Understanding and Assessing the Contribution of Sir E.B Tylor and Early Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion
Convenor: Liam Sutherland, PhD candidate, University of Edinburgh
Contact: [email protected]
Abstract:
Abstract Many historical figures and their approaches continue to be a vital part of the study of religion; the approach of the founder of Cultural Anthropology, Sir E.B Tylor and other early Anthropological approaches are often not accorded the same respect. These include scholars such as Herbert Spencer, August Comte, Robert R. Marett and Sir James G. Frazer. There are many issues which could be discussed: what historical role did they play in the genesis of the field? Are these approaches merely of historical interest or are can they prove useful for the contemporary study of religion? Are there contemporary approaches which display an influence or an affinity with these approaches? If so what aspects of these approaches must be jettisoned in order to make them acceptable for the contemporary study of religion? What role did these approaches play in the legitimisation and consolidation of European colonialism?
Outline The work of Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) and his immediate predecessors, contemporaries and successors such as: August Comte (1794-1859) Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941), Robert Ranulph Marett (1866-1943) and Andrew Lang (1844-1912) played a formative role in the creation of comparative, social scientific studies of religion, yet they are rarely regarded as useful for contemporary theory and method in the study of religion. This panel will provide an opportunity for contributing papers to discuss a variety of issues surrounding any of the early Anthropological approaches to the study of religion. These could include historiographical approaches assessing the contribution these approaches made to the foundation of the social scientific, comparative study of religion or alternatively the role these approaches played as the ‘handmaiden of colonialism.’ While it is always useful to re-examine the history of the field, the question is: have these approaches have been left behind for a reason? However many key theoretical and methodological issues in the contemporary field are the same as those dealt with these by these historic figures: such as the degree of cognitive unity or cultural heterogeneity of humanity and the extent to which ‘religion’ can adequately be defined despite its bewildering diversity. Debates between these key figures can seem perennial; whether religion is rooted in relations with personal beings as Tylor argued or whether it is defined by more abstract forces such as Mana as Marett asserted, whether worship of High Gods are universal as Lang argued or whether these are specific to certain religions as Tylor and Frazer maintained.
Thus it seems pertinent to ask whether there are aspects of these approaches which could prove useful for contemporary theory and method in the study of religion. There are contemporary scholars who have drawn on these approaches such as Robin Horton, Jan Platvoet, Stewart Guthrie and others but they have faced the challenge of sorting the useful from the dated aspects of these theories. Tylor in particular can be regarded as the foundational ancestor for scholarship which utilises minimal definitions of religion, which are substantive yet non-theological and which used for functional analyses of religion. In particular the work of Tylor and Frazer chime with modern cognitive approaches which focus on religion as patterns of thought which serve as explanatory frameworks. Arguably one of the deepest divisions within the study of religion concerns the role of the individual viz a viz society or the religious community and the central role of belief which dominated the analysis of religions until have been seriously challenged in recent years. For better or worse, the approach of Herbert Spencer was vigorously individualistic and all of these approaches were dependant on the concept of belief. Nonetheless, their approaches differed from those of William James, Rudolf Otto and Freidrich Schleiermacher in downplaying the view of religious belief as rooted in overwhelming awe and are more in tune with the contemporary notion of religion as an everyday affair. These approaches clearly provide a plethora of fascinating topics for analysis.
Confirmed speaker:
Professor Martin Stringer of the University of Birmingham