Included with a Kindle Unlimited membership.

Read with Kindle Unlimited

Buy new:

$33.88

& FREE Returns

FREE delivery Friday, April 15. Order within 10 hrs 11 mins

Or fastest delivery Tuesday, April 12

In Stock.

As an alternative, the Kindle eBook is available now and can be read on any device with the free Kindle app.

[{"displayPrice":"$33.88","priceAmount":33.88,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"33","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"88","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"RJRF2iV%2FK%2BGjNrz6%2BHGWvwScOQvJBHsvAHuP8rhPEHqf5mqZf5zr9mZM4Vhvrdfi%2F0YopxcgQ6lwLi2In6LGEZvCOsVmQiQSBev4PEMGja2ryJevUY%2FMFh2eEA54fdgfUXwgutY2C0%2B6u3alb1s%2BsQ%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"}]

$$33.88 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Share <Embed>

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$38.57
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: SuperBookDeals-

Added

Not added

$36.58
+ $5.99 shipping

Sold by: BigNameBooksDotCom

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

D. Unwin

Sex and Culture Paperback – November 1, 1934

by Joseph Daniel Unwin (Author)

52 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$9.99

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$33.88

$33.40

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 1 million more titles $9.99 to buy
Paperback
$33.88

1 Used from $33.40 5 New from $33.88

Enhance your purchase

In Sex and Culture (1934), Unwin studied 80 primitive tribes and 6 known civilizations through 5,000 years of history and found a positive correlation between the cultural achievement of a people and the sexual restraint they observe.

Print length

721 pages
Language

English
Publication date

November 1, 1934
Dimensions

6 x 1.81 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1979867046
ISBN-13

978-1979867047
See all details

Frequently bought together

Carle C. Zimmerman
39
Paperback
35 offers from $11.11
Gabriele Kuby
111
Paperback
16 offers from $9.88
Richard J. Herrnstein
1,302
Paperback
113 offers from $4.81
Rollo Tomassi
5,324
Paperback
18 offers from $10.75
Aaron Clarey
602
Paperback
5 offers from $10.49
Alexander Boot
8
Paperback
12 offers from $11.59

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joseph Daniel Unwin M.C. PH.D. (1895 - 1936) was an English ethnologist and social anthropologist at Oxford University and Cambridge University.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 2nd edition (November 1, 1934)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 721 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1979867046
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1979867047
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.81 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #194,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #879 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)

Customer Reviews:
52 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		79%
4 star		13%
3 star		5%
2 star 0% (0%)		0%
1 star		3%

How are ratings calculated?

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Taylor Bork

Excellent material

Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2019

Verified Purchase

Excellent contents. I've read through much of the book in PDF form, and wanted a paper copy. It seems most of the content is faithfully represented. One star off for whoever printed this run of books for the eye burning typo on the back cover.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

sammy

Fascinating old book

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2021

Verified Purchase

Pretty dry, fairly dense, but the ideas espoused are both groundbreaking and taboo. Should be read by anyone wanting to develop civilizational public poicy

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Franklin Schmidt

Female chastity is correlated with civilization

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2008

Verified Purchase

I have to disagree somewhat with the previous reviewer. Unwin is a very methodical anthropologist, and so he carefully distinguished between the facts that he uncovers and the explanation he offers of those facts. The primary thesis of this book is that the development of a society correlates with its regulation of female prenuptial chastity. But Unwin was a Freudian liberal, so he felt compelled to come up with as unsexist an explanation as possible, and this is where his idea comes from that prenuptial chastity causes sexual repression which in turn causes energy to be redirected into developing culture. Of course this is complete nonsense, but I forgive Unwin both because living in the 1930s, he couldn't have a deep understanding what conditions are really like when a society reaches an advanced state of feminist decay, and because I am extremely grateful to Unwin for honestly recording facts that were at odds with his own beliefs. But even Unwin should have realized from historical evidence that his explanation was wrong. Ancient Athens was probably the most productive civilization in history, and never did a society have less sexual repression for men than Athens did, where the government subsidized prostitution so that men were never in need for sex, and where women could not interfere with the productive energy of men.

