E. B. Tylor and the Problem of Primitive Culture

Ratnapalan, L. M.

doi:10.1080/02757200802320934

Cited by 31 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Taylor said that any culture is not a new creation because 'it is a result of past times' and, yet showing 'in the case of survival clear vestiges of the course of its development' [43]. If time could reverse and remove variants of a culture, the society would be completely different.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the savagism of motorbike culture has shaped the narco city

Jaramillo¹

2016

WIT Transactions on the Built Environment

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The narco-motorbike is often identified by Medellinenses as a red Yamaha. This vehicle is not only a means of private transport, but it is also used for committing crime by the traffickers. This mode of transport represents a culture of success, death and ambiguity between 'good' and 'bad.' This research studies the evolution of the culture of this vehicle in Medellin by looking at how the narco motorbike has changed the city and how the competitive environment of capitalism and symbiosis with the machine could end in a violent city inside a 'capitalist paradise.' This analysis observes the evolving narco-motorbike from historical, architectural, biological, technological and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, urbanism, transport and social media. The aim of this research is to understand how the motorbike culture originates in the first place and how the narco-motorbike has influenced the contemporary city. The methodology was an inductive approach because the theory came from analysing the case study first. This analysis is done by using the 'multilinear evolution,' which essentially studies the significant alteration of a particular culture, so a cultural law should be identified. The result of this study was that the motorbike is frequently seen as a criminal object. Instead, of avoiding the motorbike, Medellinenses seem to consider it as a way to protect themselves from the sicarios. This new urban culture might be seen as a magnetic attraction because basically, the contemporary motorbike culture encapsulated a cultural polarity.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the savagism of motorbike culture has shaped the narco city

Jaramillo¹

2016

WIT Transactions on the Built Environment

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“…In his Primitive Culture , Tylor argued that the ‘general principles of savage religion’, far from being a ‘rubbish-heap of miscellaneous folly’, were ‘essentially rational’, albeit ‘working in a mental condition of intense and inveterate ignorance’ (Tylor, 1920: 22). Surviving primitive logics, if internally rational, were nonetheless inferior to contemporaneous civilized rationalities, hence revealing the cognitive incompetence of primitive peoples (see Ratnapalan, 2008). Frazer provided a cognate argument to Tylor in his 1908 inaugural lecture at the University of Liverpool.…”

Section: Colonial Development and Southern Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Behind the Rhodes statue: Black competency and the imperial academy

Shilliam

2019

History of the Human Sciences

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Recent criticisms of the Rhodes Must Fall (RMF) Oxford campaign have problematized the presence of Black bodies within British higher education by reference to an ideal image of the impartial and discerning academy. In this article, I historically and intellectually contextualize the apprehension, expressed in the debates over RMF Oxford, that an intimate Black presence destabilizes the ethos of higher education. Specifically, I argue that much more than Rhodes’ statue implicates the British academy in the Empire’s southern African interests. I excavate a genealogy of academic debates regarding the effects of an increased proximity of Black presence to empire’s white spaces. These debates were initiated by social anthropologists in the interwar years primarily (albeit not solely) with regards to studies of southern Africa’s urbanizing spaces. What is more, such debates were highly influential to the study of ‘race relations’ in Britain’s postwar era of Commonwealth immigration. Critically, all these debates problematized the cognitive competency of African/Black peoples to inhabit white cultural spaces – including the academy – in ways that were not destabilizing of imperial order. Current campus campaigns such as RMF should not be evaluated against an ideal image of the academy. Rather, they form part of a continued confrontation with the afterlives of academic dispositions that were implicated in the imperial project that Rhodes was integral to.

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“…intelligibility with the evolution of knowledge. Tylor claimed that in spite of their obsolescence, survivals continued to play a role in the beliefs and practices of some contemporary societies and were particularly persistent in non-European cultures (see Keane 2007;Ratnapalan 2008). For Tylor, the term "custom" stood in for culture in the colonies, defined by artifacts, beliefs, and practices from the past, asynchronous with modern temporality.…”

Section: U Lt U R a L I S M A N D T H E N E W E U R O P Ementioning

confidence: 99%

“…He theorized the discrepancy entailed in the acknowledgement of different stages within a pan-human culture concept through his theory of “survivals.” This theory claims that certain practices made sense in the past, but have lost their intelligibility with the evolution of knowledge. Tylor claimed that in spite of their obsolescence, survivals continued to play a role in the beliefs and practices of some contemporary societies and were particularly persistent in non-European cultures (see Keane 2007; Ratnapalan 2008). For Tylor, the term “custom” stood in for culture in the colonies, defined by artifacts, beliefs, and practices from the past , asynchronous with modern temporality.…”

Section: Islam Is Not Culture or The Critique Of “Backward Cultural Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Islam and Culture: Dis/junctures in a Modern Conceptual Terrain

Jouili

2018

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Over the last decades, Europe debates on Islam have been framed increasingly through the lens of cultural difference. In this discursive climate, culture constitutes a crucial terrain of investment for European Muslims in their struggle for inclusion and recognition. Based on two different ethnographic research projects among European Muslims, this essay examines two distinct types of culture discourses. One employs an Islam-versus-culture trope that serves to disconnect Islam from certain patriarchal practices perceived to exist within Muslim communities. The other discourse defends the intrinsic and symbiotic link between Islam and culture, especially in order to elevate the place of artistic practices within Muslim communities. To make sense of these seeming contradictions, I explore the multivalent meanings contained in my interlocutors’ uses of the culture concept by tracing the respective genealogies of these meanings. This includes an investigation of culture's conceptual histories, formulated successively by Enlightenment thinkers, Romanticists, and early anthropologists, as well as by Islamic reformers and their more recent successors. My investigation into these conceptual histories exposes broader concerns about individual freedom and agency on the part of cultural theorists, which have furthermore enabled various claims about modernity and backwardness. While European Muslims creatively integrate various articulations of the culture concept into their world-making projects, I argue that the ontological assumptions underpinning the culture concept continue to haunt and render precarious efforts to demonstrate Muslim belonging to Europe via culture.

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E. B. Tylor and the Problem of Primitive Culture

Cited by 31 publications

References 5 publications

How the savagism of motorbike culture has shaped the narco city

How the savagism of motorbike culture has shaped the narco city

Behind the Rhodes statue: Black competency and the imperial academy

Islam and Culture: Dis/junctures in a Modern Conceptual Terrain

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