History & Philosophy Books

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

Gregory Bateson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.

"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books

"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was the author of Naven and Mind and Nature.

A Short History of Progress

Ronald Wright

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Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Each time history repeats itself, the cost goes up. The twentieth century—a time of unprecedented progress—has produced a tremendous strain on the very elements that comprise life itself: This raises the key question of the twenty-first century: How much longer can this go on? With wit and erudition, Ronald Wright lays out a-convincing case that history has always provided an answer, whether we care to notice or not. From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity's development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we've unleashed but have yet to control. It is Wright's contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age. Wright illustrates how various cultures throughout history have literally manufactured their own end by producing an overabundance of innovation and stripping bare the very elements that allowed them to initially advance. Wright's book is brilliant; a fascinating rumination on the hubris at the heart of human development and the pitfalls we still may have time to avoid.

Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History

R. Jon McGee, Richard W. Warms

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Decent beginning, but still flawed. 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I used this text for an anthropological theories course in undergraduate work. It's a pretty decent collection of work from major figures in anthropology.

Spencer, Tylor, and Morgan, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Boas, etc, etc. There is also a lot of work done to try and tie a common thread through as much material as possible. Contextualization of how a theory came to be, and what it might imply are pretty well done. Chances are, you're buying this book for a class, rather than pleasure, and though this can be kind of dry, it's fairly well done. Some selections are puzzling in terms of what they illustrate for that author, but by and large it shouldn't kill you to read this book.

There are footnotes, too. These seem like a blessing to begin with, especially if you don't have much of a foothold in the material, there is a lot that you are caught up on quickly, and it can be very helpful. On the flipside, the editors can be very heavy-handed in guiding the reading, and can be sometimes inane in their commentary. This is the major failing of the book, it's more to read, and the later in the book you get, the less useful it is.

Editorial Review:

A comprehensive and accessible survey of the history of theory in anthropology, this anthology of classic and contemporary readings contains in-depth commentary in introductions and notes to help guide students through excerpts of seminal anthropological works. The commentary provides the background information needed to understand each article, its central concepts, and its relationship to the social and historical context in which it was written.

Becoming Human

Jean Vanier

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Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

creating a common good 5 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

Jean Vanier is my favorite philosopher and spiritual thinker, and although he's a Christian, his teachings have tremendous appeal to people of all religious or non-religious perspectives. What a wonderful, wonderful human being. God bless him! Growing up, I used to eagerly watch Jean Vanier's TV program where he talks about the importance of love and relationship with others, what he calls communion and forming community. And in his sermons he always emphasizes how relationship with a person you care about is more important than material gain. He talks about how materialism satisfies the senses but it leaves an aching emptiness of the soul, which can only be filled by a spiritual relationship with God and an emotional relationship with other people, all based on love. What I love about Vanier's teachings is how he challenges us to open ourselves up to outsiders, especially to those that society sees as weak, different, or inferior, and that by opening up our hearts to them, we can help heal our own inner brokenness as well as theirs. Our world values strength and achievement, but by embracing weakness, we reach a higher inner level of personal compassion and understanding. It's all about learning to accept a person just as he is, rather than shutting oneself off from him simply because he isn't what you expect. It's about unconditional friendship through love, and love through friendship. The people in this world who understand this message and the few who actually live it are truly the blessed of God.

David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"

Editorial Review:

In this provocative work, Jean Vanier shares his profoundly human vision for creating a common good that radically changes our communities, our relationships, and ourselves. He proposes that by opening ourselves to outsiders, those that we perceive as weak, different, or inferior, we can achieve pure personal and societal freedom.

Our society shuns weakness and glorifies strength. By embracing weakness, however, we learn new ways of living and discover greater compassion, trust and understanding. This spirit of inclusion has extraordinary implications for the we live our lives and build our communities.

The Logic of Practice

Pierre Bourdieu

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Our usual representations of the opposition between the “civilized” and the “primitive” derive from willfully ignoring the relationship of distance our social science sets up between the observer and the observed. In fact, the author argues, the relationship between the anthropologist and his object of study is a particular instance of the relationship between knowing and doing, interpreting and using, symbolic mastery and practical mastery—or between logical logic, armed with all the accumulated instruments of objectification, and the universally pre-logical logic of practice.

