Does anyone know what "Historical Particulism" is?

Question

It's all I have in my notes about an anthropologist, Franz Boas.

Answer 1

Simply stated, historical particularism refers to the notion that every society goes through it's own historical process, determined by it's own particular circumstances. It's a relativistic stance that sought to challenge an early perspective of social evolutionism by which every society had to go through the same stages of development. This perspective left some societies in "previous" stages of development and others, namely western societies, in "higher" stages.

Answer 2

Historical particularism was the approach to studying culture, and one of the most significant contributions to the social science of cultural anthropology, of the great anthropologist Franz Boas.

Until his idea of historical particularism, the social sciences viewed cultures as going through changes, or a kind of 'social evolution'.  Boas postulated that these kinds of steps and changes were completely artificial constructs imposed on non-western societies in the context of studying cultures.  

No culture was "better" or "more advanced" or "primitive" in the eyes of Boas.  He sought to understand the cultures and societies in their own terms.  Historical particularism is the first real modern approach to understanding cultures that are not our own, and it attempts to do so in that cultures own terms.

Cultural relativism was the other concept that Boas espoused, and it came directly from his idea of historical particularism.