Of course I rate this book 5 stars. It is the most important book written since The Origin of Species. But since the facts it contains are not politically correct, it is doomed to obscurity. The lack of availability of this book, because it is out of print, is just part of the cultural decay of our society caused the lack of regulation of female sexuality that Unwin so well chronicled.

90 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

Available for free online...

Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2015

This isn't actually a review of the book, as I haven't completely read it yet.

However, for those interested in obtaining a copy of the book, you can go to: https://archive.org/details/b20442580 (https://archive_dot_org/details/b20442580) where you can download a copy of it in various formats, including a version for Kindle, for free.

81 people found this helpful

Helpful

MCP

Sexual repression is the foundation of civilization.

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2008

That is the basic thesis of this unjustly forgotten book. According to Professor Unwin, who was influenced by Freud, it is the "limitation of sexual opportunity" which creates the "mental energy" necessary to build a civilization.

He backs this up with exhaustive examples of the historical cycle he proposes. The cycle goes as follows: in a primitive society, people take their pleasure at whim, without commitment or limits. Then the practice of monogamous marriage, including premarital chastity, is instituted. (How he believes this first arises would take far too long to summarize here; read the book!) The sexual repression required for this chastity and fidelity increases the "mental energy" and the inner strength of those who practice it, enabling them to embark on long-term projects such as monumental architecture, agriculture, and conquest. In this early stage, men have enormous power over their wives and children, even when the children have grown up.

The "sexual opportunity" of women is always, of necessity, more limited than that of men in a civilized society, and this has a powerful effect, according to Unwin; they convey this repression and its benefits to their children. Indeed, he blames the decline of feudalism on its habit of putting its "best" women into convents to live as nuns - it is true that for a woman with intellectual aspirations, a convent was her only real option - instead of having them bear children to whom they could convey their "mental energy".

Unwin also criticizes polygamous societies; the easy "sexual opportunity" it affords men limits the "mental energy". He says, "That is why, I submit, the Moors in Spain achieved such a high culture. Their fathers were born into a polygamous tradition; but their mothers were the daughters of Christians and Jews, and had spent their early years in an absolutely monogamous environment. The sons of these women laid the foundations of rationalistic culture; but soon the supply of Christian and Jewish women was insufficient, so the incipient rationalism failed to mature greatly."

It always begins with the ruling class, the aristocracy, being the most chaste and monogamous. As they grow decadent after a few generations, the "middle class" (not necessarily in our modern understanding of it) is just getting the hang of it, having aped it from their betters, and they acquire more power in the society.

In time, however, the strict monogamy loosens. Unwin speculates that the extreme power the builders of civilizations have over their wives and children is unbearable to most, and the decrease of this power is inevitable. Unwin's attention is more on the monogamy than on the legal position of women, but the two seem to march hand in hand. "A female emancipating movement is a cultural phenomenon of unfailing regularity; it appears to be the necessary outcome of absolute monogamy. The subsequent loss of social energy after the emancipation of women, which is sometimes emphasized, has been due not to the emancipation but to the extension of sexual opportunity which has always accompanied it. In human records there is no instance of female emancipation which has not been accompanied by an extension of sexual opportunity."

Indeed, as sexual opportunity becomes easier - which always takes place in concert with female emancipation - the society's mental energy weakens, it cannot continue to invent things or maintain what it has, and in a few generations it is easily conquered by a robust monogamous patriarchy, which is fairly bursting with the mental energy of repressed sexuality.

Professor Unwin, by the way, was not in any way a male chauvinist. He concluded his book with a hopeful wish that we may find some way to have sexual repression and the equality of the sexes at the same time, and clearly believed that women are not inherently unfit for power and independence.

