Tylor's Primitive Cultural Analysis

Improved Essays
In Tylor’s Primitive Culture, Tylor described culture as a complex whole that includes the likes of morals, customs, beliefs, knowledge, habits, and other capabilities that is available to an individual part of a society. From Tylor’s definition of ‘culture’, it is evident that culture holds mental capabilities such as thoughts, behavior such as actions, and it can be learned and shared. Culture, as a whole, is co-exists within an individual in a group (i.g. cultural society) , and it can be debated about to find the ‘ultimate truth’. Tylor agrees that individuals are homogeneous with similar values and practices in order to function within a ‘cultured’ societal institution. Culture is learned and acquired without any signs of questioning there being biological functions, and this is basis of the later evolution of religion. According to Tylor, the nature of primitive religion was based on the unintellectual psychological and irrational errors. Animism, as described by Tylor, is a belief in spiritual beings and that there is life after death. Tylor argued that there are ‘cultures’ and animism and ethics are different. Tylor believed that religious ideas shift as the world shifts as time passes, which explains the questions that humans have about the human situation in the world. Tylor concluded from his findings that the ‘savages’ do not believe a moral government is a form of ‘natural religion’ because their beliefs stands as ‘natural religion’ instead which causes them to be ‘outdated’ and lacking from the western society. Tylor argues that human beings all have the same mental and intellectual capacity but some cultures have attained distinct level of intelligence from what the group has learned and processed in the society. Tylor decides that Europeans are more intellectually advanced and “primitive” people are not definitely advanced, as referred in evidence of ‘primitive’ people gathering and hunting. This argument was supported through Tylor’s evidence of ‘animism’ and the idea of the spiritual world, which laid the foundation of religion and supported the difficulty in differentiating fantasy from reality. Tylor believed that the “general likeness in human nature on the one hand, and to general likeness in the circumstances of life on the other, [the] similarity and consistency may no doubt be traced… [and] studied with especial fitness in comparing races near the same grade of civilization” (Tylor 1871:6). …show more content…
This connects into Tylor’s belief that cultural aspects of a civilization can be traced to understand their ‘cultural’ tendencies and of what they have been provided in the organization before they reached a certain level of acceptance of animism and ‘non-civilized’ actions of surviving. The belief in a detached realm of reality that is considered just as ‘real’ as the physical world has objects, death, and hallucination. Tylor brings in the aspect of animism to prove his point of the differences between ‘savages’ and the civilized, however, he does not look deeply into the cultural tradition because he focused more on how people depicted religion and their own behavioral tendencies in comparison with other religions and their people. The idea that the ‘primitives’ are mistaken in understanding the world and the agreement that a systematic historical analogy of religious phenomena exists depicts Tylor’s own understanding of the ‘savages’ and how he believes them to be. Primitive people are described as ‘savages’, through the quote, “hypothetical primitive condition corresponds in a considerable degree to that of modern

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    It’s fascinating how people have been able to make so many different definitions for the word culture; a word that was thought to have one singular definition. People of all cultures are unique not just in their methods and ways of life, but also in their definitions of culture. One person can describe culture as something that can bring family and a community together, but another person may define it as the exact opposite; something that tears people apart and in turn will rip apart a community. Neither of them are wrong or right however, because culture is something that is tangible. Culture is something that changes with time instead of against it.…

    • 1377 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Religion can be considered to be the common human culture, there is a mysterious myth, it is the human spirit. The Faith is the highest embodiment of a talent human subjective response, it is the paradise of the human consciousness of the universe, the earth's history beyond the form of fate, it is of our human existence and the integrity of the relationship between the objective world, it is a kind of metaphysical…

    • 74 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In his book, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture, Christian Smith develops a unique theory for human beings and culture. The thoughts he illustrates throughout the book offer readers new, thoughtful answers to some of life’s deepest questions as well as other valuable questions relating to theories of sociology, culture, and religion. Each of his chapters showcase the structure of culture and the role it plays in society. Christian Smith begins the book by discussing how the culture of a society is primarily understood through its moral order. He explains that we, as humans, have a natural desire to gain understanding about moral order since we are not able to obtain any absolute truth from the world.…

    • 1607 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    “‘Religion will save us," I said. Since when I could remember, religion had been very close to my heart. ‘Religion?’ Mr. Kumar grinned broadly. ‘I don 't believe in religion.…

    • 1569 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Cultural Culture In Anatevka

    • 2714 Words
    • 11 Pages

    In this paper, I will be analyzing the unique culture that lies within Anatevka. The purpose of this in-depth analysis is to observe the specific cultural elements that are present in their distinct society. In order to ensure organization and proper structure within this analytical essay, I am going to attempt to help create you a proper road map of where I will be heading, and where I should end up. To begin, I will be defining a proper conceptual framework by trying to interpret important terms and philosophical meanings that relate to culture itself, not Anatevka. I will try to explain what culture is and how it may be used properly throughout the framework of my essay.…

