Frazer's Golden Bough - why no love?

[DickP]

Why do I never hear this book mentioned with anything other than contempt? It's always some vague indictment of the book as a whole due to the author's perceived Western biases. Frazer admittedly makes a lot of conjectures about the social origins and purposes of primitive behaviors, but he never strikes me as pedantic or condescending.

Do any of you have the multi-volume set? Is it worth tracking down?

What were Frazer's source materials, do we know? My copy has no citations whatsoever.

Finally, is the hostility to this book due primarily to perceived factual errors, or solely the conclusions Sir Frazer draws from them?

Many thanks!

[Maserschmidt]

Good questions. I have a compendium edition that's fascinating reading, sort of an early version of Joseph Campbell. I've seen the unbundled version for sale in various venues, but the size is pretty intimidating, right?

I wasn't actually aware there was criticism....

[Jaledin]

? It's a standard reference. You might as well say, why no love for Cox's book on which MALLARME's "something something ancient gods" was based (some erudite I am -- it's been a long day and I'm not at my private library).

It's a new day...a new dawn. All these moons are yours, except Io. Or something.

Short answer, nobody cares -- and although J Frazier was important to a number of millenarian authors, nobody cares unless they're studying that. Ex, viz., I can't even remember the Eng-lang book which formed much of the basis of MALLARME (again -- I cap because I don't do char map) and his whole theory of the tragedy of the seasons, etc.

[ftg]

What I have seen tends to focus on his one-size-fits-all metamyth viewpoint. (Pre Joseph Campbell.) He kept trying to group unrelated myths together. Apparently there's a "right" way and a "wrong" way and some people consider his methods wrong.

I say cut him some slack. He was ahead of his time and should be respected for that.

[Dr. Drake]

Aspect of the the Golden Bough are still highly regarded (Frazer's bit on sympathetic magic is often quoted), but most of the theory it contains is basically really, really antiquated. While the examples make for fascinating reading, they are all either secondary or tertiary and often filtered through Frazer's lens, so it's not a good source for ethnography. It's basically considered a really important but dated bit of Victorian scholarship.

I still use passages from it in my anthropology and folklore classes, but it's either to teach the theory of magic or the history of the discipline, never as a model of social science research or interpretation.

[CalMeacham]

It's also a good reference for source material. I can often find things in Frazer that aren't easily available elsewhere.

I think an awful lot of his stuff is defensible -- he points out plenty of parallels between myths in different parts of the world, and connects points with logic that's not outdated. Saying only that his stuff on Sympathetic Magic still applies is not giving him sfficient credit.


I've read the entire one-volume edition. Many libraries have the mult-volume edition (the Boston Public Library has at least two, and there are copies in the libraries at Harvard, MIT, and I would suspect Tufts, and probably others.

[Colibri]

This is probably better suited to Cafe Society than GQ.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Dr. Drake]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Saying only that his stuff on Sympathetic Magic still applies is not giving him sfficient credit.

I did not say that. I said his writing on sympathetic magic is still often quoted, and that the theoretical apparatus in the work as a whole is antiquated. Both of those statements are objectively true.

His logic is fine, but some of the premises underlying it are deeply problematic. For example, believes that magic gives way to religion, which will eventually give way to science, and that every culture is moving along this same path. This requires several assumptions about the nature of religion and the nature of folk belief that aren't warranted. For one, magical belief systems and religous systems can and do co-exist.

[CalMeacham]

I did not say that. I said his writing on sympathetic magic is still often quoted, and that the theoretical apparatus in the work as a whole is antiquated. Both of those statements are objectively true.

You DID say it, and you just stated it again. I was saying that more than that is true. You didn't deny it, but my point that there's more of value than that is also true.


I didn't say that that's ALL you implied, but the point still needed to be made.

[Dr. Drake]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

You DID say it, and you just stated it again. I was saying that more than that is true. You didn't deny it, but my point that there's more of value than that is also true.


I didn't say that that's ALL you implied, but the point still needed to be made.

Okay, fair enough. I would say that he is also valued for many of the insights he had into specific cross-cultural phenomena, including a lot of observations about ritual behaviour. He also gets credit for simply producing the book: taking the time and trouble to organize all of that data counts for a lot, and as you said it's still a good starting-place for a lot of subjects relating to myth, ritual, and folk belief.