The Culture-Area Concept in Social Anthropology

Abstract

The culture-area concept promises new leads in social science research. This idea has been used primarily by anthropologists, but is now receiving much attention from workers in the biological and social sciences. The American school of social anthropology proceeds on the belief that there are regional differences in material culture, and also in social behavior, and that social evolution is itself regional. This leads us to investigate (I) the environmental problem in social anthropology; (2) the formulating of regional data in terms of tribal similarities; (3) the distribution of specific culture traits, taking them one at a time as is done by the archaeologist. Archaeology eliminates the introspective and other psychological aspects of the culture problem, but it gives time perspective, one of the requisities to an understanding of social evolution. It also gives evidence of the relation of region and to the world as a whole. Two problems are involved in the culture area: the first is ecological, the second is to determine how the tribal group functions in the area or community. If tribes fall into culture groups, we may expect something like a community function. It is the regional tendency to unity in procedure that presents a problem of interest to the social sciences, for we seem to have here the setting for the development of many institutions, of federations, of national groups.

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