ANTH 1102 Introduction to Anthropology: Course Tools: Books

The popularity of Levi-Strauss, in the words of the editors of this collection of current essays and reviews, resides "in his seeming rejection of history and humanism, in his refusal to see Western civilization as privileged and unique, in his view of the human mind as programmed, in his emphasis on form over content, and in his insistence that the savage mind is not inferior to the civilized." This collection includes articles on Levi-Strauss' works and essays discussing this controversial anthropologist/ethnologist's place in the realm of contemporary thought and philosophy. Levi-Strauss is perhaps best known for his doctrine of "structuralism" which he has defined, at one point, as "the search for unsuspected harmonies...[and] the discovery of a system of relations latent in a series of objects." The doctrine of structuralism is used by Levi-Strauss as the skeleton key to the study of the development of human culture in all its variety and in its origins. He applies its framework in his study of economics, social customs, language, mythology, and though he's an exact observer and tireless collector of facts, his overall view presents all culture as a kind of language to be decoded and interpreted based on inherent, preformed laws within the structure of the mind. The contributors to this volume include George Steiner, in a discussion of the philosophical and historical implications of Levi-Strauss' work; Susan Sontag, who focuses on the anthropologist's antihistorical approach and its relatedness to what she terms the "intellectual homelessness" portrayed in modern literature; Peter Caw, who has contributed an essay on outgrowths of Levi-Strauss' writings and the application of structuralism to other fields; and Robert L. Zimmerman and Lionel Abel, whose essays trace the relevance of the Levi-Strauss canon to the humanities. Edmund Leach, Francis Huxley, H. Stuart Hughes, Sanche de Gramont, Hugo G. Nutini, Bob Scholte, Colin M. Turnbull, Robert F. Murphy, and the Editors of Timeare also represented.

Rarely do science and literature come together in the same book.  When they do -- as in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, for example -- they become classics, quoted and studied by scholars and the general public alike. Margaret Mead accomplished this remarkable feat not once but several times, beginning with Coming of Age in Samoa.   It details her historic journey to American Samoa, taken where she was just twenty-three, where she did her first fieldwork.  Here, for the first time, she presented to the public the idea that the individual experience of developmental stages could be shaped by cultural demands and expectations.  Adolescence, she wrote, might be more or less stormy, and sexual development more or less problematic in different cultures.  The "civilized" world, she taught us had much to learn from the "primitive."  Now this groundbreaking, beautifully written work as been reissued for the centennial of her birth, featuring introductions by Mary Pipher and by Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson.