Overview
It is an old racist adage that Africans have just come down from the trees. So why are young Europeans and Americans climbing back up them? Primitivism has always had a place in flaming the West's conception of Africa, whether in the form of the Noble Savage' or crazed cults such as the Mau Mau. If not everyone is quite ready to live in a tree house, the primitivism viewpoint has still made major inroads into modern society.NGO volunteers are central to the way the world relates to Africa these days. Why are these educated and motivated young people from the West predisposed to defining Africans ethnically? Privileging the Primitive argues that the popularity of modern primitivism in the West is highly relevant to the current recasting of African ethnicity.
Some scholars argue that ethnicity is a relapse into primordialism, while others hold it be a more modern, fluid entity. The notion that ethnicity can be a moral code is growing. Historians argue over whether ethnicity is purely a product of African culture, a political category invented by colonial administrators, or a hybrid that mixes the two. Aidan Campbell locates ethnicity's derivation in our changing perceptions of Western society and, in particular, in the rehabilitation of the West's jaded political institutions.