Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture

228 Pages·2017·3.14 MB·English

by  Paul-François Tremlett

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Edward Burnett Tylor,

Religion and Culture
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Religion and the Discourse on Modernity, Paul- François Tremlett
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Edward Burnett Tylor,

Religion and Culture
Edited by
Paul- François Tremlett, Liam T. Sutherland
and Graham Harvey
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LONDON • OXFORD • NEW YORK • NEW DELHI • SYDNEY
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First published 2017
© Paul- François Tremlett, Liam T. Sutherland, Graham Harvey and Contributors, 2017
Paul- François Tremlett, Liam T. Sutherland and Graham Harvey have asserted their
right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-0341-5
ePDF: 978-1-3500-0343-9
ePub: 978-1-3500-0342-2
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Contents

Contributors vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: Why Tylor, Why Now? Paul- François Tremlett,
Liam T. Sutherland and Graham Harvey 1
Part 1 Contexts and Debates 9
1 The Debate between E. B. Tylor and Andrew Lang over the
Theory of Primitive Monotheism: Implications for Contemporary
Studies of Indigenous Religions James L. Cox 11
2 Tylor, ‘Fetishes’ and the Matter of Animism Graham Harvey 29
3 ‘Belief in Spiritual Beings’: E. B. Tylor’s (Primitive) Cognitive
Theory of Religion Jonathan Jong 47
4 From Nineteenth- to Twentieth- Century Theorizing about Myth
in Britain and Germany: Tylor versus Blumenberg Robert A. Segal 63
5 Tylor and Debates about the Definition of ‘Religion’: Then
and Now Liam T. Sutherland 87
Part 2 Tylor beyond the Canon 105
6 Edward Burnett Tylor as Ethnographer Miguel Astor- Aguilera 107
7 ‘Necromancy Is a Religion’: Tylor’s Discussion of Spiritualism
in Primitive Culture and in His Diary Anne Kalvig 123
8 Edward Tylor, Archaeologist? The Archaeological
Foundations of ‘Mr Tylor’s Science’ Katy Soar 141
9 Telling Tylorian Tales: Reflections on Language, Myth
and Religion Martin D. Stringer 163
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vi Contents
10 Deconstructing the Survival in E. B. Tylor’s Primitive Culture:
From Memes to Dreams and Bricolage Paul- François Tremlett 179
Bibliography 195
Index 215
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Contributors

Miguel Astor- Aguilera is associate professor in religious studies at Arizona
State University, USA.
James L. Cox is professor and honorary fellow in the School of Divinity at the
University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Graham Harvey is professor of religious studies at the Open University, UK.
Jonathan Jong is a research fellow and co- lead for Brain, Belief and Behaviour
at Coventry University, UK.
Anne Kalvig is professor of religious studies at the University of Stavanger,
Norway.
Robert A. Segal is professor and holds a chair in religious studies at the
University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
Katy Soar is a lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University of Winchester.
Martin D. Stringer is professor and pro- vice chancellor at Swansea University,
Wales.
Liam T. Sutherland is a doctoral candidate at the University of Edinburgh,
Scotland.
Paul- François Tremlett is senior lecturer in religious studies at the Open
University, UK.
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Acknowledgements

The editors extend their warmest gratitude to the Faculty of Arts and Social
Science at the Open University for funding an authors’ workshop in London in
May 2016. We also extend our thanks to Donovan Schaefer and Peggy Morgan
for their respective endeavours to support the book. We thank the authors for
their enthusiasm and commitment, and Lalle Pursglove and Lucy Carroll at
Bloomsbury for their help and encouragement throughout. Finally, we thank
the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions on the volume.
1newg e nprepdf
Introduction: Why Tylor, Why Now?

Paul- François Tremlett, Liam T. Sutherland and Graham Harvey
Were scientific systems the oracular revelations they sometimes all but pre-
tend to be, it might be justifiable to take no note of the condition of mere
opinion and fancy that preceded them. But the investigator who turns from
his modern text books to the antiquated dissertations of the great thinkers of
the past, gains from the history of his own craft a truer view of the relation of
theory to fact, learns from the course of growth in each current hypothesis to
appreciate its raison d’être and full significance and even finds that a return
to older starting-p oints may enable him to find new paths, where the mod-
ern tracks seem stopped by impassable barriers. (Tylor 1903 [1871] 2: 444)
It has been one hundred years since the death of the founder of social anthro-
pology, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832– 1917). Tylor was born into a prosper-
ous Quaker family in London, in 1832. At the age of 23, while working in the
family’s brass foundry, he contracted tuberculosis and was urged to travel to
warmer climes. It was this decision that, in Eric Sharpe’s memorable phrase,
‘deprived industry of a brassfounder and gave the world an anthropologist’
(1986: 53). While travelling, Tylor spent time in Mexico and became fascinated
with indigenous cultures. He also met fellow English Quaker and archaeologist,
Henry Christy. On returning to England, he published a book based on these
travels: Anahuac: or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern, in 1861.
Other major publications followed, including Researches into the Early History
of Mankind and the Development of Civilization in 1865, and probably his most
famous book, his two- volume magnum opus Primitive Culture: Researches into
the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom in 1871,
in which he set out his general theory of religion, followed a decade later by
Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (for a com-
plete list of Tylor’s publications see Rivers, Marett and Thomas 1907). Tylor
became the first ever reader in social anthropology in 1884 and its first ever