In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization (Routledge Classic Texts in Anthropology) - Softcover

Diamond, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087855582X ISBN 13: 9780878555826

Publisher: Transaction Publishers, 2017

Synopsis

Anthropology is a kind of debate between human possibilities―a dialectical movement between the anthropologist as a modern man and the primitive peoples he studies. In Search of the Primitive is a tough-minded book containing chapters ranging from encounters in the field to essays on the nature of law, schizophrenia and civilization, and the evolution of the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Above all it is reflective and self-critical, critical of the discipline of anthropology and of the civilization that produced that discipline. Diamond views the anthropologist who refuses to become a searching critic of his own civilizations as not merely irresponsible, but a tool of Western civilization. He rejects the associations which have been made in the ideology of our civilization, consciously or unconsciously, between Western dominance and progress, imperialism and evolution, evolution and progress.

About this title

About the Author

Stanley Diamond was professor of anthropology in the graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, USA. He was the founder and editor of Dialectical Anthropology and a research scientist at the National Institutes of Health, USA.

Edition details

• Publisher: Transaction Publishers
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087855582X
• ISBN 13: 9780878555826
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 404