The (roughly, "culture circle" or "cultural field") school was a central idea of the early 20th-century German school of

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

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

ethnologists Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...

Fritz Graebner Robert Fritz Graebner (4 March 1877, Berlin – 13 July 1934, Berlin) was a German geographer and ethnologist best known for his development of the theory of ''Kulturkreis'', or culture circle. He was the first theoretician of the ''Vienna School ...

, the founder of the ''Vienna School of Ethnology'', and Wilhelm Schmidt. Frobenius was influenced by Richard Andree, and his own teacher

Friedrich Ratzel Friedrich Ratzel (August 30, 1844 – August 9, 1904) was a German geographer and ethnographer, notable for first using the term ''Lebensraum'' ("living space") in the sense that the National Socialists later would. Life Ratzel's father was th ...

. These scholars believed that a limited number of 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 .

"Building on the ideas of Andree, Ratzel, and his own teacher, H. Schurtz, Frobenius made a giant step through his two pioneering works "" (1897) and "The Origin of African Civilizations" (1898a), which cleared the way for a new scientific approach in ethnology."

Arguing against the idea, then current, that "natural people" were remnants from the prehistoric era who could reveal the true nature of humanity, scholars brought history back into the study of allegedly timeless peoples. They relied on diffusionist principles, believing that similarities among cultures could be shown to be the result of cultural influence, rather than the result of a universal human nature, and that circles of interaction among various peoples could and should be delineated by the professional anthropologist. In America,

Clyde Kluckhohn Clyde Kluckhohn (; January 11, 1905 in Le Mars, Iowa – July 28, 1960 near Santa Fe, New Mexico), was an American anthropologist and social theorist, best known for his long-term ethnographic work among the Navajo and his contributions to the ...

of Harvard was known to have been influenced by the same Vienna scholars as Fürer-Haimendorf, and indeed, spent a year in Vienna while Fürer-Haimendorf was there.

Origins

See also

References

Further reading