The Building of British Social Anthropology

The Building of British Social Anthropology PDF Author: Ian Langham
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027712646
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Traces the influence of major anthropological figures on kinship studies; includes discussion of changing analyses of Australian Aboriginal kinship, marriage-class systems and totemism.

The Building of British Social Anthropology

The Building of British Social Anthropology PDF Author: K. Langham
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400984642
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
The nature of that transition to maturity [a transition involving "The acquisition of the sort of paradigm that identifies challenging puzzles, supplies clues to their solution, and guarantees that the truly clever practitioner will succeed") deserves fuller discussion than it has received in this book, particularly from those concerned with the development of the contemporary social sciences. (Thomas S. Kuhn, 1969, Postscript to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. ) The fIrst two or three decades of the twentieth-century represents a shadowy period in the history of science. For most contemporary scientists, the period is a little too far away to be the subject of a fIrst-hand oral tradition; while at the same time it is not suffIciently remote to have acquired the epic and oversimplifIed contour of history which has been transformed into mythol ogy. Historians of science, by contrast, who want to free themselves from the mythology which is used to legitimize the present state of the discipline, are interested in discovering what really happened, and how it was regarded at the time. For them the nature of science in the early twentieth-century is obscured by what they regard as its proximity in time, and they are disturbed by a general lack of depth in scholarly work in the area, which makes it diffI cult to see the period in proper perspective.

The Building of British Social Anthropology

The Building of British Social Anthropology PDF Author: Ian Langham
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027712646
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Traces the influence of major anthropological figures on kinship studies; includes discussion of changing analyses of Australian Aboriginal kinship, marriage-class systems and totemism.

Difficult Folk?

Difficult Folk? PDF Author: David Mills
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9781845454500
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
How should we tell the histories of academic disciplines? All too often, the political and institutional dimensions of knowledge production are lost beneath the intellectual debates. This book redresses the balance. Written in a narrative style and drawing on archival sources and oral histories, it depicts the complex pattern of personal and administrative relationships that shape scholarly worlds. Focusing on the field of social anthropology in twentieth-century Britain, this book describes individual, departmental and institutional rivalries over funding and influence. It examines the efforts of scholars such as Bronislaw Malinowski, Edward Evans-Pritchard and Max Gluckman to further their own visions for social anthropology. Did the future lie with the humanities or the social sciences, with addressing social problems or developing scholarly autonomy? This new history situates the discipline's rise within the post-war expansion of British universities and the challenges created by the end of Empire.

Anthropology and Anthropologists

Anthropology and Anthropologists PDF Author: Adam Kuper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317608356
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Anthropology and Anthropologists provides an entertaining and provocative account of British social anthropology from the foundations of the discipline, through the glory years of the mid-twentieth century and on to the transformation in recent decades. The book shocked the anthropological establishment on first publication in 1973 but soon established itself as one of the introductions for students of anthropology. Forty years later, this now classic work has been radically revised. Adam Kuper situates the leading actors in their historical and institutional context, probes their rivalries, revisits their debates, and reviews their key ethnographies. Drawing on recent scholarship he shows how the discipline was shaped by the colonial setting and by developments in the social sciences.

Towards an Operational Social Anthropology

Towards an Operational Social Anthropology PDF Author: Michel Verdon
Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing
ISBN: 1803819537
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Anthropology's original's aim, that of Maine and Morgan in the second half of the nineteenth-century, was to explain social variability. Behind that variability, anthropologists searched for regularities that a theory would explain. It was thus both comparative and positivist (aiming to be scientific). The first theory to emerge was evolutionism. It was soon followed by functional structuralism, structuralism and all the other 'isms' that came after. In the final analysis, unlike scientific theories, all these 'theories' did not supplant one another but merely agglutinated. The original project of a comparative and positivist anthropology thus completely failed, and the new gurus explain it by the very nature of anthropology's subject, human beings in society, which they claim are not amenable to scientific discourse. In this first of two books, Professor Michel Verdon rejects this defeatist explanation. To him, the failure does not stem from anthropology's 'objects' but from the knowing subject. The explanation lies in the process of knowing; it is epistemological, and he finds the ultimate reason in the 'cosmology' that underlies all theories, and that no one has hitherto explored. This enables him completely to upturn the traditional wisdom: it is this implicit cosmology that radically hinders any conceptual rigour in the study of social organization since it defines groups in a way that makes them ontologically variable. In the light of this unique diagnosis he can define a new language, which he labels 'operational', that yields rigourous comparisons leading to refutable and rectifiable theories. In a second book that will soon follow, he applies this language to a number of ethnographies and draws from them astonishing conclusions about societies traditionally studied by anthropology.

