The first explicit elaboration of the concept occurred in RedfleldвЂ™s article вЂњThe Primitive World ViewвЂќ (1952). Tax observed that Guatemalan Indians, who do not acculturate to Ladinos or to each other, continue to have a primitive world view, although they appear to have had a вЂњcivilizedвЂќ type of impersonal, market-oriented system of socioeconomic relations since pre-Columbian times. In a seminal paper, вЂњWorld View and Social Relations in Guatemala,вЂќ Sol Tax (1941) distinguished world view from social relations, although he suggested that perception of the latter enters into the вЂњmental apprehension of realityвЂќ that is world view. RedfieldвЂ™s original concern with levels of understanding among individuals who hold diverse world views developed into the study of interactions between high and low, intellectual and lay, urban and village cultures within a great civilization.

In its final metamorphosis, influenced by the theories of orientalists, the concept of world view merged with the concept of вЂњGreatвЂќ and вЂњLittleвЂќ traditions, which contains a more balanced evolutionary view of the loss of purity. In approaching modern urban culture via the peasant culture which is its rural counterpart, Redfield sought to rediscover the purity of folk culture and, indeed, to reimpose it by a concern with the good life and by an interest in the cause of peace and understanding among nations. This view caused Redfield to stress the positive aspects of the primitive condition and to see any evolution therefrom -in spite of reconstructive attempts-as essentially disruptive and negative.

He was impressed by the incurable wound inflicted on the Indian past and, throughout his career, thought of primitive culture as a broken thing, persisting here and there and striving to defend itself. RedfieldвЂ™s encounter with an Indian culture which was at grips successively with Spanish and modern urban cultures aroused his interest in the evolutionary process and in sociocultural change. In RedfieldвЂ™s book The Folk Culture of Yucatan (1941), he expressed an embryonic concern with the concept of world view. The concept of world view is closely tied to an ambitious effort made in the early 1950s by a group of scholars at the University of Chicago, guided by Robert Redfield. Thus, it tends to be confused with such concepts as ethos (relating to values), modes of thought, national character, and even culture itself. While emphasizing the cognitive aspect of ideas, beliefs, and attitudes, a world view cannot be clearly separated from its normative and affective aspects. It stresses the self in confrontation with the universe, although it has so far leaned very little on the personality theories of cultural anthropologists. It attempts to define those ideas from the point of view of the individuals holding them, from inside the culture rather than outside. It deals with the sum of ideas which an individual within a group and/or that group have of the universe in and around them.

It is doubtful, however, that these are entirely successful.World view is one of a number of concepts in cultural anthropology used in the holistic characterization and comparison of cultures. Some responses to this problem are available.

Hence, for any one individual it is the case that her relative standing is beyond her control. But no individual controls the choices of all others. Her relative standing, something with which egalitarians ought to be concerned, is determined by her choices in conjunction with the choices of all others. The reason is that while she has in one sense chosen her (new) welfare level, she has not chosen to be worse off than others. However, even if we can say that the person's new welfare level is justified in absolute terms, it is less clear that her now being worse off than others, is justified (a similar idea is explored by Susan Hurley). If a person responsibly acts in a way that brings her welfare level below that of others, this is justified according to the theory. This article argues that there is a tension in standard luck egalitarian theory between justifying absolute and comparative welfare levels. According to luck egalitarianism it is bad or unjust if someone is worse off than another through no fault or choice of her own.

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