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Historical Particularism

As a paradigm in anthropology, historical particularism is marked less by a consistent theory than a desire to move away from grand theories of socio-cultural development (of evolution or diffusion). Historical particularism maintains a strong focus on the cultures themselves. This approach/movement was developed by Franz Boas and carried through by his students A.L. Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Robert Lowie, Paul Radin, and Edwdard Sapir.

Boas was a strong believer in the detailed studies of cultures on their own terms and in relation to their unique histories. In response to social evolutionism and diffusionism, he maintained that cultures could have similar traits for a variety of different reasons including simultaneously invention, adoption, or trade. This could be due to similar environments, cultural contact, or other forms of historical accident. Instead of over-theorizing, he believed that anthropologists should study carefully the ways in which cultures form as the product of their environment, their psychology, and their history (with the strongest emphasis on the latter). Boas believed that cultures should not be evaluated against each other, but understood on their own terms. This position of "cultural relativism" has become a tenet of anthropological study.

Historical particularism approached culture in "holistic" terms. This holism combined linguistics, prehistory, and physical anthropology in the study of cultures and has been institutionalized in many American anthropology programs. Boas' holistic approach (his attempt to capture an entire culture) as well as his stress on the need for long and detailed fieldwork can be understood in part as the product of the American "salvage" anthropology. At a time when Native American cultures were rapidly disappearing, anthropologists were committed to preserving their unique cultures.

There was no unified definition of "culture" in this approach. As Koeber and Kluckhohn (1952) argue, Boas never explicitly defined culture in his works until he was 72 years old. He seemed to waiver between culture as a loose set of traits and as an integrated spiritual totality. His students, on the other hand, offered a plethora of new approaches and definitions towards the study of culture. A common thread in their approaches was a signaling of importance to psychology, either of the group or individual.

Franz Boas:
"Culture embraces all the manifestations of social habits of a community, the reactions of the inidividual as affected by the habits of the group in which he lives, and the products of human activities as determined by these habits" (1930:79)

A.L. Kroeber:
"...culture might be defined as all the activities and non-physiological products of human personalities that are not automatically reflex or instinctive. That in turn means, in biological and physiological parlance, that culture consists of conditioned or learned activities (plus the manufactured results of these); and the idea of learning brings us back again to what is socially transmitted, what is received from tradition, what 'is acquired by man as a member of societies.' So perhaps how it comes to be is really more distinctive of culture than what it is. (1948a: 253)

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