Theoretical Anthropology"The great virtue of the work, and one that will probably make it something of a milestone, lies in Bidney's own constructiveness. He is a philosophical optimist who believes in using what is valued from previous theories, and who is convinced that cultural or social science is able to show the way to human improvement." --"Social Forces" "Theoretical Anthropology" is a major contribution to the historical and critical study of the assumptions underlying the development of modern cultural anthropology. |
Contents
| 73 | |
| 93 | |
| 54 | |
Society and Culture | 69 |
Human Nature and the Cultural Process | 125 |
Metaanthropology and Anthropological Science | 156 |
Evolutionary Ethnology and Natural History | 183 |
Cultural Dynamics and the Quest for Origins | 215 |
The Concept of Cultural Crisis | 345 |
Modes of Cultural Integration | 366 |
Normative Culture and the Categories of Value | 400 |
Ideology and Power in the Strategy of World Peace | 433 |
The Problem of Freedom and Authority in Cultural Perspective | 450 |
The Contribution of A L Kroeber to Contemporary Anthropology | 467 |
Bibliography | 485 |
Additional Bibliography | 502 |
Culture History the Humanities and Natural Science | 250 |
The Concept of Myth | 286 |
The Concept of Personality in Modern Ethnology | 327 |
Index | 509 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstraction According actual American Anthropologist anthro approach autonomous basic behavior biological Boas Cassirer civilization concept of culture contemporary crises cultural anthropologists cultural development cultural evolution cultural phenomena cultural process cultural relativism culture forms culture history culturologists DB's determinism Durkheim Edward Sapir empirical Ernst Cassirer essentially ethnologists ethnology evolutionary explain fallacy freedom function given culture given society human culture human nature Ibid ideal idealistic ideology independent individual institutions integration Kroeber laws logical Lowie maintain Malinowski mental metaphysical modern moral myth mythological native natural law natural science Neo-Kantian normative normative science objective ontological organic origin patterns personality perspective philosophers Plato postulate practice primitive principle problem progress psychological rational reality reference science of culture scientific sense significant social anthropology social facts sociocultural sociologists sociology study of culture superorganic symbolic tend theoretical theory of cultural thesis thought tion tradition truth tural ture Tylor universal values York
Popular passages
Page 184 - CIVILIZATION, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
Page xlii - Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.
Page 370 - The function of any recurrent activity, such as the punishment of a crime, or a funeral ceremony, is the part it plays in the social life as a whole and therefore the contribution it makes to the maintenance of the structural continuity.
Page xi - Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning.
Page 238 - If we are asked therefore, where the state of nature is to be found? We may answer, it is here; and it matters not whether we are understood to speak in the island of Great Britain, at the Cape of Good Hope, or the Straits of Magellan.
Page 57 - Culture is a thing sui generis which can be explained only in terms of itself.
Page 69 - The determining cause of a social fact should be sought among the social facts preceding it and not among the states of individual consciousness. . . . The first origins of all social processes of any importance should be sought in the internal constitution of the social group [his italics].37 Durkheim did leave open a small loophole in his argument.
Page 454 - ... whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence.
Page 213 - Their labors, their trials and their successes were a part of the plan of the Supreme Intelligence to develop a barbarian out of a savage, and a civilized man out of this barbarian.