Best of
Anthropology

1972

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology


Gregory Bateson - 1972
    With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers. "This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books "[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

The North American Indian: The Complete Portfolios


Edward S. Curtis - 1972
    The photographs are accompanied by a selection of Curtis's texts.

Myths to Live By


Joseph Campbell - 1972
    Campbell stresses that the borders dividing the Earth have been shattered; that myths and religions have always followed the certain basic archetypes and are no longer exclusive to a single people, region, or religion. He shows how we must recognize their common denominators and allow this knowledge to be of use in fulfilling human potential everywhere.

Violence and the Sacred


René Girard - 1972
    Here Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred.

The Descent of Woman


Elaine Morgan - 1972
    On its first publication in 1972 it sparked an international debate and became a rallying-point for feminism, changing the terminology of anthropologists forever. Starting with her demolition of the Biblical myth that woman was an afterthought to the creation of man, Elaine Morgan rewrites human history and evolution.This lively, informative book sets out to solve the riddle of our origins; its answer is controversial. Elaine Morgan has made The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis a plausible alternative to conventional theories of evolution and The Descent of Woman first set out an understanding of who humans are and where they came from.Elaine Morgan was best known as a writer for television until the publication of The Descent of Woman in 1972, which became an international bestseller. She then spent ten years researching human evolution before publishing The Aquatic Ape (published by Souvenir Press as a revised edition, The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis) in 1982. In the years since, The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis has gone on to win widespread support among scientists.It is a measure of Elaine Morgan's enduring importance, provocative thought and international reputation that in January 2006, the first Chinese translation of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis became a Number 1 bestseller in Taiwan.

We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific


David Lewis - 1972
    This new edition includes a discussion of theories about traditional methods of navigation developed during recent decades, the story of the renaissance of star navigation throughout the Pacific, and material about navigation systems in Indonesia, Siberia, and the Indian Ocean.

The Mystic Warriors of the Plains: The Culture, Arts, Crafts and Religion of the Plains Indians


Thomas E. Mails - 1972
    Used by Kevin Costner as a resource text for the motion picture Dances with Wolves, this is an extraordinarily in-depth examination of the day-to-day lives of the North American plains Indians, with over one thousand illustrations and thirty-two four-color plates. Covering everything from social customs, personal qualities, and government to types of weaponry, achievement marks, and the training of Indian boys, The Mystic Warriors of the Plains is a comprehensive encyclopedia of Plains Indian lore that will delight and inform everyone interested in understanding the native peoples of the Plains. "Magnificently and accurately ... conveys both the tragic ironies and splendors of the rich plains civilization." —Newsweek "Fascinating detail that gives a better idea of the plains people than mere description can do...."—Navajo Times

St. Kilda: Island on the Edge of the World


Charles Maclean - 1972
    Increased contact with the mainland during the 19th century brought about the downfall of what many once regarded as an ideal society. Missionaries and tourists brought money, disease and despotism. In 1930 the islanders, who could no longer support themselves, were finally evacuated at their own request. The island, which is difficult to access, is now a nature reserve.

Gnosis: The Mesoteric Cycle (Book 2)


Boris Mouravieff - 1972
    Book by Mouravieff, Boris

Gnosis: Study and Commentaries on the Esoteric Tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy (Book Three: The Esoteric Cycle)


Boris Mouravieff - 1972
    so different that some people find it hard to accept, although it unravels many of the knotty points of theology and philosophy as well as certain key problems of our day."Great esoteric works do not argue with you... instead they leave an imprint on your being that is no less indelible for its subtlety; once you encounter them, you will never see things the same way again. To this list I'd have to add Gnosis..." - Richard Smoley, Editor, reviewing in Gnosis magazine.

Nunaga: Ten Years Among the Eskimos. Duncan Pryde


Duncan Pryde - 1972
    Pryde describes how, after a night-long flight, almost of the death, with the community bully, he won the respect and affection of these tough people, and came to share their life completely - all their concerns, joys and tribulations. he earned a degree of acceptance by the Eskimos that is granted to few white men; he witnessed the most sacred of Eskimo shaman ceremonies; he was paid the ultimate compliment - the invitation to share a friends wife.His story abounds in high adventure - incredible, near-fatal sled and canoe journeys; seal, polar bear and caribou hunts; breathtaking encounters with the beauty of Arctic fauna.

