Civilisation approach — Redfield, Marriott, Lewis, Opler

Civilisation approach

Robert Redfield — folk–urban continuum

Redfield’s folk–urban continuum gave civilisation anthropology a simple map from little communities to cities.

• Redfield contrasted folk society (small, isolated, homogeneous, sacred, traditional) with urban society (large, heterogeneous, secular, specialised).
• Change along the continuum: orthogenetic change grows from within the Great Tradition; heterogenetic change comes from external urban/colonial contact.
• Criticism: over-idealises ‘folk’ harmony; underplays conflict, class and colonial power; Indian villages were rarely fully isolated.

Great and Little Traditions

• Great Tradition: literate, reflective, textual culture of specialists (priests, philosophers) centred in cities and temples.
• Little Tradition: local, largely oral, village cults, myths and practices of peasants.
• They interact continuously; civilisation is the long dialogue between the two, not a one-way dump from texts to villages.
• Criticism: binary can blur intermediate specialists; ‘Great’ risks being equated only with Sanskritic Hinduism.

Marriott — universalization and parochialization

• McKim Marriott (student of Redfield) modelled two-way traffic between Little and Great Traditions.
• Universalization: local (Little) elements rise into wider/Great forms (a local goddess or festival gains regional Sanskritic framing).
• Parochialization: Great elements sink into local practice (a pan-Indian deity acquires village-specific myths, names, taboos).
• Useful exam pair with Sanskritisation: Marriott emphasises two-way cultural flow, not only upward imitation.

Oscar Lewis and Morris Opler

• Oscar Lewis: culture of poverty thesis—poverty can generate self-reinforcing values and practices across generations; heavily criticised for blaming victims and underplaying structure.
• Lewis’s Rampur work also stressed rural cosmopolitanism and factional politics rather than a sealed folk isolate.
• Morris Opler: ‘unity and extension’—Indian village life extends through kinship, caste, market and pilgrimage ties beyond the settlement’s boundary.
• Together they push teaching away from treating the village as a closed, static whole.