History & Philosophy Books - Page 2

Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science

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Editorial Review:

Among the social sciences, anthropology relies most fundamentally on "fieldwork"--the long-term immersion in another way of life as the basis for knowledge. In an era when anthropologists are studying topics that resist geographical localization, this book initiates a long-overdue discussion of the political and epistemological implications of the disciplinary commitment to fieldwork.
These innovative, stimulating essays--carefully chosen to form a coherent whole--interrogate the notion of "the field," showing how the concept is historically constructed and exploring the consequences of its dominance. The essays discuss anthropological work done in places (in refugee camps, on television) or among populations (gays and lesbians, homeless people in the United States) that challenge the traditional boundaries of "the field." The contributors suggest alternative methodologies appropriate for contemporary problems and ultimately propose a reformation of the discipline of anthropology.

The Future of Man

Teilhard De Chardin

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Editorial Review:

The Future of Man is a magnificent introduction to the thoughts and writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the few figures in the history of the Catholic Church to achieve renown as both a scientist and a theologian. Trained as a paleontologist and ordained as a Jesuit priest, Teilhard de Chardin devoted himself to establishing the intimate, interdependent connection between science—particularly the theory of evolution—and the basic tenets of the Christian faith. At the center of his philosophy was the belief that the human species is evolving spiritually, progressing from a simple faith to higher and higher forms of consciousness, including a consciousness of God, and culminating in the ultimate understanding of humankind’s place and purpose in the universe. The Church, which would not condone his philosophical writings, refused to allow their publication during his lifetime. Written over a period of thirty years and presented here in chronological order, the essays cover the wide-ranging interests and inquiries that engaged Teilhard de Chardin throughout his life: intellectual and social evolution; the coming of ultra-humanity; the integral place of faith in God in the advancement of science; and the impact of scientific discoveries on traditional religious dogma. Less formal than The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu, Teilhard de Chardin’s most renowned works, The Future of Man offers a complete, fully accessible look at the genesis of ideas that continue to reverberate in both the scientific and the religious communities.

The Study of Human Nature: A Reader

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Editorial Review:

This unique 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 up to contemporary theories based on evolutionary science. An ideal companion to the editor's previous book, Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e (OUP 1998), this interdisciplinary reader can also be used independently.

The second edition of The Study of Human Nature offers substantial selections illustrating the perspectives discussed in Ten Theories of Human Nature, 3/e--the Bible, Hinduism, Confucianism, Plato, Kant, Marx, Freud, Sartre, B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, and Konrad Lorenz's ethnological diagnosis of human aggression. The Islamic tradition and 17th-18th century philosophers Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, and Rousseau are also represented. Selections from Rousseau, J.S. Mill, and Nancy Holmstrom raise feminist issues, and Henry Bracken's paper deals with racial issues. Examples from E.O. Wilson's sociobiology and his critics are also included, together with Chomsky and recent examples from evolutionary psychology.

Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses

Michael Taussig

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Editorial Review:

Mimesis: the idea of imitation. Alterity: the idea of difference, the opposition of Self and Other. For anthropologists, social scientists, artists, and everyone else caught up in the enigma of "modernity", the question "What is reality?" is crucial to knowing what it is we know and what we are. In this work, anthropologist Michael Taussig, known for his work on shamanism, undertakes a history of the mimetic faculty. "Mimesis and Alterity" moves from the 19-century invention of machines capable of mimetic acts, such as the camera, backwards to the fables of colonial "first contact" and the alleged mimetic prowess of "primitives". He then moves forward to contemporary time, when the idea of alterity is increasingly unstable. Utilizing anthropological theory, the ideas of Benjamin, Adorno, and Horckheimer, extensive research on the Cuna Indians, and work on colonialism and postcolonialism, Taussig analyzes mimesis across time and cultures. More than a faculty or one more sensory capability, mimesis - differently experienced in so-called primitive and modern societies - has a history, too.

Structural Anthropology, Volume 2

Claude Levi-Strauss

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Inspiring 4 out of 5 stars.
21 of 29 people found this review helpful.

Levi-Strauss ranks with Darwin for being hugely misunderstood. Like Darwin, what people say about Levi-Strauss is so often completely wrong that I strongly doubt he's ever really read.

Levi-Strauss believed that all cultures share the same basic characteristics. "Struturalism is the search for hidden harmonies," he said. One of my favorite quips from him is how interesting it is to see how the same personality type will be cast in different cultural roles--how the same basic humanity signifies radically different things to different cultures.

Levi-Strauss believed it is not important to try and figure out when a culture branched off from another, or what preceeded what: culture should be considered on its own terms. If a pot is interesting, it's interesting, no matter what its context.

The reason this physicist is curious about a dead anthropologist is that many of the misunderstandings of regular old evolution can be cleared up, as Saussure recommended, by considering both evolutionary history--how dinosaurs turned into birds--and evolutionary structure--why, at any given step in evolution, the dino-bird was best adapted to its enviornment. Gould has made a career out of clearing up this confusion; too bad our schools leave students in the dark.

And it's also interesting from the point of view of physics. Clouds, for instance, have a structure which is determined by wiggling water vapor. By looking at the shape of the clouds, we can determine just how the vapor is wiggling.

All cloud shapes can be predicted--not by solving deterministic physical laws (i.e. time evolution) but by making strucutral predictions based on guesses. It is a sort of physical law which corresponds to the structuralist view of evolution: at any given time, a cloud looks the way it does because it solves a kind of 'best fit' problem. It does *not* look that way because we can solve the time evolution; those equations are in principle unsolvable because the degrees of freedom is so high. The cause of cloud shape is not force or energy (which in physics are used to solve the time evolution of single or few bodies--vertical evolution), but information and order (which are used when the number of interacting elements is so high that only statistical arguments can be made--horizontal evolution).

