Talk:Primitive Culture (book)

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Untitled

This article is biased. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.11.237.19 (talk • contribs) in 2005

Political correctness in the article

This article is still a bit politically correct. When given a choice most people, including anthropologists, prefer a culture with "accumulative innovation" such as antibiotics, cars and central heating to a culture with accumulative innovation such as tribal dance, beads and ancestor spirit beliefs. Art LaPella 17:22, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

"Political correctness" is often used as a phrase to discipline and demote the views of others--to suggest that others are behaving in an ideological fashion, while the other people is more neutral. It's a phrase heavily used by the American right to politicize and challenge the views of the American left. Moreover, whether people enjoy air conditioning more than beads is irrelevant. I submit to you that what a lot of "modern" people want is what their televisions tell them to want. --Smilo Don 17:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

No, this article is absolutely politically correct - ie. a quibbling over semantics. It's entire focus is on the term "primitive culture" and has no information whatsoever on the actual subject matter. At the very least, this article needs a disambiguation link to the relevant article concerning so called primitive cultures ("neolithic cultures", perhaps, would be the proper term). Rocker85 13:40, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

This IS a good example of political correctness. It's true that the right has started to call any view that doesn't amount to kicking everybody out of the country or dropping bombs "politically correct". That doesn't change the fact that the word used to mean something: a silly social prohibition against using some term; i.e. the social equivalent of censorship. The announced reason is that it offends someone, the real reason (which everybody knows) is that it allows certain people to control the discourse. My big problem is that although I work academically in the area I simply have no good way of referring inclusively to a category of cultures that anyone would be able to identify, at least not without using very cumbersome formulations such as "extant pre-neolithic societies" or some such. Why not "primitive"? They ARE primitive. What do you think primitive means? It's not necessarily bad to be primitive as long as you don't think the reason is stupidity. It's plain silly not to be able to say that a stoneage culture is more primitive than a spaceage society - it is by any reasonable measurement! It's cultural relativism taken to its most nauseating vacuous edge, that's what it is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.16.140.71 (talk) 18:32, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree, I was just about to use the term, then thought "hmm, this might not be the accepted term anymore, but what else can I say that isn't cumbersome, imprecise or unintelligible?" Turns out there is no such alternative. Essentially this is the same technique that totalitarian societies use in an attempt to control people's hearts and minds, and that was caricatured by Orwell's newspeak. Actually, there are places where the term is still used in its original meaning: check Primitive Irish. While German primitiv cannot be used in that sense anymore and seems to have become entirely pejorative (barring attempts at reclaiming), English primitive has retained at least traces of its former, neutral meaning, therefore I will continue using it. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:58, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it is not a question of politically correctness (offending or not someone), it is simply a question of correctness. The term primitive is biased with a negative assessment (or positive sometimes, anyway, has a quality appraisal). Maybe a definition could say that primitive culture may be very rich on technology (knowledge about adapting in one own enviroinment), less about science (having general theories about reality, but then, what about religions, that can't be judged, or mathematics/astrology, an ancient knowledge). Primitive carries an appreciation, and so, could be questioned. There are some distincitive and firm points that discriminate a primitive culture from another? Technology (industrial revolution or simply pre-iron age), social organization (tribal), oral knowledge trasmission, et cetera. Someone knows if, scientifically, is an obsolete term, that belongs to last century? --Filoberto (talk) 14:01, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Material removed from the article

I've removed the following material, which was added recently, from the article because I feel it does not belong in such an article, which is about the term primitive culture and societies characterised by simple technology and low population density or low numbers of members (perhaps that's a useable alternative – low-tech culture?) in general, not specifically Native Americans, who form only a relatively small portion of the totality of cultures considered primitive in modern history. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:56, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Material about Native Americans

Native Americans vs. English Colonists

Background

During the 17th and 18th centuries, American colonists and Native Americans lived in resentment and hostility. The two sides portrayed complete opposite ways of living, and through which, uneducated stereotyping arose. Since both parties disliked each other, it was easy to typecast the other side into being something they were not. The Colonists quickly judged the Native Americans as being savages and even barbaric. By calling the Native Americans as Savages, the colonists were able to demonstrate their belief that they were the superior race. Similar to racism in the US, particularly the segregation era, these American colonists treated the Native Americans were utter disrespect and took advantage of them any chance they had.

