Concerning the Concept of “Primitivity”

Abstract

The use of the word “primitive” in the literature about human behavior is very confusing. Its application to the ways of “uncivilized” people, at face value so different from those of civilized man, originated in the popular assumption that these ways were expressions of an inferior mentality. This opinion seemed to find scientific confirmation, particularly in the results of the research of Lévy-Bruhl, who spoke of a prelogical mentality of primitive people whose life is supposed to be determined by the law of participation, a concept which he had taken over from Durkheim. The members of these societies do not experience themselves as separate individuals; they and the objects in their world appear to them sometimes as the same, sometimes as others.

Reprinted, by permission of Columbia University Press, New York, N.Y., from Culture in History, Essays in honor of Paul Radin, 1960 (pp. 99–106).