Re: And now for something completely different...
- From: "Tom McDonald" <kiltmac@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 8 Sep 2006 12:26:55 -0700
Tedd Jacobs wrote:
"Tom McDonald" wrote...
At the risk of being hooted off the ng, I would like to announce that I
have now gotten a copy of Marvin Harris's 'The Rise of Anthropological
Theory', and will be interested to discuss it with anyone
aye!
Then let me start by giving the first paragraph of the Introduction as
a teaser and a taste:
"Anthropology began as the science of history. Inspired by the triumphs
of the scientific method in the physical and organic domains,
nineteenth-century anthropologists believed that sociocultural
pehonomena were governed by discoverable lawful principles. This
conviction joined their interests with the aspiration of a still
earlier period, extending back before the social sciences had been
named, to the epochal stirrings of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment
and the vision of a universal history of mankind. Whatever the
weaknesses of the theories propounded by the early anthropologists
under the sway of nineteenth-century scientism, we must concede that
the issues addressed -- origins and causes -- gave their writings an
enduring significance. Commencing with the twentieth century, however,
and continuing through until the early forties, efforts were made to
alter the strategic premise upon which the scientism of anthropological
theory depended. Almost simultaneously, there arose in England, France,
Germany and the United States, schools of anthropology that in one way
or another rejected the scientific mandate. It came to be widely
believed that anthropology could never discover the origins of
institutions or explain their causes. In the United States, the
dominant school flatly asserted that there were no historical laws and
that there could not be a science of history."
While he is going to be pretty hard on many anthropologists, and other
related thinkers, he is not unaware of the value of the critiqued
folks' work. He wants to understand what went before, and to propose
cultural materialism (as distinct from dialectical materialism) as a
unifying concept similar to natural selection in evolutionary biology.
He also says he is looking at the intellectual climate at various times
as it affected anthropological theory, so he isn't limiting his work to
anthropologists alone.
It is really, really going to be helpful to have the book.
.
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- And now for something completely different...
- From: Tom McDonald
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- From: Tedd Jacobs
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