In this, his fullest statement of a theory of practice, Bourdieu both sets out what might be involved in incorporating one’s own standpoint into an investigation and develops his understanding of the powers inherent in the second member of many oppositional pairs—that is, he explicates how the practical concerns of daily life condition the transmission and functioning of social or cultural forms.

The first part of the book, “Critique of Theoretical Reason,” covers more general questions, such as the objectivization of the generic relationship between social scientific observers and their objects of study, the need to overcome the gulf between subjectivism and objectivism, the interplay between structure and practice (a phenomenon Bourdieu describes via his concept of the habitus

), the place of the body, the manipulation of time, varieties of symbolic capital, and modes of domination.

The second part of the book, “Practical Logics,” develops detailed case studies based on Bourdieu’s ethnographic fieldwork in Algeria. These examples touch on kinship patterns, the social construction of domestic space, social categories of perception and classification, and ritualized actions and exchanges.

This book develops in full detail the theoretical positions sketched in Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice

. It will be especially useful to readers seeking to grasp the subtle concepts central to Bourdieu’s theory, to theorists interested in his points of departure from structuralism (especially fom Lévi-Strauss), and to critics eager to understand what role his theory gives to human agency. It also reveals Bourdieu to be an anthropological theorist of considerable originality and power.

Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture

Claude Levi-Strauss

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Good Introduction to Levi-Strauss but falters at the end 4 out of 5 stars.
15 of 17 people found this review helpful.

This book, based on interviews Levi-Strauss conducted with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the late '70s, is extremely clear and easy to understand for non-anthropologists like myself. He explains his views about how rational science and mythology branched off from each other in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, leading us to a situation where today we experience life differently that do 'primitive' tribes who use myths to explain the world around them. Levi-Strauss notes, however, that, while these peoples may not be as accurate in describing the world as we are with our modern science, they do possess a great deal of knowledge which we have lost on an individual level, i.e., knowledge about plants and stars. Mythology, he claims, functions like history and science for these people; for an example Levi-Strauss focuses his attention on the meaning of American myths about twins, hare(lips) and babies born feet first.

All this is quite well laid out and easy to read. However, the last chapter deals with music and mythology, and here Levi-Strauss badly missteps. He postulates that the decline in mythology that accompanied the rise of modern science coincided with the creation of great music by the likes of Bach, Haydn and Mozart that drew upon the same sources of inspiration as mythology. He spends several pages in a structural critique of Wagner's Ring which, albeit fascinating, is highly questionable. Furthermore, at the end of the book he suggests, quite wildly, that serial music is now poised to overtake the modern novel, which arose at the same time as modern science, in importance.

This weak section at the end notwithstanding, however, this is a good book for anyone interested in Levi-Strauss's groundbreaking work.

History and Theory in Anthropology

Alan Barnard

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A good cultural anthropology primer 4 out of 5 stars.
11 of 11 people found this review helpful.

This bood represents a clear and concise treatment of anthropological theory. Alan Barnard traces its history from inception to postmordernism. The different schools of thought are linked to the corresponding figures set against a particular socio-political space and time. The dinamic evolution of the discipline is well represented for it provides an interconnected mesh of causality. Throughout the book flow charts and schematic representations proved to be very helpful. Although primary sources can not be dealt adequately through interpretative works, Barnard's book is a good reference to have at hand.

Editorial Review:

Anthropology is a discipline very conscious of its history. Alan Barnard has written a clear, detailed overview of anthropological theory that brings out the historical contexts of the great debates, tracing the genealogies of theories and schools of thought. His book covers the precursors of anthropology; evolutionism in all its guises; diffusionism and culture area theories, functionalism and structural-functionalism; action-centered theories; processual and Marxist perspectives; the many faces of relativism, structuralism and poststructuralism; and recent interpretive and postmodernist viewpoints. This is a balanced and judicious survey, which also considers the problems involved in assessing anthropological theories.

Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis

Renato Rosaldo

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Thought provoking. Could be a bit more concise. 4 out of 5 stars.
21 of 27 people found this review helpful.

