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More About This Textbook
Overview
Suddenly culture seems to explain everything, from civil wars to financial crises and divorce rates. But when we speak of culture, what, precisely, do we mean?
Adam Kuper pursues the concept of culture from the early twentieth century debates to its adoption by American social science under the tutelage of Talcott Parsons. What follows is the story of how the idea fared within American anthropology, the discipline that took on culture as its special subject. Here we see the influence of such prominent thinkers as Clifford Geertz, David Schneider, Marshall Sahlins, and their successors, who represent the mainstream of American cultural anthropology in the second half of the twentieth century—the leading tradition in world anthropology in our day. These anthropologists put the idea of culture to the ultimate test—in detailed, empirical ethnographic studies—and Kuper's account shows how the results raise more questions than they answer about the possibilities and validity of cultural analysis.
Written with passion and wit, Culture clarifies a crucial chapter in recent intellectual history. Adam Kuper makes the case against cultural determinism and argues that political and economic forces, social institutions, and biological processes must take their place in any complete explanation of why people think and behave as they do.
Editorial Reviews
Library Journal
Kuper (social anthropology, Brunel Univ., U.K.) takes a penetrating look at the concept of culture, moving from antecedents in 18th- and 19th-century thought to focus on its meaning within post-World War II social sciences in America under the leadership of Talcott Parsons. Kuper examines the mid-century ethnographic work of Clifford Geertz, David Schneider, and Marshall Sahlins to determine how they applied theories of culture in the field and concludes with observations on the generation of anthropologists who were graduate students in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Kuper concludes that "the more one considers the best modern work on culture by anthropologists, the more advisable it must appear to avoid the hyper-referential word altogether, and to talk more precisely of knowledge, or belief, or art, or technology, or tradition, or even of ideology." Written with verve and fascinating insight into the ins and outs of modern cultural anthropology, Kuper's book will appeal to students of anthropology and intellectual history.--Joan W. Gartland, Detroit P.L. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Product Details
Meet the Author
Adam Kuper is a Fellow of the British Academy.
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