[lit-ideas] Tyloriana
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2015 19:41:26 -0500
In a message dated 2/23/2015 6:07:09 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Culture, culture, culture, culture, I got your culture right here.
Palma was being sceptic (or 'skeptic', if you must) about 'culture' or
"keyword: culture", but surely Tyler couldn't have been THAT wrong.
Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man
as a member of society. --- Tylor -- Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
What was *Tylor*'s culture?
E. B. Tylor was born on October 2, 1832, in Camberwell, a district of
London.
Tyor was the son of Tylor, Joseph Tylor, and Harriet Skipper, part of a
family of wealthy quakers who owned a London brass factory.
His elder brother Alfred Tylor became a geologist, not an anthropologist as
Tylor the younger would become.
Tylor was educated at Grove House School, Tottenham.
(Nancy Mitford prefers to say just "The Grove, Tottenham")
But due to the deaths of both of Tylor's parents -- i.e. his father and his
mother -- during Tylor's early adulthood he never gained a university
degree.
After both his parents' deaths -- his mother and his father -- Tylor
prepared to help manage the family brass business, but had to set this plan
aside when he developed symptoms consistent with the onset of tuberculosis
(abbreviated as "TB").
Following the advice to spend time in warmer climes, Tylor left England in
1855, travelling (by ship) to Mexico and Central America.
("I thought Massachussett's culture would be too much like mine -- being
quaker," he later confessed -- "whereas in Mexico and Central America I could
practise languages").
The experience in Mexico and Central America proved to be an important and
formative one, sparking his lifelong interest in studying unfamiliar
"cultures", as he called them.
"By calling them 'unfamiliar', I mean to say that they certainly were not
my _family_'s culture").
During his travels, Tylor met Henry Christie, a fellow Quaker, ethnologist
and archaeologist.
Tylor's association with Christie (or "Christy", as Christy preferred to
spell his surname to confuse those who knew the Christies of Derbyshire)
greatly stimulated his awakening interest in anthropology and culture, and
helped broaden also his inquiries to include prehistoric studies.
.
Tylor's first publication was a result of his 1856 trip to Mexico with
Christie.
Tylor's notes are in English and pertain to the beliefs and practices of
the people he encountered.
The notes were the basis of his work "Anahuac; Or, Mexico and the
Mexicans, Ancient and Modern" (1861) -- a parody on "Hymns, Ancient and
Modern",
published after his return to England.
Tylor continued to study the customs and beliefs of tribal Mexican
communities, both existing and prehistoric (based on archaeological finds).
"I don't care if a culture is exctinct. It is still 'cultural' to study
it", he would repeatedly tell Christie (who found the study of exctinct
cultures 'otiose').
Tylor published a second work, "Researches into the Early History of
Mankind and the Development of Civilization", in 1865, also in English (A
Mexican edition is still in preparation).
Following this came his most influential work, "Primitive Culture" (1871).
This was important not only for its thorough study of human civilisation
("Western civilisation? I think it would be a good idea!" Ghandi) and
contributions to the emergent field of anthropology, but for its undeniable
influence on a handful of scholars, such as J. G. Frazer, who were to become
Tylor's disciples and contribute greatly to the scientific study of CULTURAL
anthropology in later years.
Tylor was appointed Keeper of the University Museum at Oxford in 1883.
Some say, "at Oxford University" but surely to say that he was the keeper
of the University Museum at Oxford University violates one of Grice's maxims
("Do not be repetitive twice").
He also served as a tour guide and a lecturer.
He actually held the title of the first "Reader in Anthropology" at Oxford
from 1884 to 1895.
This was controversial, since the élite only went to Oxford to study Lit.
Hum., not Anthropology.
In 1896 Tylor is appointed the first "Professor of Anthropology" at Oxford.
He was involved in the early history of the Pitt Rivers Museum, although to
a VERY debatable extent. (Geary knows more about this, since he was
engaged in the debate.
Tylor's awards and achievements include:
1871 Fellow of the Royal Society.
1875 Honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws from Oxford.
1912 Knighted for his contributions to things.
Tylor's notion is best described in his most famous work, the two-volume
Primitive Culture.
The first volume Tylor entitles "The Origins of Culture".
It deals with ethnography including social evolution, linguistics, and
myth.
He borrowed (but never returned) the ideal of evolution from Darwin, one
of his friends.
The second volume is dedicated to "Religion in Primitive Culture", and
deals mainly not just with C. of E. ("I always found writing about my own
culture boring, and many readers shared that opinion with me") with his
interpretation of animism ("now that _was_ fun").
Fundamental to understanding Tylor's notion is his negative feelings
towards religion, and especially Christianity -- He never believed in the 39
articles of faith of High Anglicanism ("Why 39? Seems like an arbitrary number
to me.")
It is on the first page of "Primitive Culture" -- "the page one first
reads," as Geary aptly notes -- that Tylor provides a definition which is one
of
his most widely recognised contributions to anthropology and the study of
religion:
"Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom,
and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of
society."
Unlike many of his predecessors and contemporaries, Tylor asserts that the
human mind and its capabilities are the same globally, despite a particular
society’s stage in social evolution.
This means that a hunter-gatherer society would possess the same amount of
intelligence as an advanced industrial society.
The difference, Tylor asserts, is education, which he considers the
cumulative knowledge and methodology that takes thousands of years to acquire.
Tylor often likens primitive cultures to “children”, and sees culture and
the mind of humans as progressive. His work was a refutation of the theory
of social degeneration, which was popular at the time in Oxford (giving
Cambridge as an example).
At the end of "Primitive Culture", Tylor writes:
"The science of culture is essentially a reformers' science"
and this became a popular graffito in Oxford.
A term ascribed to Tylor was his theory of "survivals".
