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Closed Systems and Open Minds - The Limits of Naivety in Social Anthropology (Hardcover)
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Closed Systems and Open Minds - The Limits of Naivety in Social Anthropology (Hardcover)
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Social anthropology, defined operationally in terms of what social
anthropologists have done in the last fifty years, is the study and
comparison of tribal societies and of small fields of social life
with emphasis on the role of custom. When a social anthropologist's
research leads him into any field, which belongs to other
disciplines, what line should he adopt? What use may he make of the
results that other scholars have already achieved? Must he
knowingly make naive assumptions concerning events, which they have
regarded as complex? In each of the fascinating essays which in
turn form the core of this book - V. W. Turner's on symbols in
Ndembu ritual; F.G. Bailey's on disputes which occurred in two
Orissa villages; A. L. Epstein's on urban communities in Africa; T.
Lupton's and S. Cunnison's on the relationship between behaviour in
three Manchester workshops and certain events which happened
outside; and W. Watson's on social mobility and social class in a
coalmining Scottish burgh-several social anthropologists attempt to
answer these questions by discussing the problems of method that
they have encountered in their own recent research; and in the
searching discussion which sum up the results. To analyze one first
has to circumscribe one's field, and then simplify within the area
of circumscription. Both circumscription and simplification may
involve procedures of absorbing, abridging, and making naive
assumptions. The contributors draw attention to the attempt to
distinguish between psychical facts (emotions, thoughts, etc.) and
psychological, which we believe should apply only to statements
within the science of psychology, and not to be used by the former.
They similarly distinguish between social facts and sociological or
social-anthropological statements. ""Psychological"" and
""sociological"" are so well established in common parlance as
adjectives to categorize facts that attempts to specialize them as
hopeless.
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