Primitive culture
In older anthropology texts and discussions, the term "primitive culture" is used to refer to a society that is believed to lack cultural, technological, or economic sophistication/development. For instance, a culture that lacks a written language might be considered less culturally sophisticated than cultures with writing systems; or a hunter-gatherer society might be considered less "developed" than an industrial capitalist society.
The term was used by many Western authors, such as anthropologists and historians to describe the indigenous cultures in their foreign colonies, and in distant uncolonized lands.
Describing a culture as "primitive" is considered by many to be offensive. Use of the term, especially in academic settings, has thus diminished. The indigenous activist organisation Survival International is campaigning for the complete abolition of the term.[1] and have succeeded in persuading some newspapers to stop using it.[2]
[edit] See also
- Anarcho-primitivism
- Civilization
- Ethnology
- Neolithic
- Noble savage
- Paleolithic
- Pierre Clastres
- Primitivism
- Primitive communism
- Shifting cultivation
- White man's burden
- Zomia (geography)
[edit] Notes
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[edit] Further reading
- 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
- Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, Viking, 1959; reissued by Penguin, 1991 ISBN: 978-0140194432
- Joseph Campbell, The Historical Atlas of World Mythology, vols. I and II, Harper and Row 1988, 1989.
