The Primitive World View

In the early 1950s, Redfield undertook to formalize and institutionalize the conception and execution of world view studies. His first step in this endeavor consisted of the publication of his article “The Primitive World View” in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association. In this article, he delineated the aims and intentions of world view studies. Here he did not discuss methods of study. Rather, he focused on defining what he meant by world view studies and argued for the value such studies held for cross-cultural comparison. He took pains to distinguish world view studies from other related comparative analyses, such as studies of values, ethos, and national character. Whereas all these analyses portrayed a culture as an outsider looked in upon it, world view studies portrayed how the world or universe appeared to those within the culture looking outward. Redfield expressed great faith that a limited number of universal elements could be found to allow orderly comparative analyses not only among cultures but also civilizations. This article expressed the core of his philosophical conception for such studies and served as an influential launching point for the work of many anthropologists in the 1950s who were to undertake world view studies of specific cultures. He expanded upon this article, moreover, in his 1953 book The Primitive World and Its Transformations.