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Title: Human Universals by Donald E Brown ISBN: 0-07-008209-X Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages Pub. Date: 01 January, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.05 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Refreshing account of universals and anthropology
Comment: This is a comprehensive survey of the anthropological study of human universals, human nature, culture vs. biology, etc. It's also a critique of the field of anthropology, and one given from a refreshing outside-looking-in perspective. Brown deals with several influential cases (such as Margaret Mead's study of Samoan adolescence) and shows where they erred. He discusses the processes of defining and demonstrating universals, takes us on a grand tour of the history of universals in anthropology, presents the basic gamut of how universals have been and can be explained. In the final chapters he lays out his position and leaves cultural relativism thoroughly stomped on. Cultural relativists, he demonstrates, have relied on universals even in their attempts to show cultural relativity. Among even the most dissimilar human languages, for example, the similarities (grammar, syntax, rhythm, content, etc.) still far outweigh the differences. Anthropologists have historically focused on the differences while remaining blind to the (often more fundamental and important) similarities. I'm a little leery of some of the traits Brown ends up calling universal; he does acknowledge the "working" nature of such a list. But what precisely shall be found to be universal is less important than simply the shift to an orientation that would seek to understand human nature in such terms. This is what Brown proposes. He understands the place of anthropology in the social sciences, the field's potential, where and how that potential has gone unrealized, and how anthropologists will need to alter their approach if they're to be fruitful in the future. I haven't even scraped the surface here; the book is a gold mine of interdisciplinary connections and it brims with insights. More than anything, it's a sensible, biologically-informed, (dare I say) reality-based account of human nature. The tone is of a genuine pursuit of truth, rather than the trend among some social scientists to search high and low for anything that supports established theory. This book is packed, and in many ways it only aims to lay the framework of a better approach to the subject.
Rating: 5
Summary: An anthropological tour of our common humanness
Comment: This is a very welcome counterbalance to the many voices that stress differences among cultures at the cost of losing sight of what we humans share. With extensive use of anthropological studies, Brown alerts the reader to those almost innumerable and too easily taken-for-granted elements of humanity. We all smile when happy, mourn the loss of a child, negotiate a place in a social setting with specific traditional roles. We all eat, experience hunger, learn which foods are acceptable, connect eating with social occasions, use food-related activities as basic metaphors for aspects of life. (The annotated bibliography is especially good for its lists of shared human factors.) Those who stress differences among people now usually do so to promote tolerance of "the other." But a good basis for tolerance is to recognize the common humanness within all the differences. This book does that well. It is good but highly readable anthropology.
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Title: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker ISBN: 0670031518 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 26 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Passions Within Reason by Robert H. Frank ISBN: 0393960226 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 1989 List Price(USD): $18.15 |
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Title: Freedom Evolves by Daniel C. Dennett ISBN: 0670031860 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 10 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer ISBN: 0465006965 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 30 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley ISBN: 0060006781 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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