The Colonists' Reasoning

There are a plethora of reasons as to why the American Colonists believed that the Native Americans lived a savage life. When the English settled, what they found were no cities in existence, but villages instead. The Native Americans did not have a system of law or government, so they often fought with other tribes, as well as each other, in order to deal with their issues. They also hunted for all for all of their food and even used what they hunted as everyday materials around their tribe. Moreover, the Colonists did not understand their established language and uses of communication. The Native Americans also did not exhibit any knowledge of Agriculture, and instead, hunted for all of their resources. All of these reasons culminated to assemble the prejudice mindset the Colonists had towards the Native Americans. The English settlers saw the Indians as savages and treated them as if they were animals, for it was a way to feel dominant and superior over another race and/or to justify their actions in stealing the Native Americans’ land.

The Native American Reasoning

Just how the English Settlers believed that the Native Americans were savages, the Native Americans thought of the Colonists as a heartless group of people. The Indian way was much different than that of the Colonists, and as evidenced in the story “Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak” the author, Black Hawk, described how dissimilar English customs were to those of the Native Americans and how their viewpoints on what was polite was completely divergent, “It is one of the Indian Rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition the same day it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light manner and that they show it respect by taking time to consider it, as of a matter of importance.” From this Native American passage, it is easy to see how even the slightest difference of opinions, even on what was considered polite, could form and even further division between the two cultures. Moreover Black Hawk also illustrated how hostile the Colonists got when the Native American chose not to communicate with them when the Settlers visited their tribes. The Colonists viewed this as highly improper, but the Native Americans simply were watching the Colonists of any wrongdoings and protecting themselves. What the Native Americans believed to be well mannered, the Colonists believed to be rude, and vice-versa. From recorded stories, such as “Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak” the Native Americans seem to be peaceful people that wanted no harm, but through trickery and deceit, “The white people brought whiskey into our village, made our people drunk and cheated them out of their horses, guns, and traps,” the Native Americans had no choice, but to develop a hostility and loathing for the colonists.

Differing Opinions on Native American Savagery

Obviously not all of the Colonists considered the Native Americans to be savage, and some even professed their desire for equality. Benjamin Franklin even wrote an essay, “Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America,” detailing how the Native Americans were anything but savages, and even went on to explain how the Colonists may have been the actual barbarians. The purpose of Franklin’s essay was to illustate to society how different cultures have different methods of living life and that each one must be respected, “Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.” He portrayed being civilized as a biased opinion on one’s own cultural values. Furthermore, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter to Martin Van Buren, President of the United States, explaining how cruel and inhumane the American colonists were towards the Indians, “Will the American Government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill? —We ask triumphantly. Our wise men shake their heads dubiously… And now the steps of this crime follow each other so fast, -at such fatally quick time, -that the millions of virtuous citizens, whose agents the Government are, have no place to interpose, and must shut their eyes until the last howl and wailing of these poor tormented villages and tribes shall afflict the ear of the world.” It was through strong leaders like Franklin and Emerson that awareness was spread and the Native American voice was heard. Even though they were not Native Americans themselves, Emerson and Franklin’s efforts were monumental towards an eventual society that promoted equality between the cultures.