A perfect example of structuralism was made by Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace. In it, he argued that the course of Russia's history was not written by Napoleon, and that following Napoleon's motivations (vertical evolution) gave one the illusion that he was in control of his own decisions. In fact, Russia's history was written by the sum total of its people, each influenced into their decisions by their immediate surroundings (horizontal evolution). History then emerges in the same manner as an ant society: one person puts down a pebble, only to have it picked up and put down again somewhere else, seemingly at random. Yet the colony has certain well-defined traits. In physics the colony would be said to be a self-organizing structure, what Stuart Kauffman calls 'order for free'. So too is human history, and attempting to ground it around Churchills and Napoleons is hen-picking.

Prigogine (a chemist) pointed Levi-Strauss out in his Nobel lecture. There's only a handful of people in the world who really understand why. I encourage you to find out!

PS: I remind the writer below of the Elements of Style rule: never enclose words in quotations, as though you were admitted to a secret world that knows better. Quotation marks are the authors' indication either that he knows the word he uses is poorly chosen, or that he doesn't actually know what it means.

Editorial Review:

The eighteen essays collected in this volume have been selected and ordered to give what Lévi-Strauss terms "a bird's-eye view of the problems of modern ethnology." As representative examples, these essays introduce readers to the methods of structural anthropology while affording a glimpse into the mind of one of the foremost anthropologists of our time.

"Structural Anthropology, Volume II is a diverse collection. [It is] a useful 'sampler' that gives a reader the full range of Lévi-Strauss's interests."—Daniel Bell, New York Times Book Review

History and Theory in Anthropology

Alan Barnard

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A good cultural anthropology primer 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 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.

A Theory of Race

Joshua Glasgow

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Editorial Review:

Social commentators have long asked whether racial categories should be conserved or eliminated from our practices, discourse, institutions, and perhaps even private thoughts. In "A Theory of Race", Joshua Glasgow argues that this set of choices unnecessarily presents us with too few options. Using both traditional philosophical tools and recent psychological research to investigate folk understandings of race, Glasgow argues that, as ordinarily conceived, race is an illusion. However, our pressing need to speak to and make sense of social life requires that we employ something like racial discourse. These competing pressures, Glasgow maintains, ultimately require us to stop conceptualizing race as something biological, and instead understand it as an entirely social phenomenon.

Visions of Human Nature: An Introduction

Donald Palmer

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Nice Adult Beginners Book 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

If one is expecting a technically precise book which meets the needs of professionals or even undergraduates having to write that last minute term paper, then disappointment is at hand. If, however, you want a comfortable introduction to historically changing views of human nature as presented by Plato, Aristotle, The Buddha, Augustine, Descartes, Freud, and Sartre, this is a very worthwhile text.
Palmer does a nice job of presenting standard arguments for each of the thinkers discussed, frequently highlighting differences and always providing something of a cultural context.
This is a good book for someone who knows only a little about the subject or who knows perhaps a bit more than just a little but wants a quick enjoyable read as a review.

If you already know the 4 noble truths of the Buddha, the difference between Anselm and Descartes' versions of the Ontological Argument, Hume's attack on the foundations of knowledge, Kant's use of the apriori, and the implications of Sartre's Radical Freedom, then don't buy this book sight unseen.

For anyone else with a passing interest in philosophy, it's worth the money.

Editorial Review:

This is a somewhat unconventional introduction to philosophy, with over 400 cartoons by the author designed to make teaching and learning more fun. Organized by individual theory, this lighthearted book can be used as a core text, or might supplement separate paperbacks or an anthology.

Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime (Inner Traditions)

Robert Lawlor

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Editorial Review:

Australian aboriginal people have lived in harmony with the earth for perhaps as long as 100,000 years, in their words, since the First Day. In this absorbing work, Lawlor explores the essence of their culture as a source of and guide to transforming our own world view. While not romanticizing the past or suggesting a return to the life of the hunter/gatherer, Voices of the First Day enables us to enter into the mentality of the oldest continuous culture on earth and gain insight into our own relationship with the earth and to each other.

This book offers an opportunity to suspend our values, prejudices, and Eurocentrism and step into the Dreaming, to discover: a culture whose antiquity predates even the controversial civilizations of Atlantis and Mu, initiatic and ritual practices that reveal the origins of esoteric, yogic, magical, and shamanic traditions of ancient and modern times, a culture that rejected agriculture, architecture, the subjugation of animals, writing, and clothing, a people that valued kin, community, and the law of the Dreamtime as their greatest "possessions," a people that did not see themselves as "greater" or "lesser" than the earth or its plants and animals, languages whose richness of structure and vocabulary open new worlds of perception and comprehension.

Illustrated with more than 100 extraordinary photographs, bark paintings, line drawings and engravings from the early 20th century, never before published.

Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon

Patrick Tierney

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Editorial Review:

A finalist for the 2000 National Book Award in non-fiction.

What Guns, Germs, and Steel did for colonial history, this book will do for present-day anthropology. Darkness in El Dorado is an explosive account of how ruthless journalists, self-serving anthropologists, and obsessed scientists placed one of the Amazon basin's oldest tribes on the cusp of extinction. First coming to prominence in the 1960s, the "savage" Yanomami Indians were the subject of anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon's multi-million-copy bestseller Yanomamo: The Fierce People and many award-winning films. These exemplars of human ferocity, however, did not arrive at such dispositions naturally. Patrick Tierney describes how the Yanomami's internecine warfare was triggered by repeated visits of leading anthropologists from around the world as well as by the Atomic Energy Commission, which wished to use Yanomami blood in radiation studies in the mid-1960s. This is an epic, compelling work, sure to shake the very foundations of American anthropology.