Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
By the World War II era, the question of independent invention versus diffusion had been rendered nonsensical in sociocultural anthropology: either it was irrelevant to explanation of the dynamics of social life or it represented a false dichotomy. It persisted in certain anthropological quarters, however. In particular, *archaeologists remained concerned to specify the nature of innovations, because, unlike sociocultural anthropologists, they had not abandoned the effort to account for world historical change (see Stahl 1994).
HENRIKA KUKLICK
See also: migration, technology, world system
Further reading
Kuklick, H. (1992) The Savage Within, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Lowie, R.H.
(1937) The History of Ethnological Theory, New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston
Smith, G.E., B.Malinowski, H.J.Spindler and A. Goldenweiser (1927) Culture: The Diffusion Controversy, New York: W.W.Norton
Stahl, A.B. (1994) ‘Innovation, Diffusion, and Culture Contact: The Holocene Archaeology of Ghana’, Journal of World Prehistory, 8:51–112
Steward, J. (1929) ‘Diffusion and Independent Invention: A Critique of Logic’, American Anthropologist, (n.s.) 31:491–5
Stocking, G.W.Jr (1971) ‘What’s In a Name?’, Man, 6: 369–90
Tylor, E.B. (1888) ‘On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions, Applied to Laws of Marriage and Descent’, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 18:245–72
Wissler, C. (1914) ‘The Horse in the Development of Plains Culture’, American Anthropologist, (n.s.) 16 :1–25
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