Closed Systems and Open Minds

Regular price €68.99
Quantity:
In stock with our UK publisher. 14-28 days
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
14 days return policy Shipping & Delivery
A. L. Epstein
A01=Max Gluckman
A01=Thomas Szasz
African Advancement
African Mine Community
African Mine Workers
African Political Institutions
Author_Max Gluckman
Author_Thomas Szasz
Category=JHMC
Clean Castes
Complex Social Field
dispute resolution anthropology
Dominant Symbols
Educational Affiliations
Ely Devons
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Evans Pritchard's Analysis
Evans Pritchard’s Analysis
F. G. Bailey
field delimitation in anthropology
Girl's Puberty Ritual
Girl’s Puberty Ritual
Informal Group Structure
Instrumental Symbols
Max Devons
Max Gluckman
Mine Compound
Mother Daughter Relationship
Ndembu Ritual
Ndembu Society
Northern Rhodesia
Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt
Orissa Legislative Assembly
Psycho Analytic Theory
ritual symbolism analysis
Ritual Symbols
Salaried Staff Association
Sheila Cunnison
Single Interest Relationships
social mobility studies
Social Systems
Tom Lupton
tribal societies research
urbanization in Africa
V. W. Turner
W. Watson
workshop ethnography
Young Man

Product details

  • ISBN 9780202308593
  • Weight: 453g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 15 Nov 2006
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis Inc
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
Secure checkout Fast Shipping Easy returns
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.
Max Gluckman (1911-1975) was head of the Department of Social Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Manchester.

More from this author