Category: Social Anthropology

Psychological and Functional Theories of Religion: Psychological Theories of Religion: Sigmund Freud in his book ‘Totem and Taboo’ accepted totemism as the earliest form of religion but deferred from Durkheim in explaining the theory of totemism. According to him, in prehistoric times people lived in hordes. Each horde contained men and women. The senior-most male monopolized …

Evolutionary Theories of Religion: Animism: The earliest anthropological theory about the evolution of religion is given by E. B. Tylor in his book “Primitive Culture”. He argued the speculation amongst early humans about the events associated with life, death, dreams, sleep led them to the notion that two entities inhabited the body, one active during the …

Types of Exchange: Most of what is produced by human labour are distributed by means of exchange. Exchange refers to the pattern of giving and receiving valuable objects and services. Human beings can not live without exchanging their labour or the products of their labour with one another. The pattern of exchange varies from one society …