Horizons of Anthropology

by Sol Tax (Editor)

The scientific study of human evolution and culture is about a hundred years old. This volume surveys its achievements and methods. Originally published more than forty years ago, the volume's contributors include people who have shaped anthropology's future. As Gluckman says in his Preface, the contributions "point to the horizons of increasing understanding of man, his evolution and his social setting, as seen by a rising generation of scholars." The book includes chapters on how man gradually became different from other primates--on the origin and nature of language and its contribution to our peculiarities as human beings. It surveys the long history of human culture and societies and the theories about their similarities and differences; it discusses human equality and inequality, and it considers, from the anthropologist's point of view, economics, politics, law, religion, medicine, and the arts. In recent decades the various branches of anthropology--physical, cultural, psychological, and social--have become more specialized, and each branch is increasingly linking itself to its appropriate cognate, biological, psychological, or social sciences. Yet there remains a central common field to anthropology, as the science of man, for practitioners in all its branches. This book develops that common interest and deals with the specific problems of various parts of the field. The book brings out the basic nature of anthropology and the extraordinary fascination that lies in the systematic study of the exuberant variety of human societies and customs.

Genres: Anthropology, Science

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Kevin]

1964 - Sol Tax, as editor and chief, presents twenty one essays, written by nineteen gifted anthropology professors, representing nineteen separate anthropological disciplines.

HoA is fairly academic -

“...when structural description is extended outward via the referential function of language, it leads from analysis of linguistic form into analysis of patterns of use in contexts of situation. The same holds true when the scope of structural description is extended along the lines of the renewed interest in social variation...”

HoA is a little dated -

Because it was published in 1964, many of its suppositions have been superseded, through advancements in the science, by better rooted conclusions. Some of the essays stress outmoded processes such as an emphasis on race, or an emphasis on Freudian principles, or an emphasis on the ‘hierarchy’ of nature.

*NOTE: Be prepared for a few cringe worthy references (e.g. referring to women as “commodities,” referring to Africans as “negroids,” etc.).

HoA has Laura Nader! -

Laura Nader’s ‘Perspectives Gained From Field Work’ is as fresh and relevant today as ever. Nader writes about the epiphanies of insight accrued by the science of Cultural Anthropology via a methodology which has changed very little. Her essay alone is, in my humble opinion, worth the price of the book.

“Each of the nineteen anthropologists has described particular phenomena of biology and of culture; of archeology, linguistics, or ethnography; of politics, society, economics, religion, or the arts. All of us are specialists, but despite the diversity of our interests, we are nevertheless closely united in the science of man... All of us tend to believe equally that what we have learned in anthropology is important for everybody in the world to know, and some of us find it difficult not to shout it from the housetops.” ~Sol Tax