The Search for Society: Quest for a Biosocial Science and Morality [Paperback]

Robin Fox (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (October 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813514886
• ISBN-13: 978-0813514888
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,257,414 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was drawn to anthropology through early reading about history and civilization, and by religious doubts as a teenager. (I had been a pious Church of England boy.) My mother gave me H. G. Well's "Outine of History" when I was a teenager and I read T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" with its references to ritual and Sir James Frazer. I did a sociology degree at the LSE specializing in social philosophy and social anthropology, then went for two years to Harvard. While there I went out to New Mexico and fell in love with the Pueblo Indians. Back in the UK I did fieldwork on Gaelic-speaking Tory Island in NW Donegal. I wrote "Kinship and Marriage" which is perhaps the world's most widely used book on that topic. After meeting Lionel Tiger (at the London Zoo) I became interested in Darwinism and the evolution of behavior. Together we moved to Rutgers University in New Jersey and have been there ever since. We wrote "The Imperial Animal" which brought mild notoriety and helped change the social sciences in an evolutionary direction. I have studied the brain at Stanford and Macaque monkeys in Bermuda, written poetry and essays, and continue to enjoy teaching and research and writing. Anthropology is for me full of great insights, but also a lot of fun. See my website at www.robinfoxbooks.com for more details - and more fun stuff.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Social Science Beware!, April 20, 2000

By 

Jeremy Raymondjack (Roslindale, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Search for Society: Quest for a Biosocial Science and Morality (Paperback)

This truly is a stunning book. All throughout, the reader can sense Fox's frustration with his colleagues and with humanity's view of itself in general. This is a plea for the longest kind of perspective, one that recognizes the horrifically-disturbing blip that history represents on the 5-million year timeline that is the human story. Fox makes it unabashedly clear that if we do not embrace an evolutionary view of ourselves, we are destined to live in out-of-control, frustrating, dehumanizing societies. The closest thinker that I have found to Fox is Paul Shepard, another brilliant scholar who shreds the boundaries of disciplines. But Fox is even bolder in his challenge to the academy and it's Enlightenment heritage, dismissing as useless much of the classic thought, as well as the current drivel -- since neither considers the full ethical implications of a Darwinian worldview. Great stuff!