Primitive Worlds: People Lost in Time

by Napoleon A. Chagnon, Neville Dyson-Hudson, Tor Eigeland

Please see photo of table of contents and dust jacket's fly leaf. Book is packed with excellent photos, includes essays on various non-western people and cultures

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Africa

211 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Wendelle]

this book is like work-shadowing five different anthropologists in studying cultures with limited technology, no formal government, and ever-present kinship relations. The manner of anthropology is not armchair theorizing but subsumption into the natives' cultural environment: cohabiting with a willing native sponsor, observing and interacting with the native community, and coming out with new information about the social structure and relationships of that community to show for a few years' expense. Thus in this book, despite the unfortunate ambiguity of the title, we learn like the anthropologist neither to ogle nor to idealize exotic peoples. we learn of their fierceness, their generosities, and their intelligence in maneuvering for maximum economic and political capital within their communities. At the same time we also learn of their capacities for wariness of foreigners, avarice, indifference to animal pain, and tricksterness. Thus they are not the noble saints or the parasitic migrants painted by opposing agendas. Rather they are just another variety of human living, made especially unique and precious because of the early isolation of their culture from the homogenizing effect of overruling interaction or invasion from more modern human societies.

[Kim Browers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew going in that the writing and perspectives might be problematic in a book of this era. I was right. Subconscious racial bias and Othering are present throughout. It's a benefit that not all articles are written by the same Anthropologists, so there is also a shift in voice and perspectives with each chapter.

I always believe it's a benefit to awareness and celebrating diversity to read about cultures that are not our own, even if they're sometimes presented through a White lens. I take something away from every ethnologue I read...even if that thing is just acknowledging I can see subconscious bias in literature and academia. THAT is also important.

The pictures are also decent, and tend to be people doing rather ordinary things. I enjoyed the candid nature of many of them.

[gigi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall this was really interesting and the candid pictures are beautiful. Some of these tribes have very little to no research on them outside of this book it seems, so it’s very cool getting an intimate look even if each section are just relatively short ethnographies.

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of fascinating essays by anthropologists who have spent time with cultures largely unchanged and untouched by the modern world. I was initially worried by the title and publication date, but on the whole the authors handle their subjects with open-minded intelligence, and the only mockery is of themselves as they struggle to acclimate to such an unfamiliar way of life.