Richard Thurnwald, “Völkerkundliche Vergleiche unter den Erdteilen” (1955)

Thurnwald’s essay, written in 1945 and published in 1955, is a methodological reflection on how ethnology can compare cultures across continents without collapsing them into simple evolutionary stages or isolated culture areas. He distinguishes practical knowledge of non-European peoples from the historical-theoretical task of reconstructing human development, but he immediately rejects the idea that contemporary “Naturvölker” are transparent survivals of an unchanged primitive past.

Denn die heute lebenden sog. Naturvölker sind keineswegs den einstigen Primitiven gleichzusetzen, sondern machten verschiedene andersartige Erlebnisse namentlich mit fremden Völkern durch und veränderten sich selbst im Laufe der Zeit.

English translation: For the so-called primitive peoples living today are by no means to be equated with the primitives of former times; rather, they underwent various different experiences, notably with foreign peoples, and themselves changed in the course of time.

The first part is therefore source-critical. Reports differ because observers differ: in training, patience, purpose, language ability, institutional pressures, and relations to informants. Ethnographic “facts” are not automatically comparable units; they are produced through uneven encounters and may reflect local conflicts, selective memories, or the observer’s own assumptions. Thurnwald’s practical conclusion is that comparison requires longer, more disciplined field research.

Aus diesem Grunde sollten Stipendien für Forschungsreisen wenigstens auf ein bis zwei Jahre gegeben werden, mit dem Auftrage, sich mindestens dreiviertel Jahre an einem Ort aufzuhalten.

English translation: For this reason, grants for research expeditions should be awarded for at least one to two years, with the requirement of remaining at least three quarters of a year in one place.

Against older evolutionism, Thurnwald accepts the importance of diffusion and historical contact emphasized by Ratzel, Frobenius, Gräbner, Ankermann, and Schmidt, but he rejects rigid Kulturkreis schemata. His criticism is not that influence never occurs, but that cultural traits are adopted, transformed, refused, or reinterpreted within concrete social situations. Hence the mapping of traits cannot substitute for historical explanation.

Statt „Methode“ hätte er besser „Hypothese“ gesagt, denn um eine solche handelte es sich, nicht um eine Methode für Feldforscher.

English translation: Instead of "method" he would have done better to say "hypothesis," for that is what it was—not a method for field researchers.

Functionalism, especially in Malinowski’s sense, is treated as a necessary corrective because it attends to the present interdependence of institutions. Yet Thurnwald also finds it insufficient when it excludes history. His own position tries to join function and development: institutions persist through inertia, change under pressure, and are reworked by new generations. Subsistence, kinship, rule, exchange, discipline, inheritance, migration, warfare, and world-picture must be compared as interacting processes.

Wir dürfen uns diese Vorgänge nicht statisch vorstellen, sondern im ganzen dynamischen Ablauf.

English translation: We must not conceive these processes statically, but in their entire dynamic course.

The later comparative sections move across Africa, Eurasia, Oceania, Australia, and the Americas. Thurnwald gives special weight to food-getting and mobility: hunting, gardening, hoe agriculture, pastoralism, seafaring, and state formation each create different possibilities for hierarchy, assimilation, exclusion, and political authority. Yet he repeatedly resists turning these into fixed types. Cattle herders, seafarers, conquerors, and agriculturalists matter historically because of how they interact, not because they embody permanent stages.

The essay’s central value lies in this double warning: ethnology needs comparison, but comparison without source criticism becomes schematic; ethnology needs historical reconstruction, but history without attention to living functions becomes abstract. Its vocabulary reflects mid-twentieth-century anthropology, including selectionist and hereditarian assumptions, yet its methodological force remains its insistence that no continent, culture area, or single explanatory principle is self-sufficient. Thurnwald closes by making cultural history part of human self-knowledge rather than antiquarian classification.

Wenn wir Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit betreiben wollen, müssen wir uns an die wahre Bedeutung der Worte Kultur, Geschichte und Menschheit halten und ohne vorgefaßte Meinung mit gespannter Aufmerksamkeit der Enthüllung der Vorgänge entgegenstreben.

English translation: If we wish to pursue the cultural history of humanity, we must hold to the true meaning of the words culture, history, and humanity, and, without preconceived opinion, strive with keen attention toward the unveiling of the processes.