Culture and Human Nature

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Overview

This volume illustrates Melford Spiro's explorations of key relationships among culture, society, and human nature. He addresses such fundamental issues as the limitations of cultural relativism, the problem of explanation in the social sciences, and the importance of a comparative approach to the study of social and cultural systems. Spiro believes that deep motivational and cognitive structures underlie human behavior. He argues that these structures can be explained by the evolutionary history of our species and by social experience.

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781560007029
  • Publisher: Transaction Publishers
  • Publication date: 1/1/1994
  • Edition description: REV
  • Pages: 309
  • Sales rank: 956,409
  • Product dimensions: 6.06 (w) x 8.88 (h) x 0.90 (d)

Meet the Author

Melford E. Spiro is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the anthropology department in 1968. Before that he taught at Harvard University where he founded the anthropology department. Among his works are Gender and Culture, Oedipus in the Trobriands, and Culture and Human Nature.

Melford E. Spiro is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the anthropology department in 1968. Before that he taught at Harvard University where he founded the anthropology department. Among his works are Gender and Culture, Oedipus in the Trobriands, and Culture and Human Nature.

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Table of Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition
Editors' Introduction
1 Culture and Human Nature 3
2 Some Reflections on Cultural Determinism and Relativism with Special Attention to Emotion and Reason 32
3 Preculture and Gender 59
4 Is the Oedipus Complex Universal? 72
5 Social Systems, Personality, and Functional Analysis 109
6 Religious Systems as Culturally Constituted Defense Mechanisms 145
7 Collective Representations and Mental Representations in Religious Symbol Systems 161
8 Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation 187
9 Virgin Birth, Parthenogenesis, and Physiological Paternity: An Essay in Cultural Interpretation 223
10 Whatever happened to the Id? 250
11 Some Reflections on Family and Religion in East Asia 262
12 Symbolism and Functionalism in the Anthropological Study of Religion 286
Index 303
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