparison therefore presupposes detailed historical study of limited areas, including the diffusion of traits between neighbouring peoples; only then can general laws be sought. The essay became a programme for American anthropology and is reprinted in “Race, Language and Culture” (1940).

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• 原始人的心智1911 · 弗朗茨·博厄斯

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• 1911原始人的心智