Knowra Lewis H. Morgan Lewis H. Morgan Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881) was an American lawyer and anthropologist whose studies of Indigenous peoples and kinship helped shape anthropology and social evolutionary theory.
Kinship : Social relationships formed through descent, marriage, adoption, or other culturally recognized ties. Morgan made systems of kin terms and relationships central evidence for studying societies.
League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois : Morgan’s 1851 study of the Haudenosaunee confederacy, its institutions, and its social life. This book presented his direct observations of Iroquois society and kinship.
Ely S. Parker : A Seneca leader, engineer, and diplomat who advised Morgan and collaborated with him on Haudenosaunee research. Parker’s knowledge and assistance were vital to Morgan’s study of Iroquois society.
Unilineal cultural evolution : The theory that all societies pass through the same sequence of cultural stages. Morgan’s scheme is a prominent example of this nineteenth-century approach.
Kinship terminology : The words and classificatory rules a society uses to name relatives. Morgan compared kin terms across societies to infer patterns of social organization.
Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family : Morgan’s 1871 comparative study of kinship terms across societies worldwide. It developed his argument that kinship terminology could reveal social relationships and historical connections.
Karl Marx : A German philosopher and political economist whose critique of capitalism helped found Marxism. Marx studied Morgan’s account of early society while developing arguments about historical materialism.
Cultural relativism : The principle that cultural beliefs and practices should be understood in their own social contexts. This approach opposes ranking societies against Morgan’s proposed universal stages.
Social evolutionism : The theory that societies develop through successive stages of social and cultural complexity. Morgan arranged societies into developmental stages, a framework later used by social evolutionists.
Ancient Society : Morgan’s 1877 account of human social development through successive stages of subsistence, government, and family life. It set out the evolutionary framework that most strongly influenced later theorists.
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