“If there is nothing beyond the organic...” Heredity and Culture at the Boundaries of Anthropology in the Work of Alfred L. Kroeber (2009)
Kronfeldner, Maria E. (Author)
NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin
Volume: 17
Pages: 107--133
The material I use is not new, but the interpretation and the conclusions I draw from it are novel. Historians and anthropologists have addressed Kroeber's writings on the Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics. Yet they did not see the full significance of Kroeber's work in understanding the development and role of the concept of culture in our explanations of human existence. In addition, when anthropologists provide an account of Kroeber's cultural determinism, they still ignore the importance of Kroeber's use of Weismannian ideas. Furthermore, while the contemporary anthropologist Ingold (2001) criticizes Kroeber for relying on a physical-cultural divide within anthropology and thus for splitting human beings into different compartments, this paper takes a step back. It seeks to explain what Kroeber did, why he did it, and what we can learn from his case when writing the history of the concept of culture. This is the first goal of the paper. The second is, as mentioned, to illustrate what we can learn from Kroeber's case when writing accounts of the historical impact of the concept of hard inheritance. So far, Kroeber has not featured prominently in such accounts (see e.g. Paul 1995: 40--49) or in historical accounts of the history of hereditarian ideas in general.
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