Revision summary
Boas treated each culture as a unique historical product. Unilinear stages of Morgan and Tylor were rejected. Method was fieldwork, language, and trait history. Kroeber and Lowie spread culture-area work. The limit is description without later controlled comparison.
Model answer
Introduction
Historical particularism, led by Franz Boas, said each culture is a unique product of its own history. It rejected one ladder of stages for all peoples.
Body
The claim
- Boas attacked Morgan and Tylor unilinear evolution as armchair ranking.
- Fieldwork, language, and museum collections must reconstruct how traits arrived: invention, diffusion, or independent growth.
- Kroeber, Lowie, and Goldenweiser carried the method. Culture areas and trait lists replaced world stages.
Limit
- Particularism saved anthropology from racist ladders, but it could stall at endless local lists.
- Later Steward ecological evolution and White energy evolution answered with limited generalisation, without restoring Morgan’s three ages.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD B[Boas] --> H[Unique culture history] H --> F[Field language museum] E[Unilinear stages] --> X[Rejected]
Conclusion
Historical particularism made culture history local and empirical. It is still the warning against ranking living peoples as leftovers of Europe’s past.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Elucidate the biological and cultural factors in Human Evolution
Next question in the 2015 paper (Q2). View answer →
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Did Boas deny all comparison?
He denied premature laws. He compared once the local history was known.
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Is particularism anti-science?
It is anti-speculation. It demanded evidence before a world formula.
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