Why study 'Primitive Societies' ?

From: 'Social Anthropology' by E.E. Evans Pritchard

What are 'Primitive Societies' ?

We are sometimes criticized for giving so much of our time to the study of these primitive societies. It is suggested that inquiry into problems of our own society might be more useful. This may be so, but for various reasons, primitive societies have long held the attention of those interested in the study of social institutions. They attracted the notice of philosophers in the eighteenth century chiefly because they furnished examples of what was supposed to be a man living in a state of nature before the institution of civil government. They engaged the attention of anthropologists in the nineteenth century because it was believed that they provided important clues in the search for the origins of institutions. Later anthropologists were interested in them because it was held that they displayed institutions in their simplest forms and that it is a sound method to proceed from the examination of the more simple to the examination of the more complex, in which what has been learnt from the study of the more simple would be an aid. This last reason for interest in primitive societies gained in weight as the so-called functional anthropology today developed, for the more it is regarded as the task of social anthropology to study social institutions as interdependent parts of social systems, the more it is seen to be an advantage to be able to study those societies which are structurally so simple, and culturally so homogeneous, that they can be directly observed as wholes, before attempting to study complex civilized societies where this is not possible. Moreover, it is a matter of experience that it is easier to make observations among people with cultures unlike our own, the otherness in their way of life at once engaging attention and that it is more likely that interpretations will be objective. Another, and very cogent, reason for studying primitive societies at the present time is that they are rapidly being transformed and must be studied soon or never. These vanishing social systems are unique structural variations, a study of which aids us very considerably in understanding the nature of human society because in a comparative study of institutions, the number of societies studied is less significant than their range of variation. Quite apart from that consideration, the study of primitive societies has intrinsic value. They are interesting in themselves in that they provide descriptions of the way of life, the values, and the beliefs of people living without what we have come to regard as the minimum requirements of comfort and civilization.

We, therefore, feel it an obligation to make a systematic study of as many of these primitive societies as we can while there is still an opportunity to do so. There are a vast number of primitive societies and very few indeed have yet been studied intensively by anthropologists, for such studies take a long time and anthropologists are a very small body.

But though we give chief attention to primitive societies I must make it clear that we do not restrict our attention to them.