Blurred Distinction Between Savagery and Civilization

As evidenced by the behaviors amongst the English settlers and the Native Americans, there was a blurred distinction between what was considered savage and what was deemed civilized. Both parties would like to think that they were the civilized group of people and that the other culture displayed savagery, but what was interesting was that there were some similarities between the two cultures. Although the two cultures did not interact with each other very much, Mary Rowlandson’s personal account, “The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson,” shed light upon the popular beliefs the Colonists had towards the Native Americans, as well as the altered opinion through personal experiences with the “enemy.” Despite her strong beliefs towards the Native Americans and their customs, Rowlandson’s psyche was completely altered over the course of her captivity, and through which, she is able to see the other race in a whole new light. It is interesting because Rowlandson originally viewed the Indians as savages that were downright barbaric, but through her up close experiences with them, she was able to see how the Native Americans were actually civilized people. She obviously would not have awarded them for their elegance, but she truly began to see the Indians as a much more refined race of people. This altered mindset could be attributed to her extended time spent with them, but mostly to her cognizance that both cultures were more similar than either side would think. Whether it be from wearing their clothes, spending nights with them, eating their food, or communicating with them, Mary Rowlandson was a symbol of hope during such cruel time of hatred violence, for she represented not only the uneducated prejudice of the colonists, but also the hope that both sides could eventually cope with each other in an open society.

References

Indigenous Peoples, hi-tech

• Missouri Botanical Garden (February 27, 2012). "Indigenous Peoples at Forefront of Climate Change Offer Lessons On Plant Biodiversity". Science News. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 4, 2012. Humans are frequently blamed for deforestation and the destruction of environments, yet there are also examples of peoples and cultures around the world that have learned to manage and conserve the precious resources around them. The Yanesha of the upper Peruvian Amazon and the Tibetans of the Himalayas....
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
• "1491: New revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles Mann". review. Good Reports. November 2, 2005. Retrieved March 4, 2012. ...'Holmberg's Mistake': the notion, which has held sway in the West for almost five centuries, that Native Americans before Columbus lived in an eternal, unhistoried state, either as vicious barbarians or noble savages. 1491 is a historical travelogue, examining some of the ways Holmberg's Mistake is being corrected. Mann doesn't have all the answers, or even a whole lot of 'new revelations,' but instead focuses on areas the liveliest current debates over the nature of pre-Columbian America....
• Mann, Charles C. (2005). "Introduction. In the Beni". 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Knopf. p. 480. ISBN 9781400040063. ....Much of the environmental movement is animated, consciously or not, by what geographer William Denevan calls "the pristine myth"—the belief that the Americas in 1491 were an almost untouched, even Edenic land, "untrammeled by man," in the words of the Wilderness Act of 1964, a U.S. law that is one of the founding documents of the global environmental movement.... Yet if the new view is correct and the work of humankind was pervasive, where does that leave efforts to restore nature?
  :The Beni is a case in point. In addition to building roads, causeways, canals, dikes, reservoirs, mounds, raised agricultural fields, and possibly ball courts, Erickson has argued, the Indians who lived there before Columbus trapped fish in the seasonally flooded grassland. The trapping was not a matter of a few isolated natives with nets, but a society-wide effort in which hundreds or thousands of people fashioned dense, zigzagging networks of earthen fish weirs (fish-corralling fences) among the causeways. Much of the savanna is natural, the result of seasonal flooding. But the Indians maintained and expanded the grasslands by regularly setting huge areas on fire. Over the centuries the burning created an intricate ecosystem of fire-adapted plant species dependent on indigenous pyrophilia. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Mann, Charles C. (2005). "(Part 3)". 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Knopf. p. 480. ISBN 9781400040063. "EMPTY OF MANKIND AND ITS WORKS" The Beni was no anomaly. For almost five centuries, Holmberg's Mistake — the supposition that Native Americans lived in an eternal, unhistoried state — held sway in scholarly work, and from there fanned out to high school textbooks, Hollywood movies, newspaper articles, environmental campaigns, romantic adventure books, and silk-screened T-shirts.... {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)

--Pawyilee (talk) 15:40, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

PS: Experimental archaeology, not to be confused with primitive technology not concerned with any archaeological or historical evidence, gains hands-on experience in how "hi-tech" primitive culture is and always has been. --Pawyilee (talk) 15:49, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I doubt that this, however impressive it may be, is what people have in mind when saying hi-tech. Anyway, are you essentially agreeing that there is no alternative for "primitive" in this context? "Pre-industrial", "pre-modern" or "pre-literary" and the like don't cut it, either, because "primitive", like "developped", is a relative term. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes; yes. --Pawyilee (talk) 11:01, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

