Culture and Human Nature / Edition 1

by Melford E. Spiro

Overview

This volume illustrates Melford Spiro's explorations of key relationships among culture, society, and human nature. He addresses such fundamental issues as the limitations of cultural relativism, the problem of explanation in the social sciences, and the importance of a comparative approach to the study of social and cultural systems. Spiro believes that deep motivational and cognitive structures underlie human behavior. He argues that these structures can be explained by the evolutionary history of our species and by social experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781560007029
Publisher:	Transaction Publishers
Publication date:	02/28/1994
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	342
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Melford E. Spiro is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the anthropology department in 1968. Among the many books he has published are Anthropological Other or Burmese Brother? and Oedipus in the Trobrtands.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Transaction Edition, Editors' Introduction, I. CULTURE AND HUMAN NATURE, 1. Culture and Human Nature, 2. Some Reflections on Cultural Determinism and Relativism with Special Attention to Emotion and Reason, 3. Preculture and Gender, 4. Is the Oedipus Complex Universal?, II. FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS, 5. Social Systems, Personality, and Functional Analysis, 6. Religious Systems as Culturally Constituted Defense Mechanisms, 7. Collective Representations and Mental Representations in Religious Symbol Systems, III. RELIGION AND MYTH, 8. Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation, 9. Virgin Birth, Parthenogenesis, and Physiological Paternity: An Essay in Cultural Interpretation, 10. Whatever Happened to the Id?, 11. Some Reflections on Family and Religion in East Asia, 12. Symbolism and Functionalism in the Anthropological Study of Religion, Index