In Search Of The Primitive: A Critique Of Civilization Paperback

Stanley Diamond

Anthropology is a kind of debate between human possibilities-a dialectical movement between the anthropologist as a modern man and the primitive peoples he studies. In Search of the Primitive is a tough-minded book containing chapters ranging from encounters in the field to essays on the nature of law, schizophrenia and civilization, and the evolution of the work of Claude Levi-Strauss. Above all it is reflective and self-critical, critical of the discipline of anthropology and of the civilization that produced that discipline. Diamond views the anthropologist who refuses to become a searching critic of his own civilizations as not merely irresponsible, but a tool of Western civilization. He rejects the associations which have been made in the ideology of our civilization, consciously or unconsciously, between Western dominance and progress, imperialism and evolution, evolution and progress.

9780878555826

English

Taylor And Francis Inc

42853

284

Stanley Diamond was professor of anthropology in the graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, USA. He was the founder and editor of Dialectical Anthropology and a research scientist at the National Institutes of Health, USA.

By a brilliant but unorthodox American anthropologist . . . a beautifully presented set of ideas, which should be read by anyone seriously interested in anthropology. Diamond stands out as one of the most perceptive of those who are arguing for a reformation of anthropology.- -- Choice