Books by "Robert Bates Graber"
2 books found
The greatest of cultural achievements, from the Taj Majal to Beethovens 9th symphony, could never have been produced, or even dreamt of, except in a society organized on a state basis. Had people continued to live in small, autonomous communities, as they had for the first two million years of human existence, such achievements would have remained well beyond their capabilities. Thus the form of organization known as the state was one of the most momentous attainments in human history. Yet most theories tracing this development, from the tiniest villages to large and complex states, remain unsatisfactory. The invention of agriculture and the production of food surpluses have been seen as essential to this development but they were not enough. Some means had to be invoked enabling the surmounting of local autonomies and the creation of multi-community political units, first chiefdoms and eventually states. And since societies, no matter how small, do not give up their sovereignty voluntarily, they had to be coerced into doing so through the agency of war. But warfare only under special conditions, those specified by the Circumscription Theory. This theory, now the leading anthropological theory of early state formation, is not only described in detail in this book, but is also accompanied here by an accountnever before toldof the theorys curious and convoluted history.
Examines the history of evolutionism in cultural anthropology, beginning with its roots in the 19th century, through the half-century of anti-evolutionism, to its reemergence in the 1950s, and the current perspectives on it today. No other book covers the subject so fully or over such a long period of time.. Evolutionism and Cultural Anthropology traces the interaction of evolutionary thought and anthropological theory from Herbert Spencer to the twenty-first century. It is a focused examination of how the idea of evolution has continued to provide anthropology with a master principle around which a vast body of data can be organized and synthesized. Erudite and readable, and quoting extensively from early theorists (such as Edward Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, John McLennan, Henry Maine, and James Frazer) so that the reader might judge them on the basis of their own words, Evolutionism and Cultural Anthropology is useful reading for courses in anthropological theory and the history of anthropology. 0813337666 Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology : a Critical History