Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Culture : The Anthropologists’ Account / Adam Kuper.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2009]Copyright date: 2000Description: 1 online resource (320 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780674039810
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 306 21/eng/20230216
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- Introduction: Culture Wars -- Part One: Genealogies -- 1 Culture and Civilization: French, German, and English Intellectuals, 1930–1958 -- 2 The Social Science Account: Talcott Parsons and the American Anthropologists -- Part Two: Experiments -- 3 Clifford Geertz: Culture as Religion and as Grand Opera -- 4 David Schneider: Biology as Culture -- 5 Marshall Sahlins: History as Culture -- 6 Brave New World -- 7 Culture, Difference, Identity -- NOTES -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INDEX
Summary: 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.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780674039810

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- PREFACE -- Introduction: Culture Wars -- Part One: Genealogies -- 1 Culture and Civilization: French, German, and English Intellectuals, 1930–1958 -- 2 The Social Science Account: Talcott Parsons and the American Anthropologists -- Part Two: Experiments -- 3 Clifford Geertz: Culture as Religion and as Grand Opera -- 4 David Schneider: Biology as Culture -- 5 Marshall Sahlins: History as Culture -- 6 Brave New World -- 7 Culture, Difference, Identity -- NOTES -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INDEX

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

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.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024)