Knowra Edward Burnett Tylor Edward Burnett Tylor Edward Burnett Tylor was an English anthropologist whose theory of cultural evolution and influential definition of culture helped establish anthropology as an academic discipline.
Culture : Culture is the learned knowledge, practices, beliefs, and forms of expression shared by a social group. Tylor’s 1871 definition helped make culture a central subject of anthropology.
Victorian anthropology : Victorian anthropology was the nineteenth-century study of human societies, cultures, and origins in Britain. Tylor’s theories took shape within this era’s effort to build a comparative science of humanity.
Lewis Henry Morgan : Lewis Henry Morgan was an American anthropologist who studied kinship and proposed stages of social evolution. Morgan developed a parallel evolutionary scheme and influenced the same comparative debates.
Primitive Culture : Primitive Culture is Tylor’s 1871 book defining culture and examining religion, myth, and custom comparatively. It contains his best-known definition of culture and his account of animism.
Cultural relativism : Cultural relativism is the principle that beliefs and practices should be understood in their cultural contexts. It counters the ranking of societies that shaped Tylor’s evolutionary framework.
Cultural evolution : Cultural evolution is the process by which cultural practices and institutions change over time. Tylor arranged societies along a proposed sequence from simpler to more complex forms.
Quakerism : Quakerism is a Christian movement emphasizing direct religious experience, simplicity, and peace. Tylor was raised in a Quaker family before pursuing scholarship outside its religious life.
James George Frazer : James George Frazer was a Scottish anthropologist and classicist known for The Golden Bough. Frazer extended comparative theories of religion that Tylor had helped establish.
Researches into the Early History of Mankind : Researches into the Early History of Mankind is Tylor’s 1865 book on language, custom, and cultural development. This earlier work displays the comparative method that he developed in Primitive Culture.
Historical particularism : Historical particularism explains cultures through their distinct histories rather than a universal sequence of stages. Boas and his students advanced this approach against evolutionary generalizations.
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