That is one of the two criticisms I would make of this excellent work. But one can hardly blame Professor Unwin, who was writing in 1934, long before scientific study had verified that all of the traditional stereotypes about women were based in biological fact. Indeed, thanks to feminist domination of mass media, few people today are aware of this.

The other criticism is that Unwin focuses all of his attention on the "mental energy" caused by sexual repression. I suspect he is right about it, but there is another vital factor in the building of a civilization, and that is paternity. Men build things - houses, palaces, empires, codes of ethics - so that they can pass them on to their own children, and thus achieve one kind of immortality. Men who know they cannot train and endow their children are disinclined to produce. This, even more than the lack of opportunity for personal enrichment, is why communism and socialism are such abysmal failures, and why inheritance tax is such a dangerous threat to civilization itself. It would be good to read an intertwining of this theory and Unwin's.

This book has long been out of print and copies are rare and expensive, but until this situation is remedied, it can be obtained through inter-library loan. I highly recommend it for its exhaustive documentation.

120 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Chris X

Phenomenal

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 30, 2019

Verified Purchase

An important and very interesting study that maybe as a society/civilisation we can learn from..perfect if you're anti-PC.

4 people found this helpful

Cornelius

Brilliant and Shocking Exposition of Sexual Regulations and Cultural Advance

Reviewed in Canada on November 27, 2019

Verified Purchase

Unger surveys eighty so-called 'primitive' civilizations, as well as six advanced civilizations, and finds a stunning correlation between the extent of a society's pre-marital and post-marital sexual regulations, and its civilizational advance (conquest, exploration, abstract thought, industry, commerce, etc.). In general, the more restrained a society is when it comes to sex, the more repressed sexual energy is created; that repressed energy is then transformed into, and given full expression in, productive, outward endeavours.

As an anthropologist, Unger is surprisingly careful; since this book was published in 1934, I expected a stereotypical Englishman's exaltation of the white man's superior intellect. Unger does not fall for such preposterousness; he even admits that there is no reason to believe that coloured men have inferior intellects or abilities. In fact, he argues against the racialism that prevailed in his day.

Although Unger's correlation is interesting, and his causation convincing, I am not convinced by his proposed mechanism: Freudian sexual sublimation. In fact, there are more direct mechanisms that would explain why repressed sexuality translates into powerful outward displays of productive and expansive energy:

1. When sex is more difficult to procure, people engage in more productive activities. This is a simple opportunity cost formula.
2. Men won't invest resources in children that aren't theirs. Sexual restraint ensures that women are less likely to cheat and conceive children with other men.
3. Hypergamy is dominant: without sexual restraint, men and women expend energy in attaining unachievable sexual partners.

Aside from these shortcomings, Unger's book is worth reading if you are interested in why sexual restraints come about, and how they relate to civilizational advance.

David Mercer

Fascinating social anthropology

Reviewed in Canada on July 12, 2021

Verified Purchase

The author was nearly lost to obscurity, but has been remembered and recovered in a most timely way. His epic study of world cultures revealed the key and core role that sexual mores play in determining cultural vitality and even the endurance of a society. History does not always repeat itself, yet we would be blind and dull not to heed the evidence of the past. Worth reading and then asking serious questions about the route Western Society has taken, and whether it can truly continue as such.

Alexei

I will read this book many times throughout my life

Reviewed in Canada on March 13, 2020

Verified Purchase

Fantastic book.
The first chapter explains how he is going to tackle the issue.
The second and third chapter gathers all the evidence from mostly uncivilized societies.
It’s a great book that will change the way you view our society and even individuals.

Amine

Big interesting book

Reviewed in France on August 25, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book is huge, but it is well written.

See all reviews

Buy new:

$33.88

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

Sex and Culture Paperback – November 1, 1934

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new: $33.88

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

Sex and Culture Paperback – November 1, 1934

Enhance your purchase

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries

Buy new:

$33.88