Posada's Popular Mexican Prints


José Posada - 1972
    For over forty years he worked tirelessly as an incorruptible and truly popular artist, illustrating cookbooks and fortune-telling books, collections of songs and riddles, periodicals and newspapers, children's books and novels, and most of all famous broadsides that were distributed throughout the country. After his death he was venerated by the artists of the new generation — Rivera, Orozco, and many others, who realized that he had both saved and renewed the art of engraving in Mexico, and incorporated much of Posada's imagery into their own work.Here are close to 300 of Posada's best engravings, all done for the printer and publisher A. Vanegas Arroyo in Mexico City. Posada worked in two techniques — engraving on type metal with a many-pointed burin and, later, relief etching on zinc. The broadsides he illustrated commemorated all sorts of occasions — disasters, political events, crimes, and miracles — or they glorified great popular heroes like Zapata. Posada was known for his calaveras — skeletons that cavorted, ate and drank, rode bicycles and horses, wielded swords and daggers, or were revolutionaries, streetcleaners, dishwashers, and almost everything else. This was traditional art for All Souls' Day, the Mexican Day of the Dead, but in Posada's hands it became extremely versatile, sometimes an instrument of social and political satire, sometimes a sympathetic portrait of a revolutionary, sometimes a comic, cartoon-like memento mori. He did engravings of murders, suicides, catastrophes, robberies, and executions, as well as of snake-men, giant snails, and other grotesques and deformation. He pictured the daily pleasures and chagrins of the people from a proletarian point of view, and with overflowing imaginativeness. There is brutality and horror in his art, but there is also humor, political consciousness, and a sprawling, immediate vitality.This edition includes explanatory notes and commentary, often giving precise topical meaning to what otherwise appears vague or allegorical. It presents all of Posada's various themes, and all of the many forms in which he worked in his maturity. It is hoped that through it he will gain the wider audience, especially in America, that he deserves.

Roots of Civilization


Alexander Marshack - 1972
    

The Jivaro: People of the Sacred Waterfalls


Michael Harner - 1972
    From 1599 onward they remained unconquered in their forest fastness east of the Andes, despite the fact that they were known to occupy one of the richest placer gold deposit regions in all of South America. Tales of their fierceness became part of the folklore of Latin America, and their warlike reputation spread in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Jivaro "shrunken head" trophies, tsantsa, found their way to the markets of exotica in the Western world. As occasional travelers visited them in the first decades of this century, the Jivaro also became known not as just a warlike group, but as an individualistic people intensely jealous of their freedom and unwilling to be subservient to authority, even among themselves. It was this quality that particularly attracted me when I went to study their way of life in 1956-57 and I was most fortunate, at that time, to find, especially east of the Cordillera de Cutucli, a portion of the Jivaro still unconquered and still living, with some changes, their traditional life style.  This book is about their culture.

Notes of an Alchemist


Loren Eiseley - 1972
    Eiseley describes this book as a "kind of alchemy...by which a scientific man has transmuted for his personal pleasure these sharp images into something deeply subjective."

Portraits from North American Indian Life


Edward S. Curtis - 1972
    The spirit of Native American life is covered in great depth and with remarkable sensitivity to the connections between them, but the most remarkable segments of this text are the portraits. Like no other photographer before him, Edward Curtis attempts to capture the essence of these people and shows you what it is to walk along their great land. Filled with full-page sepia tone photographs and detailed text, Portraits From North American Indian Life is a beautiful and historical reference for all to enjoy.

The Gods of Revolution: An Analysis of the French Revolution


Christopher Henry Dawson - 1972
    In so doing he reversed the trends of recent historiography which has concentrated primarily on examining the social and economic context of that great upheaval."Dawson underlines the fact that the Revolution was not animated by democratic ideals but rather reflected an authoritarian liberalism often marked by a fundamental contempt for the populace, described by Voltaire as "the 'canaille' that is not worthy of enlightenment and which deserves its yoke." The old Christian order had stressed a common faith and common service shared by nobles and peasants alike but Rousseau "pleads the cause of the individual against society, the poor against the rich, and the people against the privileged classes." It is Rousseau whom Dawson describes as the spiritual father of the new age in disclosing a new spirit of revolutionary idealism expressed in liberalism, socialism and anarchism. But the old unity was not replaced by a new form. Dawson insists the whole period following the Revolution is "characterized by a continual struggle between conflicting ideologies," and the periods of relative stabilization such as the Napoleonic restoration, Victorian liberalism in England, and capitalist imperialism in the second German empire "have been compromises or temporary truces between two periods of conquest." This leads to his assertion that "the survival of western culture demands unity as well as freedom, and the great problem of our time is how these two essentials are to be reconciled."This reconciliation will require more than technological efficiency for "a free society requires a higher degree of spiritual unity than a totalitarian one. Hence the spiritual integration of western culture is essential to its temporal survival." It is to Christianity alone that western culture "must look for leadership and help in restoring the moral and spiritual unity of our civilization," for it alone has the influence, "in ethics, in education, in literature, and in social action" sufficiently strong to achieve this end.

Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me!


Edmund Carpenter - 1972
    The effect, says Carpenter, is staggering: ""I think media are so powerful that they swallow cultures,"" encircling and destroying old environments, eroding and dissolving cultural identity. Citing his own experiences Carpenter tells of the stunning psychological disorientation he has witnessed among men who have just learned to write their names, heard their voices coming from a tape deck or seen their photograph for the first time; staring into the lens of a camera ""the terror in their eyes is the terror of being recognized as individuals"" -- for the first time each man saw himself and his environment ""and saw them as separable."" Unlike McLuhan, Carpenter is leery of ""hot"" media and openly biased toward the visual: Euclidian space, three-dimensionality, the phonetic alphabet are for him inexorably linked to the development of Western Civilization and its characteristic patterns -- lineality, causality, temporality, etc. Thus the ubiquitous use of radio in New Guinea alarms him. Radio is magic; it reinforces the separation of spirit and flesh hitherto confined to dream-myth rituals and ceremonials. He worries about its propaganda potential noting that in North Africa and Indonesia it has already been used to break down traditional tribal groupings, ""building nationalism to a feverish pitch and creating unreasonable national goals."" This sometimes smacks of Western paternalism but Carpenter pleads that no technology is neutral; the notion that electronics can simply be used to dispense information is folly; the medium is indeed the message. Some of his recommendations (government sponsored chess, crossword puzzles and ""huge mirrors erected in public places"") will make you blink but his repeated examples of media-induced distortions of human behavior are interesting enough to galvanize attention and draw feedback.

Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth


Walter Burkert - 1972
    How did this violent phenomenon achieve the status of the sacred? This question is examined in Walter Burkert's famous study.

A God Within


René Dubos - 1972
    

An Introduction to Animal Behaviour


Aubrey Manning - 1972
    The study of animal behavior is about all these things and more. It involves absolute stillness and violent activity, all the noises and smells and changes of color and shape that characterize animal life. Taking the organization of behavior within the individual animal as its core, this clear, concise and readable foray into the fascinating world of animal behavior investigates Tinbergen's questions of causation, evolution, development and function. It provides lucid accounts of all levels of behavior from the nerve cell to that of the population. The broad biological approach of this new, rewritten edition makes it an excellent choice for all students of animal behavior and psychology and their teachers.

Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes


Georgia Writers' Project - 1972
    In the later years of the depression, members of the Georgia Writers' Project visited and interviewed blacks, many of whose grandparents, smuggled into slavery as late as 1858, had passed on the customs and beliefs of their African past. Seeking evidence of African traditions, the project's workers questioned the blacks about conjure--the curses and potions responsible for turns of luck, illnesses, and even death--about dreams that often determine the course of daily life, and about spirits and other apparitions as real as walking, breathing people.

The Evolution of Primate Behavior


Alison Jolly - 1972
    

Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians


Pierre Clastres - 1972
    "Determined not to let the slightest detail" escape him or to leave unanswered the many questions prompted by his personal experiences, Clastres follows the Guayaki in their everyday lives.Now available for the first time in a stunningly beautiful translation by Paul Auster, Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians radically alters not only the Western academic conventions in which other cultures are thought but also the discipline of political anthropology itself.Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians was awarded the Alta Prize in nonfiction by the American Literary Translators Association.

The Delaware Indians: A History


C.A. Weslager - 1972
    . . the product of decades of study by a layman archeologist-historian. With a rich blend of archeology, anthropology, Indian oral traditions (he gives us one of the best accounts of the Walum Olum, the fascinating hieroglyphics depicting the tribal origins of the Delaware), and documentary research, Weslager writes for the general reader as well as the scholar."--American Historical Review In the seventeenth century white explorers and settlers encountered a tribe of Indians calling themselves Lenni Lenape along the Delaware River and its tributaries in New Jersey, Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania, and southeastern New York. Today communities of their descendants, known as Delawares, are found in Oklahoma, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Ontario, and individuals of Delaware ancestry are mingled with the white populations in many other states. The Delaware Indians is the first comprehensive account of what happened to the main body of the Delaware Nation over the past three centuries. C. A. Weslager puts into perspective the important events in United States history in which the Delawares participated and he adds new information about the Delawares. He bridges the gap between history and ethnology by analyzing the reasons why the Delawares were repeatedly victimized by the white man.

On Adam's House in Paradise: The Idea of the Primitive Hut in Architectural History


Joseph Rykwert - 1972
    En route, with wry wit and charm, Rykwert singes every generation of architectural theoreticians back to Vitruvius, but he manages to illuminate their efforts and their immolations.--Charles Moore, Progressive ArchitectureThis new edition of On Adam's House in Paradise (first published by the Museum of Modern Art) incorporates all the original illustrations and several new ones, as well as additional text by the author.

