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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8335448" data-attributes="member: 42582">On "primitive" and similar notions (eg "crude" used of material artefacts):There is a long tradition of talking about material cultures in the social sciences. This tradition is hardly un-vexed! But at its best it manifests historical awareness.Marshall Hodgson was a historian at U Chicago. His method of doing world history is broadly similar to Weber. In one of his essays (The Great Western Transmutation) he discusses (among other things) the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He compares the material technology of Spain, Turkey and China to the material culture of the Aztecs. The former three are broadly comparable; the latter he suggests is comparable to classical Sumer. This (in his view) is part of the explanation of how conquest was possible.I'm a big fan of Hodgson and Weber, and use them in teaching. I think the technicalisation/rationalisation analysis of modernity is explanatorily powerful. Of course there are critics, some of whom I also use in teaching (eg Hobson's The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation). I get frustrated that (per Hobson) movable metal type was first invented in Korea and yet in schools it continues to be taught as a German invention.Anyway, I think there is a big difference between nuanced analysis that tries to incorporate technological aspects of complex causal processes; and the use of "primitive" as a label in a game system, particularly if - in the posited world of the game - there is no explanation beyond an authorial fiat of "backwardsness" to explain why there are differences in technology.I think that last point is important though typically ignored. The main theme of Hodgson's essay that I mentioned above is that processes of gradual social diffusion maintained technological parity throughout the Eurasian and North African area for several thousand years; and that imperialism/colonialism in its modern form is one result of a social process that could in principle have taken place anywhere in that area (and almost commenced in 11th/12th century China), that happened to take place in western Europe, and that produces technological innovations at such a rate that (i) gradual processes of diffusion are no longer possible, while (ii) dramatic imbalances of power arise which lead to the actual processes of conquest and resulting diffusion that we have all experienced over the past several centuries.A typical D&D world has (i) milennia of history, and (ii) no social process comparable to the emergence of modernity in Europe and its spread to the rest of the world, and yet (iii) ostensible technological contrasts between neighbouring peoples like (say) the Kingdom of Keoland in the World of Greyhawk (high mediaeval material culture) and the Lizardfolk of the Hool Marshes. Its a reversal of JRRT's Shire: Tolkien uses authorial fiat to give us a completely inexplicable combination of pre-modern social norms and trappings with industrial level material production; these D&D worlds use authorial fiat to give us completely inexplicable examples of "backwardsness" not because of a geographically-caused inability to participate in processes of diffusion of technological innovation, but because the author has decided that Lizardfolk (or Orcs, or Golbins, or . . .) are incapable of "development".That's one basis of my dislike of the use of the notion of "primitive" peoples in FRPGing.</blockquote>

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