Primitive culture

The term primitive culture was used in older anthropology texts and discussions of the 17th, 18th and 19th century mostly, as an umbrella term for all tribal and nomadic societies

which was used to describe societies that Westerns often viewed as less advanced or developed in comparison to those of Europe, often tribal or nomadic in nature. While the term is no longer used due to its inherent racist and enthnocentric undertones, the types of soci

and cultures a primitive culture is one that lacks major signs of economic development or modernity. 

Overview

Another defining characteristic of primitive cultures is a greater amount of leisure time than in more complex societies.

Usage

For instance, it might lack a written language or advanced technology and have a limited and isolated population. The term was used by Western writers to describe foreign cultures contacted by European colonists and explorers.

Different Types of Primitive Cultures

Early Agricultural Socities

Many early sociologists and other writers portrayed primitive cultures as noble—Noble Savages—and believed that their lack of technology and less integrated economies made them ideal examples of the correct human lifestyle. Among these thinkers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who is most frequently associated with the idea of the Noble Savage based on his Discourse on Inequality, and Karl Polanyi, who in The Great Transformation praised the economic organization of primitive societies as less destructive than the market economy. The belief that primitive cultures are ideal is often described as primitivism; branches of this theory include primitive communism and anarcho-primitivism.

Many of these writers assumed that contemporary indigenous peoples or their cultures were comparable to the earliest humans or their cultures. Some people still make this assumption. The word "primitive" comes from the Latin "primus" meaning "first," and it was believed by Victorian anthropologists that the so-called primitive contemporary cultures preserved a state unchanged since "stone age" paleolithic or neolithic times. This assumption has proved to be false as hunter-gatherer bands have just as much accumulated innovation as do "modern" civilised cultures. The differences are because most of the cultural innovation in hunter-gatherer or shifting horticultural cultures is in areas of ceremonial, arts, beliefs, ritual and tradition which usually do not leave cultural artefacts, tools or weapons. The assumption too that hunter-gatherer bands and shifting horticultural tribes have more in common than they have with more complex urban or civilised societies is also denied by many modern archaeologists. Close examination of differences in culture show that these types of cultures are as different as they are from modern urban and civilised cultures.

Though belief in the "Noble Savage" has not disappeared, describing a culture as primitive is often considered factually incorrect and offensive today. Use of the term, especially in academic settings, has thus diminished.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Stanley Diamond, In Search of the Primitive, Transaction Publishers,U.S. 1987, ISBN 087855582X
• Adam Kuper, The Reinvention of Primitive Society. Transformations of a Myth , Taylor & Francis Ltd. 2005, ISBN 0415357616
• Farb, Peter (1968). Man's Rise to Civilization As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State. New York, NY: E. P. Dutton.

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