Time perspective in aboriginal American culture : a study in method / by E. Sapir.

  • Edward Sapir
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Time perspective in aboriginal American culture : a study in method / by E. Sapir. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/108 page 3
    Before being in a position to answer this question, we must be clear as to just what we expect of our time perspective. It is evident at the outset that the nature of our material im¬ poses limitations not felt, or not felt so keenly, by the historian. First of all, we shall to only a very limited extent expect to con¬ struct an absolute chronology, that is, assign anything like def¬ inite dates. In some cases we shall be satisfied with an approxi¬ mate date, a margin of error being allowed that may vary from a few years to several centuries, or, in the remoter past, even millennia. In still other, perhaps the majority, of cases, we shall be content to dispense with the assignment of dates alto¬ gether and shall aim merely to establish a definite sequence of events. A second limitation is no less clear. One of the char¬ acteristic traits of history is its emphasis on the individual and personal. While the importance of individual events and personalities for the progress of human affairs is not to be under¬ estimated, the historical reconstructions of the cultural anthropol¬ ogist can only deal, with comparatively few exceptions, with generalized events and individualities. Instead of speaking, for instance, of the specific influence exerted by a particular shaman of a tribe at an inaccessible period in the past, cultural anthropol¬ ogy will have to lump together a number of such phenomena and generalize as to the influence exerted by the class of shamans at a more or less well defined time and place. Or, if it is a ques¬ tion of the social relations between two tribes, say the Haida and Tsimshian, it may in a number of cases have to content itself with a broad definition of such relations, taking, for in¬ stance, the Haida and Tsimshian as such as the units directly involved, though perfectly aware that the actual mechanism of the relation is in every case borne by individuals, house-groups, or clans, that is, by subdivisions of the historical units osten¬ sibly concerned. A great deal of such substitution of the whole for the part is unavoidable in ethnology. These two limitations must be frankly recognized, but they need not in the slightest obscure the application of historical methods to the field of cul¬ tural anthropology. They introduce a purely quantitative, not qualitative, correction into our initial ideal of historical treat¬ ment. Often enough, in dealing with an historical process not far
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3