On Anthropological Knowledge: Three Essays (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Series Number 54) - Softcover

Sperber, Dan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521318513 ISBN 13: 9780521318518

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1985

Synopsis

What can be understood of other cultures? And what can we learn about people in general from the study of other cultures? In the three closely related essays that constitute this book and which have already created considerable controversy in their original French versions, and been rewritten and expanded for this edition, Dan Sperber discusses these fundamental issues of anthropology. In the first essay he analyses the way in which anthropology is written and read. In the second, he offers a novel rationalist alternative to cultural relativism, based on both anthropological and psychological arguments, and illustrated by his own fieldwork in Ethiopia. The third essay provides an assessment of the work of Lévi-Strauss, in which the arguments of the previous two essays are linked with an incisive critique of Lévi-Strauss' contribution to the study of cultural variation.

About this title

Book Description:

Dan Sperber discusses the way in which anthropology is written and read. He also offers a novel rationalist alternative to cultural relativism, based on anthropological and psychological arguments, and through his own fieldwork in Ethiopia, as well as providing an assessment of the work of Lévi-Strauss through incisive critique.

Language Notes:

Text: English, French (translation)

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0521318513
• ISBN 13: 9780521318518
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120