Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization - Hardcover

Williams, Robert A. , Jr.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0230338763 ISBN 13: 9780230338760

Publisher: Palgrave, 2012

Synopsis

From one of the world's leading experts on Native American law and indigenous peoples' human rights comes an original and striking intellectual history of the tribe and Western civilization that sheds new light on how we understand ourselves and our contemporary society. Historical conflicts between the Western world and tribalism are said to be grounded in irreconcilable differences in culture, governing institutions, religion and worldview. Throughout the centuries, conquest, war, and unspeakable acts of violence and dispossession have all been justified by citing civilization's opposition to these differences represented by the tribe. Robert Williams, award-winning author, legal scholar, and member of the Lumbee Indian Tribe, proposes a wide-ranging reexamination of the history of the Western world, told from the perspective of civilization's war on tribalism as a way of life. Starting from the foundations of Western political theory and philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome to show how the West's war on tribalism influenced and shaped Christianity, the Renaissance and Enlightenment Eras, the African slave trade, Darwin's theory of evolution, the Vietnam War, and even today's environmental movement, Williams shows us how what we thought we knew about the rise of Western civilization over the tribe is in dire need of reappraisal.

About this title

Review:

"Armed with guns, horses, and machines, European settlers relentlessly mowed down, pushed aside, and in some cases enslaved peaceful natives they found living in the new worlds they were overrunning. Reaching back to antiquity, they resurrected myths about one-eyed giants and other monsters to rationalize the harsh treatment they were visiting on Indians and Mexicans. Later, they would deploy very similar rhetorical strategies to justify extermination and enslavement in other parts of the world. The suspicion grows that Western agents are the savages and the peace-loving natives the superior race. Savage Anxieties explains how, like bad money driving out good, a savage society will win every time." --Richard Delgado, professor, Seattle University School of Law and author of Critical Race Theory

Book Description:

An original and striking intellectual history of the West's bias against tribalism - from the dawn of civilization to the present, by an award-winning author and law professor

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0230338763
• ISBN 13: 9780230338760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 265