Warrior Herdsmen


Elizabeth Marshall Thomas - 1972
    They are proud, often cruel, warrior herdsmen whose oldest members live just as they did hundreds of years ago, but whose younger members sometimes learn to read and write and have brushed against the modern world. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas accompanied three anthropological expeditions to Africa and lived among the Dodoth. She displays a remarkable ability to communicate with the tribespeople and describe their lives and customs.

Wake Up Dead Man: Hard Labor and Southern Blues


Bruce Jackson - 1972
    Through engagingly documented song arrangements and profiles of their singers, Jackson shows how such pieces as "Hammer Ring," "Ration Blues," "Yellow Gal," and "Jody's Got My Wife and Gone" are like no other folk music forms: they are distinctly African in heritage, diminished in power and meaning outside their prison context, and used exclusively by black convicts.The songs helped workers through the rigors of cane cutting, logging, and cotton picking. Perhaps most important, they helped resolve the men's hopes and longings and allowed them a subtle outlet for grievances they could never voice when face-to-face with their jailers.

Phallos: A Symbol And Its History In The Male World


Thorkil Vanggaard - 1972
    A fascinating study of the phallus as a symbol of power and dominance, this book offers an interesting thesis regarding a cultural repression of homosexuality and some challenging hypotheses concerning elemental ties between boys and older men.

Rationality and Irrationality in Economics


Maurice Godelier - 1972
    The author, being a Marxist, sought the answers, as he writes, ‘not in philosophy or by philosophical means, but in and through examining the knowledge accumulated by the sciences.’ The stages of his journey from philosophy to economics and then to anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book.Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle the question of rationality or irrationality of economic science and of economic realities from the angle of an a priori idea, a speculative definition of what is rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and disappearance of social and economic systems in history as being governed by a necessity ‘wholly internal to the concrete structures of social life.

In Man We Trust: The Neglected Side of Biblical Faith


Walter Brueggemann - 1972
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Weapons & Fighting Arts of Indonesia


Donn F. Draeger - 1972
    This study on the martial arts of Indonesia discusses empty hand fighting and the use of weapons like spears, whips and knives, as well as the links between the fighting arts of China and India.

The Tausug: Violence and Law in a Philippine Moslem Society


Thomas M. Kiefer - 1972
    Full treatment is given to the forms violence takes among the Tausug as well as the conditions that trigger it, the manner in which restoration of honor may occur once threatened or damaged, and how disputes and violent feuds become social processes with ramifications throughout the social system.

Culture and Politics in Indonesia


Claire Holt - 1972
    The authors, representing the fields of anthropology, history, and political science, explore the ways in which traditional institutions, beliefs, values, and ethnic origins affect notions of power and rebellion, influence political party affiliations, and create new modes of cultural expression. Using two different but contemporary approaches, the authors show what can be learned about Indonesia through use of the Western concepts of "culture" and "politics." Professors Lev, Liddle, and Sartono illustrate how much can be gained from presenting Indonesian life in Western terms, while Professors Abdullah and Anderson contrast Indonesian and Western ideas. In an Afterword, Clifford Geertz reflects on the questions raised in these essays by discussing the tense relationships between Indonesian political institutions and the cultural framework in which they exist. CLAIRE HOLT was, until her death in 1970, Senior Research Associate of the Modern Indonesia Project, Cornell University. In Indonesia she served as assistant to the late Dr. W.F. Stutterheim, the noted archaeologist and cultural historian. She lectured extensively in Europe, the Far East, and the United States on Indonesian culture, and worked as a researcher and training specialist for the US Department of State.

The Black-Man of Zinacantan: a Central American Legend


Sarah Blaffer Hrdy - 1972
    

Marriage in Tribal Societies


Meyer Fortes - 1972
    Three papers by Esther Goody, Grace Harris and Jean La Fontaine give accounts of observations in African tribal societies; the fourth, by Marguerite Robinson, is a reassessment of Malinowski's data on the Trobrian islanders. Marriage in tribal societies is a transaction: it is also an institution with a place in the social structure. Status in marriage is seen as a crucial issue. The movement from filial to conjugal status in a first marriage is fundamental and irreversible; it is not diminished by subsequent divorce and remarriage. The partners may change, the status remains. Nevertheless, the rights and obligations of marriage, once authorised, are meant to be respected by all others. Hence the jural penalties for adultery. These are some of the themes which initiate important theoretical discussions in these papers. In his introductory essay Professor Fortes unifies the material, notes the important generalizations which emerge, and points the way to further research.

Prejudice And Tolerance In Ulster: A Study Of Neighbours And "Strangers" In A Border Community


Rosemary Harris - 1972