Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/290

 BOOK REVIEWS

METHODS AND PRINCIPLES

Primitive Society. ROBERT H. LOWIE. Boni and Liveright: New

York, 1920. vin, 463 pp,

Dr. Lowie and American ethnology are to be heartily congratulated on the appearance of this book which meets a long felt want. It is a contribution to sociology of great importance, for it gives us a compre- hensive account of the characteristics of the ruder forms of human society by one who has himself, by work in the field, gained a clear view of the principles upon which they depend.

The book may be considered from two points of view. In the first place, it is a valuable record of the known facts concerning the different forms of social organization, marriage, kinship, rank, and government from different parts of the world. In the second place there is a definite point of view running through the whole in the light of which many problems of theoretical interest are discussed.

In the latter respect Dr. Lowie shows himself an adherent of the historical as opposed to what is often known as the evolutionary school of thought, and chooses Morgan's scheme of the evolution of human society as the special object of his criticism. On the vexed questions concerning the respective r61es of diffusion and convergence he takes a moderate position, one which does not bring him into open conflict with the pre- vailing dogma of the independence of American culture. Especially valuable on the theoretical side is his discussion of the priority of the family or sib. 1 He goes far towards proving that in America the sib is later than the family, or at least later than that form of social grouping which is often known to American ethnologists as the band, and gives much evidence to show that the sibless organizations have not passed through a stage in which they possessed sibs. On the kindred topic of the time-order of the different modes of descent of the sib, he adopts the view that the family has evolved, sometimes into the patrilineal, and sometimes into the matrilineal sib, and rejects the view that one has always preceded or succeeded the other.

I believe that I shall be paying the best compliment to Dr. Lewie's

1 The "clan" of other writers.

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