Ethnology (from the
Greek ,
ethnos meaning "people, nation, race") is the branch of
anthropology and
Sociology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology,
religion,
language, and social structure of the
ethnic,
racial, and/or
national divisions of humanity.
Scientific Discipline
Compared to
ethnography, the study of single groups through direct contact with the culture, ethnology takes the research that ethnographers have compiled and then compares and contrasts different cultures. The term
ethnology is credited to
Adam Franz Kollár who used and defined it in his
Historiae ivrisqve pvblici Regni Vngariae amoenitates published in
Vienna in 1783. Kollár's interest in linguistic and cultural diversity was aroused by the situation in his native multi-lingual
Kingdom of Hungary and his roots among its
Slovaks, and by the shifts that began to emerge after the gradual retreat of the
Ottoman Empire in the more distant
Balkans.
Among the goals of ethnology have been the reconstruction of
human history, and the formulation of
cultural invariants, such as the
incest taboo and culture change, and the formulation of generalizations about "
human nature", a concept which has been criticized since the 19
th century by various philosophers (
Hegel,
Marx,
structuralism, etc.). In some parts of the world ethnology has developed along independent paths of investigation and
pedagogical doctrine, with
cultural anthropology becoming dominant especially in the
United States, and
social anthropology in
Great Britain. The distinction between the three terms is increasingly blurry. Ethnology has been considered an academic field since the late 18th century especially in Europe and is sometimes conceived of as any comparative study of human groups.
The 15th century "discovery of America" had an important role in the new
Occidental interest toward the "
Other", often qualified as "savages", which was either seen as a brutal barbarian or as a "
noble savage". Thus,
civilization was opposed in a
dualist manner to
barbary, a classic opposition constitutive of the even more commonly-shared
ethnocentrism. The progress of ethnology, for example with
Claude Lévi-Strauss's
structural anthropology, led to the criticism of conceptions of a linear
progress, or the pseudo-opposition between "societies with histories" and "societies without histories", judged too dependent on a limited view of
history as constituted by accumulative growth.
Lévi-Strauss often referred to
Montaigne's
essay on
cannibalism as an early example of ethnology. Lévi-Strauss aimed, through a
structural method, at discovering universal invariants in human society, chief among which he believed to be the
incest taboo. However, the claims of such cultural
universalism have been criticized by various 19th and 20th century social thinkers, including
Marx,
Nietzsche,
Foucault,
Althusser and
Deleuze.
The French school of ethnology was particularly significant for the development of the discipline since the early 1950s with
Marcel Griaule,
Germaine Dieterlen,
Claude Lévi-Strauss and
Jean Rouch.
Scholars
See also