Tylor asserts that when a society evolves, certain customs are retained
that are unnecessary ("as five o'clock tea", he writes, "which is in England
drunk at four o'clock as a matter of fact") in the new society, like outworn
and useless "baggage".
His definition of survivals is
"processes, customs, and opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on
by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which
they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs and examples
of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved."
"Survivals" can include outdated practices, such as the European practice
of bloodletting, which lasted long after the medical theories on which it
was based had faded from use and been replaced by more modern techniques.
Critics argued that he identified the term but provided an insufficient
reason as to why survivals continue. Tylor’s meme-like concept of survivals
explains the characteristics of a culture that are linked to earlier stages
of human culture.
Studying survivals assists ethnographers in reconstructing earlier cultural
characteristics and possibly reconstructing the evolution of culture.
Tylor argued that people had used religion to explain things that occurred
in the world.
He saw that it was important for religions to have the ability to explain
why and for what reason things occurred in the world.
For example, God (or the divine) gave us sun to keep us warm and give us
light. Tylor argued that animism is the true natural religion that is the
essence of religion; it answers the questions of which religion came first and
which religion is essentially the most basic and foundation of all
religions.
For him, animism was the best answer to these questions, so it must be the
true foundation of all religions. Animism is described as the belief in
spirits inhabiting and animating beings, or souls existing in things.
To Tylor, the fact that modern religious practitioners continued to believe
in spirits showed that these people were no more advanced than primitive
societies.
For him, this implied that modern religious practitioners do not understand
the ways of the universe and how life truly works because they have
excluded science from their understanding of the world.
By excluding scientific explanation in their understanding of why and how
things occur, he asserts modern religious practitioners are rudimentary.
Tylor perceived the modern religious belief in God as a “survival” of
primitive ignorance.[18] He claimed the contemporary belief in God to be a
survival, because science could explain the phenomena previously justified by
religion.
Cheers,
Speranza
References,
Tylor, Anahuac: or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern, Longman,
Green, Longman and Roberts.
'Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of
Civilization, John Murray.
'Primitive Culture Vol 1, John Murray.
'Primitive Culture Vol 2, John Murray.
Anthropology an introduction to the study of man and civilization,
Macmillan.
On a Method of Investigating the Development of Institutions; applied to
Laws of Marriage and Descent Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute vol
18
Tylor, Edward Burnett". Who's Who, 59: p. 1785. 1907.
Paul Bohannan, Social Anthropology (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston)
Lewis, Herbert S. "The Misrepresentation of Anthropology and its
Consequences", American Anthropologist 100: 716–731
"Animism", Online Etymology Dictionary.
Lowrie, Robert H. "Edward B. Tylor", American Anthropologist, New Series
Vol. 19, No. 2., pp. 262–268.
Edward Burnett Tylor: biography", Pitt Rivers Museum
Giulio Angioni, L'antropologia evoluzionistica di Edward B. Tylor in Tre
saggi... cit. in Related Studies
8.Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. New York: J. P. Putnam’s Sons. Volume
1, page 1.
Stringer, Martin D. "Rethinking Animism: Thoughts from the Infancy of Our
Discipline", The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 5,
No. 4. ), pp. 541–555.
Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. New York: J. P. Putnam’s Sons, p. 410.
Wallis, Wilson D. "Reviewed Work(s): 'The Doctrine of Survivals' by
Margaret T. Hodgen", The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 49, No. 193. pp.
273–
274.
Tylor, Edward. Primitive Culture. New York: J. P. Putnam’s Sons. 16.
Braun, Willi and Russel T. McCutcheon, eds. Guide to the Study of
Religion. London: Continuum. 160.
Moore, Jerry D. "Edward Tylor: The Evolution of Culture," Visions of
Culture: an Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists, Walnut
Creek, California: Altamira, . 23.
Moore, Jerry D. "Edward Tylor: The Evolution of Culture." Visions of
Culture: an Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut
Creek: Altamira, 1997. 24.
Strenski, Ivan. "The Shock of the 'Savage': Edward Burnett Tylor,
Evolution, and Spirits," Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to
Theories of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 93.
17Strenski, Ivan. "The Shock of the 'Savage': Edward Burnett Tylor,
Evolution, and Spirits." Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction to
Theories of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 94.
Strenski, Ivan. "The Shock of the 'Savage': Edward Burnett Tylor,
Evolution, and Spirits." Thinking About Religion: An Historical Introduction
to
Theories of Religion. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 99.
Joan Leopold, Culture in Comparative and Evolutionary Perspective: E. B.
Tylor and the Making of Primitive Culture (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag).
Efram Sera-Shriar, The Making of British Anthropology, 1813–1871, London:
Pickering and Chatto, pp. 147–176.
George W. Stocking, "Matthew Arnold, E. B. Tylor, and the Uses of
Invention", American Anthropologist, 65 783–799
"Edward B. Tylor: The Science of Culture", Robert Graber, Truman State
University
Giulio Angioni, Tre saggi sull'antropologia dell'età coloniale (Palermo,
Flaccovio); Fare, dire, sentire: l'identico e il diverso nelle culture
(Nuoro, Il Maestrale, 2011).
Laavanyan Ratnapalan, "E. B. Tylor and the Problem of Primitive Culture,"
History and Anthropology, 19, 2 131142.
Hugh J. Dawson "E. B. Tylor's Theory of Survivals and Veblen's Social
Criticism", Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 54, pp. 489–504
Margaret T. Hodgen "The doctrine of survivals: the history of an idea".
American Anthropologist, vol 33. pp. 307–324
Robert H. Lowie "Edward B. Tylor obituary". American Anthropologist Vol.
19 pp. 262–268 JSTOR 660758
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