ABSTRACT

This chapter will explore the strange discrepancy between the indisputably central and inclusive role played by indigenous cultures in the development of theory in the social and cultural sciences on the one hand, and, on the other, the systematic exclusion, marginalization, and invisibility of living indigenous peoples in those same sciences. I suggest that a possible route to explaining this discrepancy is through the history of primitivism and evolutionism in European and American thought. It is important at the outset to emphasize that “primitivism” is a concept that has both positive (that is to say, romantic) as well as negative connotations. Even though the notion has often been used in a positive sense, it still draws on illusory ideas about indigenous peoples, and therefore I strongly advocate its demise. The problem, however, is that the phenomenon of primitivism is so firmly rooted in human culture (not just, by the way, in European and American cultures) that I fear any attempt to eradicate it would simply be quixotic. But I think it is our job as scholars to point out the inconsistencies and irrationalities of our cultures, indigenous as well as Western.