Human Types

by Raymond Firth

Based on a wide range of field studies, Sir Raymond Firth discusses the geographical and historical factors that determine the development of racial groups; shows how culture is an out-growth of natural environment; and describes how various societies have solved the economic, technological, social and sexual problems that confront them. The book provides a framework for understanding all human societies and interpreting the changes that take place within them.

Genres: Anthropology

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Sir Raymond William Firth CNZM FRAI FBA was an ethnologist from New Zealand. As a result of Firth's ethnographic work, actual behaviour of societies (social organization) is separated from the idealized rules of behaviour within the particular society (social structure). He was a long serving professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, and is considered to have singlehandedly created a form of British economic anthropology.

Reviews

[Gary Bruff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Human Types is old anthropology. Thankfully and unlike much other old anthropology, it is not about race and races. What type of person a human can be varies according to the vagaries of history and the idiosyncratic manifestations of any individual member of a society. So the title ‘Human Types’ is unfortunate. More apropos is the subtitle ‘An Introduction to Social Anthropology’. Unlike cultural anthropologists who emerged from the psychological study of Native American languages and cultures to establish American cultural anthropology, social anthropologists were more interested in conflict and cooperation, in bonds that tie people together and oppositions that tear people asunder. Firth gives the example of a tribe of pig farmers who followed a traditional rule where farmers were forbidden to eat their own pigs. As a result, people were forced to generously give and graciously receive from fellow members of society in order to eat and survive. The purpose of the rule seems to be to make people cooperate with one another even if they have no other relationship besides neighbor or friend. And this enforced cooperation improves the survival chances of the group as a whole. Nobody can survive alone, so sociality is both a natural and a necessary cure for alienation and private struggle. The taboo on eating your own pigs is analogous to the taboos against incest or cannibalism. Kinda. But more significantly it creates a cycle of reciprocity that glues folks together.

Human Types ranges through the topics of social anthropology along a familiar route: human nature as social, economic cooperation as kin based, political disputes settled through the same kin groupings, the political economy of small scale civilizations sustained by “reason and unreason”, meaning folk wisdom and popular superstition. At the end, a case is even made for ‘applied anthropology’, which smacks of Orwellianism but which was really intended to lend benevolent guidance to bureaucratic machines which at the time were prone to tragic blunders in the ethnographically ignorant administration of colonial empires.

Human Types is obviously a very dated book, but it is nevertheless a lucid introduction to the study of primitive tribal societies (which are no longer the main subjects of ethnographic research) from a social-functional perspective (which is no longer more than a tangent in current introductions to the field). I found the topically organized bibliography (‘For Further Reading’) to be a very interesting snapshot of an earlier ethnographic and ethnological canon.

[J.D. Steens · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a dated (1958)overview of social anthropology. The book's title and first chapter ("Racial Traits and Mental Differences")caught my attention. Firth (gently) pushes back against arguments that there is such as thing as superiority of race based on mental measurements. What is interesting is how much theory and effort was put into arguments that attempted to prove such superiority. While Firth is fairly clear that humans are humans with many different cultural practices, the emphasis on documenting superiority says far more about the theorists and researchers themselves: An accepted assumption of one's superiority leads to questions about how such superiority/inferiority can be documented (e.g., cranial size).

While Firth himself does not go this far, different cultural practices may have underlying human universals such as tribalism (a group needs to cohere, and coheres by developing its own, even arbitrary, rules); the central role of reciprocity and respect; the role of rank and social status; the rules governing sexual relationships; and the role of magic and religion in getting what we need or want (seeking; "pleasure"), and avoiding what we don't want or need (avoiding; "pain"). Firth says that while the simple cultures do use magic, that is not to say they are not highly sophisticated, rational and practical when it comes to day-to-day challenges (e.g., the Pacific islanders who built ocean-going canoes). Rationality, magic, religion, and technology are all woven together, tightly, as an organic whole. If Western or developed cultures sense they are superior because they are rational and not magical, Firth reminds the reader that prayers to transcended beings to assist us is, likewise, integrated with our highly rational approach in day-to-day endeavors.

[José Van Rosmalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit boek verscheen in 1962 in het Nederlands onder de titel ‘ Sociale antropologie, een inleiding’. Het boek is dus meer dan zestig jaar geleden geschreven. Toch had de auteur al wel moderne inzichten. Hij verzette zich tegen westers superioriteitsdenken en hij presenteerde veel informatie gebaseerd op onderzoek. De antropologie probeert menselijk gedrag te beschrijven, hoe mensen werken, wonen, de rol van mannen en vrouwen, van ouderen en jongeren. Dat gebeurde vooral in niet westerse gebieden, waar mensen ‘afgesneden’ waren van de westerse beschaving, maar later ook in onze samenleving. Het is dan een manier van kijken en analyseren, liefst zonder vooroordeel. Het boek geeft een beeld van de wetenschappelijke nieuwsgierigheid en de resultaten waar die toe kunnen leiden. Het boek is natuurlijk niet meer up to date, maar voor de ontwikkelingsgeschiedenis van dit vakgebied nog wel relevant.