ABSTRACT
The title of this volume highlights the problem of trying to move beyond a paradigm in religious studies (and in other disciplines) that requires the concept of the primitive. Charles Long has suggested that such a move would be profoundly disorienting because any attempt to transcend primitivism threatens to throw the meaning of modernity itself into disarray. According to Long, the idea of the primitive is inextricably enmeshed within the concept “civilization” (Long 1986: 79-96). “The problematical character of Western modernity created the language of the primitives and primitivism through their own explorations, exploitations, and disciplinary orientations” (ibid.: 93). Thus, the Western concept of the “primitive” has signified the inferior Other, the marker of alterity, against which “civilization” defines itself, its activities, and its knowledge.2
