Historical Development Anthropology blog- The Grand Diffusionists
Isa Pedersen
Mr. Roddy
IHSS
8 September 2021
The Grand Diffusionists
Fritz Graebner and Wilhelm Shmidt lead and started a small group of Austro-German diffusionists who did not agree with Boas. They thought that what Boas had been teaching went against 19th-century evolutionism. The Grand diffusionists believed that there were barely any cultures that were completely original, that every culture seemed to adopt parts of a different culture. This is what the word diffusion means, therefore, “The Great Diffusionists”. Their school, Kulturkreise school of cultural anthropology, was named this because Kulturekreise means culture cluster. Kulturekreise is the theory that they believed in and taught. This theory became popular among a British group lead by Grafton Elliot Smith and William J. Perry. Perry and Smith even found that all cultures spring from Egypt. Perry and Smith continued teaching and researching this topic for many more years. They made the group bigger and it is still believed in today.
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