288 swanton: anthropology and provincialism 



parts of a ''culture area," since each center influences the more 

 primitive people bj^ whom it is surrounded, but it would prob- 

 ably be truer to consider these primitive or "savage" peoples as 

 comprising the raw material, the people of dissociated ideas and 

 institutions, out of which the several culture centers have been 

 built, the lowlands of culture from which the centers of civilization 

 project like so many mountain peaks. The subsequent reaction 

 of the culture centers upon them should not obscure the fact 

 of their originally fundamental position. 



And now as to the importance of all this for us. We know 

 how, even in the comparatively limited horizon of one nation or 

 one state, individuals tend to assume that to be right and just 

 to which they themselves and their immediate associates are 

 accustomed and that to be wrong which is foreign to their ways 

 of thought. We call such an attitude " provincial," and we laugh 

 at the man from the back township or the mountain county, 

 who thus exhibits his narrow prejudices and the limited mental 

 outlook of the community from which he sprang. But we should 

 be warned that provinciahsm is relative. One may be ''cosmo- 

 politan" as regards counties or towns and make fun of the 

 provincial with only the county or town outlook but be equally 

 provincial himself with relation to views entertained in the next 

 state. Again he may be cosmopolitan as between states but 

 provincial when it comes to another nation, or cosmopolitan as 

 between nations of approximately the same type of civilization 

 but provincial when confronted with nations or peoples of a 

 different cultural or racial type. Even the broadest of us is prone 

 to consider, or rather assume — for such things are often imbedded 

 too deeply in our subconscious natures to be made matters of 

 consideration — that certain ideas, customs, technical processes, 

 forms of government are best, or rather that they are essential, 

 as much part and parcel of humanity as hand or foot or eye, yet 

 we may be absolutely deceiving ourselves. It is the especial 

 function and peculiar privilege of anthropology systematically 

 to study and record ideas, technical processes, customs, and so on 

 wherever found, to the end that mankind may constantly become 

 less provincial, more cosmopolitan in his outlook, may discern 



