From Publishers Weekly
Cultural anthropologist and University of Chicago professor Shweder's "recipes" are lucid, timely investigations of suffering, the domestic life of Hindu women, the sleeping arrangements parents of different nationalities and classes institute with their children, and female genital mutilation-to name a few. Pillorying the "secular theodicy" of victimization, Shweder (and, in this particular essay, his co-authors Nancy C. Much, Manamohan Mahapatra and Lawrence Park) argues that those who suffer are not inherent victims. An expert on the cultural life of South Asian villages and towns, Shweder (Thinking Through Cultures) applies the doctrine of "karmic consequences" to current public health policy in the U.S., addressing the idea of a "sin tax" such as smokers experience. The American bent towards autonomy often doesn't jibe with the needs of the community, but Shweder persuasively asserts that "as we search around for postmodern ways to rethink our responsibilities to society and nature, it would not be surprising if we began to acknowledge the intuitive appeal of ideas such as sacred self, sacred world, karma, duty, pollution, and sin." In "Fundamentalism for Highbrows: The Aims of Education Address at the University of Chicago," he admits that the notion of an open mind is hard to define but cogently sets out his exacting "principles." Though Shweder is a vital essayist whose ear is tuned to cultural currents, the essays that cover anthropological issues may fail to interest general readers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
How much cultural relativism is enough? Whether you consider yourself a modernist with universalist sympathies or a post-modernist with completely pluralist preferences, you will be given pause by the arguments in this book. You will be informed, amused, infuriated, moved, and prompted to doubt deep personal convictions - often within the space of a single paragraph. No serious student of psychological anthropology or cultural psychology can ignore Shweder's commentary on the great issues confronting those fields.
--Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan (20030912)
Richard Shweder is the authentic voice of a concerned and critical anthropology: unbuttoned, funny, courageous, and mercilessly precise.
Why Do Men Barbecue? takes no prisoners. It is a major contribution to the exposure of all forms of ethnocentrism, with special and loving attention to our own.
--Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study
In fresh, brisk, and arresting language, Shweder challenges us to see the world in new ways or else come up with new arguments for holding on to the views we already have. This insightful and provocative book isn't just for anthropologists and other social scientists, but for those who value having to look twice at the world they think they know.
--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School
In our globalized world there are, and will always be, many divergent views of what is real, good, and true, and how to think and feel and be a person. Rick Shweder's spirited and beautifully written essays remind us that it is not just right but necessary to recognize and understand differences in ideas and ways of life. His provocative insights give us an agenda for a cultural psychology we can really use in the turbulent years ahead.
--Hazel Rose Markus, Stanford University
Shweder's "recipes" are lucid, timely investigations of suffering, the domestic life of Hindu women, the sleeping arrangements parents of different nationalities and classes institute with their children, and female genital mutilation--to name a few. (
Publishers Weekly )
Whether writing about the lives of Hindu women in rural India, comparing the family sleeping arrangements of different societies, or challenging feminist criticisms of female genital surgery in sub-Saharan Africa, Shweder describes the results of his ethnography of difference with elegance and wit. He avoids the dehumanizing fetishism of difference that characterizes all too much contemporary social science and social theory, and resists familiar relativist bromides demanding 'tolerance.'
--Michele M. Moody-Adams (
Times Literary Supplement )
