Kulturkreis
The Kulturkreis (roughly, "culture circle" or "cultural field") school was a central idea of the early 20th-century German school of anthropology that sought to redirect the discipline away from the quest for an underlying, universal human nature toward a concern with the particular histories of individual societies. It was the notion of a culture complex as an entity that develops from a centre of origin and becomes diffused over large areas of the world.
Origins
The theory was developed by the German
Frobenius was influenced by Richard Andree, and his own teacher Friedrich Ratzel.[1]
These scholars believed that a limited number of Kulturkreise developed at different times and in different places and that all cultures, ancient and modern, resulted from the diffusion of cultural complexes—functionally related groups of culture traits— from these cultural centers. Proponents of this school believed that the history of any culture could be reconstructed through the analysis of its culture complexes and the tracing of their origins to one or more of the Kulturkreise.
"Building on the ideas of Andree, Ratzel, and his own teacher, H. Schurtz, Frobenius made a giant step through his two pioneering works "Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis" (1897) and "The Origin of African Civilizations" (1898a), which cleared the way for a new scientific approach in ethnology."[2]
Arguing against the idea, then current, that "natural people" were remnants from the prehistoric era who could reveal the true nature of humanity, Kulturkreis scholars brought history back into the study of allegedly timeless peoples. They relied on
See also
- Cultural area
- Trans-cultural diffusion
- Totemism
References
- ^ King, Gail; Wright, Meghan; Goldstein, Michael (2017-04-24). "Diffusionism and Acculturation". University of Alabama. Archived from the original on 2022-04-02. Retrieved 2022-04-02.
- ISBN 978-0-02-865965-7 – via Encyclopedia.com.
Further reading
- Frobenius, Leo (1898). Die Weltanschauung der Naturvolker [The Worldview of Primitive Peoples] (in German). Weimar: E. Felber.
- ISSN 0044-2666.
- Græbner, Fritz (1911). Die Methode der Ethnologie [The Method of Ethnology] (in German). Heidelberg.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Harris, Marvin (1968). The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York City: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
- Ratzel, Friedrich (1896). The History of Mankind. Translated by Butler, A. J. London: Macmillan Publishers.