The Slain God

The Slain God PDF Author: Timothy Larsen
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191026565
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Throughout its entire history, the discipline of anthropology has been perceived as undermining, or even discrediting, Christian faith. Many of its most prominent theorists have been agnostics who assumed that ethnographic findings and theories had exposed religious beliefs to be untenable. E. B. Tylor, the founder of the discipline in Britain, lost his faith through studying anthropology. James Frazer saw the material that he presented in his highly influential work, The Golden Bough, as demonstrating that Christian thought was based on the erroneous thought patterns of 'savages.' On the other hand, some of the most eminent anthropologists have been Christians, including E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Edith Turner. Moreover, they openly presented articulate reasons for how their religious convictions cohered with their professional work. Despite being a major site of friction between faith and modern thought, the relationship between anthropology and Christianity has never before been the subject of a book-length study. In this groundbreaking work, Timothy Larsen examines the point where doubt and faith collide with anthropological theory and evidence.

Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology

Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology PDF Author: R. Jon McGee
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452276307
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1053

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Book Description
Social and cultural anthropology and archaeology are rich subjects with deep connections in the social and physical sciences. Over the past 150 years, the subject matter and different theoretical perspectives have expanded so greatly that no single individual can command all of it. Consequently, both advanced students and professionals may be confronted with theoretical positions and names of theorists with whom they are only partially familiar, if they have heard of them at all. Students, in particular, are likely to turn to the web to find quick background information on theorists and theories. However, most web-based information is inaccurate and/or lacks depth. Students and professionals need a source to provide a quick overview of a particular theory and theorist with just the basics—the "who, what, where, how, and why," if you will. In response, SAGE Reference plans to publish the two-volume Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia. Features & Benefits: Two volumes containing approximately 335 signed entries provide users with the most authoritative and thorough reference resource available on anthropology theory, both in terms of breadth and depth of coverage. To ease navigation between and among related entries, a Reader's Guide groups entries thematically and each entry is followed by Cross-References. In the electronic version, the Reader's Guide combines with the Cross-References and a detailed Index to provide robust search-and-browse capabilities. An appendix with a Chronology of Anthropology Theory allows students to easily chart directions and trends in thought and theory from early times to the present. Suggestions for Further Reading at the end of each entry and a Master Bibliography at the end guide readers to sources for more detailed research and discussion.

Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory

Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory PDF Author: Paul A. Erickson
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442606568
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 617

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Book Description
This comprehensive anthology offers over 40 readings that are critical to the understanding of anthropological theory and the development of anthropology as an academic discipline. The fourth edition maintains a strong focus on the "four-field" roots of the discipline in North America but has been reorganized with a new section on twenty-first-century theory, including coverage of postcolonial and public anthropology. New key terms and introductions accompany each reading and a revamped glossary makes the book more student-friendly. Used on its own, or together with the overview text A History of Anthropological Theory, Fourth Edition, this anthology offers a flexible and unrivaled introduction to anthropological theory that reflects not only the history but also the changing nature of the discipline today. For additional resources, visit the "Teaching Theory" page at www.utpteachingculture.com.

Ethnography

Ethnography PDF Author: Vincenzo Matera
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030517209
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
This volume presents both a historical exploration of ethnography and a thematic discussion of major trends that, over different periods, have oriented and re-oriented research practice. As it overviews ethnography from different geographic and thematic perspectives, it further explores new lines of ethnographic research, including as feminist ethnography and visual research, that uncover non-traditional routes to anthropological knowledge. As the great ethnographer E. E. Evans-Pritchard wrote, “Anyone who is not a complete idiot can do fieldwork... but will [his contribution] be to theoretical, or just to factual knowledge?” As Evans-Pritchard highlights and as this book argues, successful ethnography must be connected to a sophisticated theoretical reflection rooted in social and cultural anthropology.

Cambridge and the Torres Strait

Cambridge and the Torres Strait PDF Author: Anita Herle
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521584616
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Centenary volume of the Torres Strait Expedition suggesting new ways of looking at its work.