Study Guide for Week 2.  Due Monday at 10:00 a.m.

Stocking, G., (1987) Victorian Anthropology, chs. 4-6, first two paragraphs of ch. 7, and epilogue.

Boas, F. (1896) “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology”

Segal, D. (2005) “Civilization, Barbarism, and Savagery” in W. McNeil, ed. Encyclopedia of World History.

1.  “Social Darwinism” is a widely used phrase.   Look for its use over the last 12 months or so in some searchable, mass-mediated source, such as Time magazine or The New York Times or something of your own choosing.  Based on both this mini research exercise and your general knowledge, what is the common meaning of this phrase?  (Keep a record of your research, including examples of the term’s use in the source you searched.  You will be asked to draw on this material in our discussion.)

2. What is the chronological relationship between “the revolution in human time” and the emergence of the Darwinian theory of biological evolution?

3a. What visual figure or image corresponds to Victorian social evolutionary theory?

3b. What visual figure corresponds to Darwinian theories of speciation over time?

3c.  What visual figure corresponds to Prichardian ethnology?

BONUS QUESTION:  If you have the correct answers to 3a through 3c, you will receive a  bonus question from us, after you submit your study guide.

4. Each of Stocking’s chapters can be read as an attempt to address a specific question or a cluster of related questions.  The more sharply you can extract the question(s) Stocking addresses in a given chapter, the more fully you can comprehend the responses he provides.  Write a succinct summary of the question(s) addressed by (a) either chapter four or five  (your choice), and (b) chapter six.

5.  Provide a succinct explanation/definition of the following “key terms” or “key phrases”:

a. If you chose chapter five, for 4a, then explain comparative philology.  If you chose chapter four, for 4a, then explain diffusionism.

b. recapitulation

c. antediluvian

d. the paleolithic equation.

BONUS QUESTION: What other term or phrase is used in this book to speak about this “equation”?

6. After you have completed the reading assignment in Victorian Anthropology, use the index of the book to identify the passages in which Stocking discusses “the comparative method” of social evolutionary anthropology.  Re-read all of them.  Then read Boas’s 1896 essay.  In that essay. Boas argues that “like phenomena” in different social orders often have different causes or antecedents.  Accepting, for the sake of the argument, Boas’s demonstration of this proposition, write a rigorously edited paragraph that explains how this Boasian proposition contests/upends the “comparative method” of social evolutionary anthropology.

7. Prepare notes for yourself to be able to discuss the following question (do not include these notes in your written study guide): On Stocking’s view, what relationship is there between the horrible violence inflicted on the indigenous population of Tasmania, on the one hand, and Victorian social evolutionary anthropology, on the other?