lunes, 27 de diciembre de 2010

Antropología/Arqueología

Shore, Bradd. Culture in mind : congnition, culture, and problem of meaning: Oxford University Press, 1996.


For most of the 20th century, social scientists have assumed that all human beings essentially "think alike"-that seeming differences in the ways people conceive of the world are due to "superficial" cultural differences rather than to "actual" physical differences. This unquestioned tenet of anthropology arose in reaction to the Darwinian concepts of the previous century, where "different" was assumed to mean inferior to Western cognition. In this important book, Shore argues that the dichotomy between the cultural and the physical is false, since humans are necessarily culture-bearing creatures. In making this argument, he discusses diverse cultural models such as American baseball, Australian aborigine initiation, and the spatial arrangement of Samoan villages. While the ideas discussed here are important, the book is not easy reading and will be of interest mainly to anthropologists (psychologists, alas, should pay greater attention to cross-cultural differences, but do not). Academic and research libraries with anthropology collections will consider this a necessary purchase.
Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, Wash.