SOC250Y1 Chapter 3: study guide chapter 3
Document Summary
Redfield calls the big tradition the official beliefs as defined by elites. The small tradition the more popular version of religion to which everyday people adhere. Many ninteenth and early twentieth century scholars attempted to make sense of the broad range of religious behaviour observed around the world during the colonial period. using the metaphor of physical evolution. Sir james frazer- argues that religion grew out of magic practices, an argument now widely discredited for its ethnocentric implications about a model of progressive development leading from primitive to more advanced . Frazers theory was similar to earlier contentions by. Auguste comte that humans have progressed from a theological to a metaphysical, and finally to a scientific stage, in which arbitrary superstition gives way to rational scientific knowledge. (theological- Marx and engels- linked their theory of religious evolution to dialectical materialism. Because religious evolution is an epiphenomenon of economic processes, they said, as the modes of production changed so did religion. www. notesolution. com.