--Guest — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.32.77.211 (talk) 17:41, 13 June 2012 (UTC) I wish I could find references, but I've read several assertions that the "extra leisure time" claim arrises only from not counting certain activities as "work" that most of us would consider work.

incomplete article

This article is reads like a good start and then someone stopped writing. Where is critique of the term. Modern usage, arguments for using it, arguments against using it?--Inayity (talk) 09:20, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Re-Write or Delete

This article is absolute nonsense. It has no foundation and is meaningless words put together for the sake of writing something. Please re-write or delete, don't just include an article for the sake of it. Belittles Wikipedia ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.181.119 (talk) 04:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Title change

Shouldn't the title of this article be "Primitive Culture" (title case) since it is about a book? I ab not sure how to change a title. User-duck (talk) 00:20, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 14 September 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: (non-admin closure) MOVED to Primitive Culture (book).

No obvious consensus for what should be done at this title, so I'll leave the redirect but anyone should feel welcome to change it per this discussion. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 19:30, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

---

Primitive culture → Primitive Culture – Change capitalization to title of book Editor2020 (talk) 04:09, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Book titles are ordinarily capitalised. Adumbrativus (talk) 05:53, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
• Support. I would have thought this was uncontroversial, but I see it is rolling back a change made in 2005 by Christopher Parham. Per WP:NCCAPS, the proposed move is correct: see under Title of Works. Havelock Jones (talk) 09:24, 14 September 2021 (UTC) Move to Primitive Culture (book) per discussion below. Havelock Jones (talk) 08:02, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Primitive Culture (book) A google book search indicates that the term without caps is widely used and (book) would benefit readers. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:05, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
• Looking at the edit history it seems to have had content for the generic meaning but unlike Talk:Palm house#Requested move 30 March 2021 the changes seem less clear cut since info for the book seems to have been in place for years[1]. Probably needs splitting if both the generic and specific topics are notable and per Red Meat we may need a DAB page. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:09, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
  • @Crouch, Swale: this appears to be correct and explains why Christopher Parham moved the article away from Primitive Culture in the first place. It is curious the article has morphed from one topic to another, and probably something irregular has happened at some point in the edit history, but for the purpose of this RM I think we can choose the appropriate name for the article we now have, which is Primitive Culture. I doubt we need an article on primitive culture, because AIUI this is not current terminology in anthropology. Certainly we don't have one, so we don't currently need a DAB page. Havelock Jones (talk) 19:45, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
    • Yes it was originally written about the generic topic even though it was (incorrectly) capitalized thus the move. We did have an article on the generic topic that gradually became one about the book, the question is if there should be one now which could also cover the book. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:51, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
      • With a degree of reluctance, I note that on 4 June 2011, the article (then about the generic topic) was classified as being of top importance to WP:ANTHRO by JrTayloriv, which would tend to suggest that there should be an article about it. On the other hand, the text of the article at that date looked like this which virtually reads like an explanation that the term is no longer used by RSs (even 10 years ago). I certainly don't think that the present topic should be merged with the generic topic, for the same reason that The Interpretation of Dreams shouldn't be merged with Dream interpretation. Havelock Jones (talk) 20:23, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
• Move to Primitive Culture (book). Too generic not to be disambiguated. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:01, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
• Primitive Culture (book), per discussion. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:37, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
• Original proposer changes to Move to Primitive Culture (book) Editor2020 (talk) 01:59, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Comment there's a clear consensus to move to Primitive Culture (book), but what should be done with Primitive culture and Primitive Culture? Lennart97 (talk) 13:59, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

@Lennart97: I was thinking the same. Maybe redirect them both to Civilization#History, or Uncontacted peoples? Whatever the target is, both of them should have the same target. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:15, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

The first of those is probably too broad, the second too specific... so maybe a disambiguation page listing a few such targets, plus the book, makes the most sense? Lennart97 (talk) 08:20, 23 September 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Primitive cultures" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Primitive cultures has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 December 27 § Primitive cultures until a consensus is reached. GnocchiFan (talk) 16:51, 27 December 2023 (UTC)