Customer Reviews

High Points In Anthropology

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I wish I could get contracted to slap together a 'greatest hits' of anthropological selections, supply some commentary more appropriate to World Book Encyclodpedia than a college text, and then charge $80 for it. Sign me up! The selections in this book cover most of the seminal thinkers in early anthropology, although as it progresses through time the criteria seems to grow more vague and seemingly random. There are no women covered in this massive tome other than Ruth Benedict and her dubious contribution of 'personality studies'; there is no mention even of Margaret Mead, let alone people like Mary Douglas. Some editorial choices seem to reflect the biases of the editors more than the canon of anthropology. For example, there is somewhere around 100 pages of text from Levi-Strauss, and a mere 10 or so from Clifford Geertz (the first essay in his Interpretation of Cultures). There are other glaring omissions based on strange logic (e.g. the choice to include a selection from Durkheim but NOT Marx or Engels, which is explained - weakly - in the introduction). The selections by Marshall Sahlins and Alfred Kroeber are probably some of the worst examples of their writing they could have found for an anthology, and will most likely turn students *off* from their work than endear them or make them curious for more. Furthermore, the editors simply do not provide the reader with the tools for analysis that are necessary to place these theorists in their proper historical and intellectual contexts. As mentioned above, the extremely brief, synoptic commentaries that serve as introductions to each piece could have been assembled by a high-school student surfing the internet. We are given an entirely-too-straight-forward, normative picture of the various authors' ideas, accomplishments and contributions to the field; we are not given any sense of the contentious nature of some of these ideas, how they were debated, criticized and elaborated upon both in the halls of academia and in the fieldwork process. A person could counter that this is simply not possible in an 'introductory'-type book, but I would refer them to Garbarino's rather thin volume 'Sociocultural theory in anthropology', which does an excellent job of this type of analysis. However, Bohannan and Glazer do include a few essays reprinted from long dead (and occasionally hard to find) journals like "Man" (such as Evans-Pritchard's latter-day rant against the application of pure scientific positivism to human societies). The end result is that, if you are assigned this book for a class (as I was), you really have no choice but to shell out the $75 or $80 because you will be hard pressed to collect all the various readings yourself at the university library. But if choice is actually a factor and you are simply looking for a comprehensive and lucid guide to anthropological theory, I would recommend Edmund Leach's "Social Anthropology" or Marvin Harris' "The Rise of Anthropological Theory". Meanwhile, if you must have a reader of the original, primary sources, this book will suffice, but there really ought to be more substance here -- espeically for the price.

I'm an anthropology major in my senior year. One of my classes was Anthropological Theory. This book was the main reading. It is concise. It offers a multitude of anthropological view points that are the foundations of modern anthropological thought.

If anyone is looking to build a library of good scholarly works, this is a great foundation in that it offers many view points that have helped shape modern schoold of thought in many fields.

This book is an excellent text on which to base an upper level undergraduate introduction to the history of anthropological theory, although most teachers will want to supplement it with additional readings. The introductory chapter essays provide interesting and helpful biographical data on each author, as well as material historically situating the textual excerpts offered. While the selections are generally well-chosen as to importance, brevity and ease of reading, some do not necessarily represent an author's best or most important work (e.g. the selection offered for A.L. Kroeber). The text covers basic trends in anthropological theory up to about the 1970's, and includes many historically significant authors who might otherwise be "written out" in favor of more recent theoretical stars. While I would not recommend this as the *only* reading for a theory class, it does a great job of introducing students to the history of anthropological theory, while leaving the teacher room to decide how and where to supplement it with additional (or more recent) readings.

This is an EXCELLENT book for those struggling with the history of cultural anthropology. I highly recommend it to any cultural anthropology student who wants an easy to read description of the important figures and movements in CA. It really spells it out.

This book is an insightful compilation of all the groundbreaking researchers in Anthropology. By reading this book, one gains a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of anthropological theory and praxis. This book contains valuable biographical information as well as selected works from each of the persons profiled. It is a must read for anyone interested in the world of anthropology.