Author: Robert Harry Lowie

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-06-11

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9781330041031

Excerpt from The History of Ethnological Theory Ethnography is the science which deals with the "cultures" of human groups. By culture we understand the sum total of what an individual acquires from his society – those beliefs, customs, artistic norms, food-habits, and crafts which come to him not by his own creative activity but as a legacy from the past, conveyed by formal or informal education. The relation of ethnography to sister disciplines is thus clear. It is that part of anthropology (in the English sense of the word, the whole science of man) which is not primarily concerned with races as biological divisions of Homo sapiens and does not interest itself in the psychology of individuals except insofar as it reflects or influences society. On the other hand, prehistory is simply the ethnography of extinct social groups. At times ethnography shares its subject matter with literature, but its attitude is distinct. An exotic milieu, say, Tahiti, impresses itself on the sensibilities of a Pierre Loti, whose talent may convey similar thrills to the reader. An ethnographer does less and more. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.