Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Man Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy by W. Arens ISBN: 0-19-502793-0 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand Pub. Date: September, 1980 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: Another Urban Legend Bites The Dust!
Comment: Will Rogers said it didn't bother him so much when people lied, but it did bother him when they just KNEW something that wasn't so.
The myth of cannibalism is so ingrained among presumably educated people that when William Arens applied the scientific method and found the myth wanting, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
While it is true that during times of starvation, people have been known to eat human flesh, and serial killers like Gilles de Rais, Fritz Haarman and Jeffrey Dahmer have eaten their victims; cannibalism as a socially accepted practice is a racist myth.
Like other legends (satanic ritual child abuse in day care centers, UFO abductions, etc), cannibalism stories are always second hand at best. Usually it's a smear by one ethnic or religious group against another from the old Blood Libel claiming Jews drink the blood of Christian babies, to the equally racist belief that Hawaiians like SPAM because it supposedly tastes like human flesh.
No group ever claims that THEY eat people. It's always the hated enemy and/ or those slated for destruction. Arens notes how Columbus considered the natives of Hispanola to be the most docile and harmless people on Earth who could be enslaved easily. The Spanish Crown allowed the enslavement of the natives, but only those who ate human flesh. Of course like most peoples, the "Caribs" got rather insolent when Columbus started killing them and stealing their land and PRESTO! -the once peaceful, docile natives turned into vicious cannibals instantly! This gave Columbus and his successors a convenient excuse to rob, rape, murder, and enslave the natives, who became more uppity... This cycle was quite agreeable to those who stood to make money from genocide.
If man-eating was socially acceptable, one would think someone could have produced a photograph or videotape since the man-eaters would not have gone to any lengths to hide something they weren't ashamed of. But no such evidence exists for the same reason there's no hard evidence for fire-breathing dragons, one-eyed giants, giant three-headed dogs, unicorns or other creatures from ancient bestiaries. They only exist in overheated imaginations.
The reason this book caused such a ruckus when it was released, is not just the fact that it made anthropologists look as disreputable as phrenologists: charlatans, shysters and hucksters practicing a crank pseudo-science. Among the highly educated, it's fashionable to ridicule the bumpkins and yokels for being gullible enough to buy into astrology, creationism and other forms of nonsense. But as W. Arens proved with "The Man-Eating Myth", the intelligencia is just as easily fooled as what Mencken called "the booboise" and that in many cases, "PhD" means "piled high and deep".
 |
Title: Divine Hunger : Cannibalism as a Cultural System by Peggy Reeves Sanday ISBN: 0521311144 Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr (Pap Txt) Pub. Date: 25 July, 1986 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
 |
Title: Cannibalism and the Colonial World by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, Margaret Iversen, Timothy Brennan ISBN: 052162908X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 06 August, 1998 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
 |
Title: Flesh & Blood by Reay Tannahill ISBN: 0316837059 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.45 |
 |
Title: Man Corn: Cannibalism and Violence in the Prehistoric American Southwest by Christy G. Turner II, Jacqueline Turner ISBN: 087480566X Publisher: Univ of Utah Pr (Trd) Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $65.00 |
 |
Title: Eating Their Words: Cannibalism and the Boundaries of Cultural Identity by Kristen Guest, Maggie Kilgour ISBN: 0791450902 Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
