Frazer, Sir James

Frazer, Sir James (1854–1941). Anthropologist. Frazer was born in Glasgow, where he took his first degree, and was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1879, which he held for the rest of his life. In 1888 he contributed articles on taboo and totemism to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which laid the foundation for his work on primitive religion. He followed them with The Golden Bough (1890), a pioneer work of comparative anthropology, which occupied him until the 1930s. The evolution of society was, Frazer suggested, from magic to religion and then to science. This led him to examine the role of god-kings, scapegoats and sacrifices, and fire festivals. Prodigiously dedicated and hard-working, he amassed a vast pile of evidence, much of it printed in Anthologia anthropologica (1938, 1939). He had no field experience and showed little interest in comment and criticisms of his work. His early presbyterian family religion gave way to a vague ‘trembling hope’ in some ‘world of light eternal’. Frazer was knighted in 1914 and given the OM in 1925.

J. A. Cannon