I read this book as part of a cultural anthropology correspondence course through the University of California, Berkeley in 1997-98.

The book contains many important ideas. For example, chapter three on imperialist nostalgia is a must-read for anybody who wants to understand the underpinnings of Western attitudes toward other cultures. Very eye-opening.

There are other important ideas throughout the book. The tone of the book is scholarly and a bit labored. It took me more than a little discipline to finish the book. I don't fault Rosaldo for this; the blame goes to the editor. This book is important and needs a light to moderate developmental edit to make it accessible to its audience.

Rosaldo has made a very important contribution to cross-cultural understanding.

A Great Example of Postmodernism 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I had to read this book for an anthropological theories course but it's the kind of book I can always come back to when I think anthropology is getting too full of itself. This book is very easy to read. Rosaldo uses a semi-conversational tone that makes the reader an accomplice of his studies. In true postmodernist form, his study of the head hunting ritual of the Philippino Ilongots takes on personal interpretations that are shaped by the loss of his wife.

Trying to reconcile his personal loss with the controversial study of a murder ritual make for an important ethnographic approach that should be an essential read for anyone who observes cultures and tries to understand them within their personal terms.

Editorial Review:

Exposing the inadequacies of old conceptions of static cultures and detached observers, the book argues instead for social science to acknowledge and celebrate diversity, narrative, emotion, and subjectivity.

The Study of Human Nature: A Reader

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Now in a new edition, this exceptional anthology provides an introduction to a wide variety of views on human nature. Drawing from diverse cultures over three millennia, Leslie Stevenson has chosen selections ranging from ancient religious texts to contemporary theories based on evolutionary science. An ideal companion to the editor's recent book, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e (OUP, 1998), this interdisciplinary reader can also be used independently.
The Study of Human Nature, 2/e offers substantial selections illustrating the ten perspectives discussed in Ten Theories of Human Nature, 4/e--The Bible, Hinduism, Confucianism, Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Sartre, B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, and Konrad Lorenz's ethological diagnosis of human aggression. The Islamic tradition is represented by a selection from the 20th-century Iranian philosopher Ayatullah Murtaza Mutahhari. The 17th- and 18th-century philosophers Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant are also represented. Selections from Rousseau, J.S. Mill, and Nancy Holmstrom discuss alleged differences between women and men, and a paper by Henry Bracken deals with racial issues. Examples from E.O. Wilson's sociobiology and his critics are also included, together with material from Chomsky and from recent evolutionary psychology.
This new edition includes more substantial selections from the Hindu, Confucian, and Christian traditions and provides more accessible extracts from Marx, Sartre, and Lorenz. An excellent reader for introductory courses in philosophy, religious studies, human nature, and intellectual history, The Study of Human Nature, 2/e, is also an essential resource for anyone interested in ancient, modern, and contemporary perspectives on human nature.

The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays

Isaiah Berlin, Roger Hausheer

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The best of the best 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

In this volume Henry Hardy Isaiah Berlin's faithful pupil and editor brings together some of the best essays from the previous volumes of Berlin essays he supervised the publication of. There are essays on 'The Pursuit of the Ideal ' on ' Philosophical Foundations' on 'Freedom and Determinism' on 'Political Liberty and Pluralism' on 'The History of Ideas ' on 'Russian Writers '
on' Romanticism and Rationalism' and on ' Twentieth Century Figures'
The volume contains Berlin's most well- known essays including the essay on 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' the one on ' Machiavelli' and the one ' On Historical Determinism'.
This is a selection of the best writing of a person who is without question one a most significant modern political thinker and historian of ideas.
Berlin's love of ideas, his vast knowledge, his tremendous verbal energy and skill, his humane understanding of character, his original consideration of fundamental historical periods and processes are all at work here.
This is a volume which should be in the library of every person who wishes to think about history and politics seriously.

Editorial Review:

Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading thinkers of our time and one of its finest writers. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing: here the reader will find Berlin's famous essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox"; his penetrating portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and Akhmatova to Churchill and Roosevelt; his essays on liberty and his exposition of pluralism; his defense of philosophy and history against assimilation to scientific method; and his brilliant studies of such intellectual originals as Machiavelli, Vico, and Herder.