Editing Cultural anthropology (section)

===The critique of evolutionism===
Anthropology is concerned with the lives of people in different parts of the world, particularly in relation to the discourse of [[belief]]s and practices. In addressing this question, [[Ethnology|ethnologists]] in the 19th century divided into two schools of thought. Some, like [[Grafton Elliot Smith]], argued that different groups must have learned from one another somehow, however indirectly; in other words, they argued that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or "[[Diffusion (anthropology)|diffused]]".
[[File:Cultural evolution.PNG|thumb|left|300px|In the [[unilineal evolution]] model at left, all cultures progress through set stages, while in the [[multilineal evolution]] model at right, distinctive culture histories are emphasized.]]

Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of creating similar beliefs and practices independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention", like [[Lewis Henry Morgan]], additionally supposed that similarities meant that different groups had passed through the same stages of [[cultural evolution]] (See also [[classical social evolutionism]]). Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could not have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy could not have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized.

20th-century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order, on the grounds that such a notion does not fit the empirical facts. Some 20th-century ethnologists, like [[Julian Steward]], have instead argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments. Although 19th-century ethnologists saw "diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually exclusive and competing theories, most [[Ethnography|ethnographers]] quickly reached a consensus that both processes occur, and that both can plausibly account for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers also pointed out the superficiality of many such similarities. They noted that even traits that spread through diffusion often were given different meanings and function from one society to another. Analyses of large human concentrations in big cities, in multidisciplinary studies by [[Ronald Daus]], show how new methods may be applied to the understanding of man living in a global world and how it was caused by the action of extra-European nations, so highlighting the role of [[Ethics]] in modern anthropology.

Accordingly, most of these anthropologists showed less interest in comparing cultures, generalizing about human nature, or discovering universal laws of cultural development, than in understanding particular cultures in those cultures' own terms. Such ethnographers and their students promoted the idea of "[[cultural relativism]]", the view that one can only understand another person's beliefs and behaviors in the context of the culture in which they live or lived.

Others, such as [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] (who was influenced both by American cultural anthropology and by French [[Émile Durkheim|Durkheimian]] [[sociology]]), have argued that apparently similar patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see [[structuralism]]). By the mid-20th century, the number of examples of people skipping stages, such as going from [[hunter-gatherers]] to post-industrial service occupations in one generation, were so numerous that 19th-century evolutionism was effectively disproved.<ref>Diamond, Jared. ''Guns, Germs and Steel''.</ref>