Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/292

 28C AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N. s., 22, 1920

of the language of the smiths, especially in words concerning their trade, also point to a difference of origin.

In the more theoretical portions of the book no objection can be raised to the author's attitude towards the older and cruder views of Morgan and his followers concerning unilinear evolution. On the other hand, Dr. Lowie's views concerning the nature of the process of diffusion are open to criticism, and this matter is so important in relation to the attitude adopted towards the problem of the independence of American culture that it must be considered at some length. The criticism in this respect must centre round Dr. Lowie's use of the concept of borrowing. Throughout the book he continually speaks of the process by which one culture influences another as borrowing, and uses this term even when the influenced and influencing cultures are widely separated from one another. In several passages, too, he speaks of contact between widely separated peoples, thus implying an attitude towards diffusion which I have already criticised elsewhere 1 in a review of Dr. Wissler's book on The American Indian.

There is no doubt that certain elements of culture such as dances, songs and material objects, may be directly borrowed by one people from another, though even in these cases the process usually involves such modification of the transmitted object or institution as to make the term "borrowing" unsatisfactory. In the vast majority of the cases in which one culture influences another, even in its immediate vicinity, the process has a dynamic character which makes the concept of borrowing inadequate and misleading. Even if the term were suited to the transac- tions between neighboring peoples, it becomes wholly inappropriate when a culture is influenced by another coming from a distance. In his use of the term "borrowing," and in all his references to diffusion, Dr. Lowie fails to appreciate the most important features of the process by which the diffusion of culture acts as a stimulus to new developments, a process in which a new idea or a new technique sets up a change, the general direction of which, as well as many of its details, is determined by the nature of the incoming influence.

The limitation of the author's outlook which is produced by his dependence on only one, and that a relatively unimportant, mechanism of diffusion is well illustrated by his treatment of the relations between the sib-organizations of North America. Five different areas of distribution of this form of social organization are distinguished and the differences

��1 Man, vol. xix, (1919) p. 75.

�� �