The invention of primitive society: transformations of an illusion

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Book

Title:	The invention of primitive society: transformations of an illusion
Author:	Kuper, Adam
Year:	1988
Pages:	264
Language:	English
City of publisher:	London
Publisher:	Routledge
ISBN:	0415009022; 0415009030
Geographic term:	world
Subjects:	traditional society anthropology
Abstract:	This book shows how, since Darwin, anthropologists have tried to define the original form of human society. The first generation - from Henry Maine to Lewis Henry Morgan - initiated the search. By the end of the 19th century it had been linked to the pursuit of the earliest religion. The theory of 'totemism' developed by McLennan, Robertson Smith and Frazer claimed to describe the initial state of religion and society. Only then were the first field studies designed to test the theory. These Victorian models were refined and developed by great theorists, including Engels, Durkheim and Freud. In the 20th century they became the basis of academic anthropology, and were subjected to increasingly abstract transformations. But, as the author points out, there was of course no original 'primitive society', the search and its goal were illusory, and when we study constructions of the primitive, we study mirror-images of ourselves. This book explains the persistence of the illusion, demonstrating the capacity for endurance and transformation of even quite mistaken models.