This lost classic by Leslie A. White represents twenty-five years of his scholarship on the anthropology of modern capitalism. Drawing out his now classic formulations of social organization, cultural evolution, and the relationship between technology, ecology, and culture, this major theoretical work traces a vast expanse of history from the earliest forms of capitalism to the detailed inner workings of contemporary democratic institutions. The abridged version of Modern Capitalist Culture delivers all of White’s major arguments in a clear and concise manner. A substantial foreword by Burton J. Brown, Benjamin Urish, and Robert Carneiro both situates this posthumous work within the history of anthropological theory and shows its importance to contemporary debates within the discipline.
This lost classic by famous anthropological theorist Leslie A. White, published now for the first time, represents twenty-five years of his scholarship on the anthropology of modern capitalism. Drawing out his now classic formulations of social organization, cultural evolution, and the relationship between technology, ecology, and culture, this major theoretical work traces a vast expanse of history from the earliest forms of capitalism to the detailed inner workings of contemporary democratic institutions. A substantial foreword by Burton J. Brown, Benjamin Urish, and Robert Carneiro both situates this posthumous work within the history of anthropological theory and shows its importance to contemporary debates within the discipline.
Evolutionism and Its Critics is a critical history of evolutionary theories in the social sciences and a defense of them against their many critics. Sanderson deconstructs not only the wide array of social evolutionary theories, but the criticisms of the antievolutionists. Deconstructing evolutionary theories means laying bare their fundamental epistemological, methodological, conceptual, and theoretical assumptions and principles. Deconstructing antievolutionism means showing just where and how the critics have, for the most part, gone wrong. But Evolutionism and Its Critics aims to reconstruct as well as deconstruct and does this by building on the shoulders of past giants of evolutionary theorizing a comprehensive evolutionary interpretation of human society based on abundant scientific and historical evidence.
Histories of Anthropology Annual presents diverse perspectives on the discipline's history within a global context. Critical, comparative, analytical, and narrative studies involving all aspects and subfields of anthropology are included.øVolume 3 features critical and biographical studies of Sir Richard Burton, Frank Hamilton Cushing, J. N. B. Hewitt, Stephen Leacock, Antänor Firmin, and Leslie A. White. Analytical topics include applied and collaborative anthropologies, Edward Sapir's phonemic poetics, mercantile proto-capitalism, the Delaware Big House ceremony, and race and racism in anthropology.
Few figures in modern American anthropology have been more controversial or influential than Leslie A. White (1900?1975). Between the early 1940s and mid-1960s, White?s work was widely discussed, and he was among the most frequently cited American anthropologists in the world. After writing several respected ethnographic works about the Pueblo Indians, White broke ranks with anthropologists who favored such cultural histories and began to radically rethink American anthropology. As his political interest in socialism grew, he revitalized the concept of cultural evolution and reinvigorated comparative studies of culture. His strident political beliefs, radical interpretive vision, and often combative nature earned him enemies inside and outside the academy. His trip to the Soviet Union and participation in the Socialist Labor Party brought him to the attention of the FBI during the height of the Cold War, and near-legendary scholarly and political conflicts surrounded him at the University of Michigan. ø Placing White?s life and work in historic context, William J. Peace documents the broad sociopolitical influences that affected his career, including many aspects of White?s life that are largely unknown, such as the reasons he became antagonistic toward Boasian anthropology. In so doing, Peace sheds light on what made White such a colorful figure as well as his enduring contributions to modern anthropology.
There has been a significant surge in recent Argentine cinema, with an explosion in the number of films made in the country since the mid-1990s. Many of these productions have been highly acclaimed by critics in Argentina and elsewhere. What makes this boom all the more extraordinary is its coinciding with a period of severe economic crisis and civil unrest in the nation. Offering the first in-depth English-language study of Argentine fiction films of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first, Joanna Page explains how these productions have registered Argentina’s experience of capitalism, neoliberalism, and economic crisis. In different ways, the films selected for discussion testify to the social consequences of growing unemployment, rising crime, marginalization, and the expansion of the informal economy. Page focuses particularly on films associated with New Argentine Cinema, but she also discusses highly experimental films and genre movies that borrow from the conventions of crime thrillers, Westerns, and film noir. She analyzes films that have received wide international recognition alongside others that have rarely been shown outside Argentina. What unites all the films she examines is their attention to shifts in subjectivity provoked by political or economic conditions and events. Page emphasizes the paradoxes arising from the circulation of Argentine films within the same global economy they so often critique, and she argues that while Argentine cinema has been intent on narrating the collapse of the nation-state, it has also contributed to the nation’s reconstruction. She brings the films into dialogue with a broader range of issues in contemporary film criticism, including the role of national and transnational film studies, theories of subjectivity and spectatorship, and the relationship between private and public spheres.
Studying six Islamic states in detail, Ayubi encompasses innovative material on sex and the family, and on the emerging alternative economic and social networks of Islamic banks, schools, and hospitals in those states.
…Formally speaking, the New Economy Policy had been replaced by the New Economic Order, which had been promulgated in the name of liberalism. Thus it may seem that the issues and concerns addressed by the book had been rendered irrelevant by the shift in policy. Against such proposition, I must say that my book addresses itself to the question of ideas, principles and weltanschaaung beyond mere policies and formality. It is therefore too early in the day to conclude that the new liberalism has definitively replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) as an era and ethos, throwing into question the relevance of this book. It may well turn out to be that the issues and concerns of the book transcend superficial policy changes in a more fundamental way. -Shaharuddin Maaruf University of Malaya 15 April 2014 The sweep through the history of Malay political ideas which is to be encountered in Malay Ideas on Development from Feudal Lord to Capitalist – a sweep achieved with analytic skill and clarity – will stimulate new readers to seek more detailed examination of one targeted writer or another. Creating such desire is an indication of the book’s effectiveness. Juxtaposing one thinker with another, setting modern debate in the context of traditional political thought, proposing categories or streams of political thinking – ‘capitalistic nationalism’, ‘traditionalistic nationalism’ and so forth – is the best possible way of promoting a greater interest in the history of Malay political thinking, and not just as an academic enterprise. Shaharuddin Maaruf is one of a small handful of scholarly pioneers whose work has the capacity to enrich the quality of political debate in Malaysia. -Anthony Milner Basham Professor for Asian History, Australian National University
An abridged edition of the insightful work praised as “an impressive contribution both to the history of ideas and to political philosophy” (Alasdair MacIntyre, author of After Virtue). Once of central importance to left historians and activists alike, recently the concept of the “bourgeois revolution” has come in for sustained criticism from both Marxists and conservatives. In this abridged edition of his magisterial How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? Neil Davidson expertly distills his theoretical and historical insights about the nature of revolutions, making them accessible for general readers. Through extensive research and comprehensive analysis, Davidson demonstrates that what’s at stake is far from a stale issue for the history books—understanding that these struggles of the past offer far reaching lessons for today’s radicals.