    • 2714 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Religion is an expression of social cohesion” as it unifies people together in a variety of ways such as a common goal or behaviour. It brings together people from all social classes to celebrate religious ceremonies such as sacrifice. It also allows societies to work in relative harmony by ensuring morals and principles according to the religion are evident in society. These features are both eminent in Nordic and Aztec communities. In Nordic society, religion played a significant role in bringing together the whole community at sacrificial times.…

    • 1004 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Our world, today, has many laws, customs and beliefs. These characteristics that we see today, have evolved over the course of many years, all the way to when they were created, by the first civilizations, around 3000 to 5000 years ago. These ancient civilizations contributed greatly to what culture, and religion, all across the world, is today. There were four dominant ancient civilizations, of the past, Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and India. As they evolved these civilizations shared many similarities, culturally and religiously.…

    • 1098 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Hortense Powdermaker’s book, Stranger and Friend, chronicles her experiences doing fieldwork throughout her career. In it, she discusses culture as shared meaning, where context and history give different components of a society social value. Through this process, essential qualities of a culture develop. The theory with which Powdermaker views culture, cultural essentialism, is one which uses these essential qualities as means of identification to form groups of people. This differs from Malinowski’s functionalist view, which claims that culture serves the needs of individuals rather than of larger communities.…

    • 967 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout history, religion has been a driving force of practically every aspect of life for nearly every single society ever to have existed. For most community-based societies, such as the tribes of Indigenous Americans, religion is also found to be community-based and stresses cooperation over dominance of any sort, which in turn leads the economical structure of the society to be community-based, allowing for each member of the community to have an equal share of the resources available. The concept of a society’s economic structure to closely mirror the religious beliefs of a society also proves true for agrarian societies, such as Rome, whose religious belief places a single man at the forefront of religious occurrences and thus imposes…

    • 907 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Religion and its accompanying world view reflects the values of the culture which practices that religion as exhibited in the ancient world cultures of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. In Mesopotamia, it is evident that the religion and world view of the Sumerians reflects the values of their culture based upon their negative outlook on life and the inability they had to trust their gods to take care of them. In Sumer, peoples were afraid of unexpected floods and possible raids by outsiders, which according the Kidner, “this gave the Sumerians a pessimistic outlook on life.” The pessimistic Sumerians believed that these uncertainties in life were caused by their unpredictable gods. The Sumerians believed they could influence the gods in order to make the world more secure, which caused their culture to focus mainly on pleasing and persuading the gods.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In understanding the dimensions of religion and how the rituals of each religion have been formed, it is important to recognize that each individual religion holds its own unique methods of practice and have many different levels of complex beliefs; including ways of following and practicing the cultural expectations as well as understanding the historical events that have formed each religion. Some beliefs are formed due to the exposure of the religion that has been practiced within one’s family. Others may be formed within adulthood based upon self-discovery and one’s wishes to pursue a certain lifestyle. Those who are fully knowledgeable on the many different forms of religion are more likely to be able to form more in-depth opinions that…

    • 1399 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Christian versus Non-Christian The world that we live in is an extraordinarily large place, and in it there coexist countless different views concerning religion. Imagine the world as a whole, religion can be broken down into two main categories: Christian views and non-Christian views. In order to view both of these cultures it becomes necessary to define exactly what each term encompasses.…

    • 1412 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    From the dawn of civilization, myths have defined our culture, shaping it in more ways than one can comprehend. Just like the natural events that so shape our world, the evolving and changing of myths have a vast impact on the development of a culture. Through studying these myths, we can see the history of this change, becoming literary archeologist in order to better understand the interactions between the cultures of our world. By brushing off the dust and comparing the creation myths of ancient cultures one can see the relationship between said cultures and examine the bones of the societies in order to see their impact on one another. Etiological myths allow one to view cross-cultural contamination between civilizations.…

    • 626 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Introduction In this paper I will examine the difference between material and non-material culture in my world, identifying ten objects that are part of my regular cultural experience. For each object, I will then identify what aspects of non-material culture (values and beliefs) these objects represent. Finally, I will reveal what this exercise has revealed to you me about my culture. There are clear differences between material and non-material culture, according to Little et.…

    • 768 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Crossing several different boundaries in the human experience, religion is notoriously difficult to define. Still, many attempts have been made, and while every theory has its limitations, each perspective has contributed to our current understanding of this complex phenomenon. We can now identify several of the characteristic elements that religion consists of. To followers, religion is a way of life guiding thinking, feeling, and acting. It usually provides something or someone requiring devotion.…

    • 584 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays