Originally published in , this is an extraordinarily interesting and honest read. The basic questions about the structure of the natural world, the nature of right and wrong, and the meaning of life and death, as well as basic methods of considering the truth or falsehood of the answers those questions give rise to, are, Radin argues, recognizably consistent across the whole range of human societies.
The argument is clearly and forcibly made in pages that also contain an extraordinary collection of poems, proverbs, myths, and tales from a host of different cultures, making Primitive Man as Philosopher not only a lasting contribution to the discipline of anthropology but a unique, rich, and fascinating anthology, one that both illuminates and enlarges our imagination of the human.
Presents the oral traditions, legends, speeches, myths, histories, literature, and historically significant documents of the twelve independent bands and Indian Nations of Wisconsin. This anthology introduces us to a group of voices, enhanced by many maps, photographs, and chronologies.
An annotated collection of tales from the Winnebago people, drawn from the Smithsonian Institution among other sources, ranges from creation myths to trickster stories to myths and legends about the history of the tribe.
Wisconsin's thousands of effigy mounds and other ancient earthworks are a treasure of world civilization. This popular introduction for general readers, updated throughout with new archaeological findings and satellite imagery, answers the questions, Who built the mounds?
When and why were they built? Where can they be viewed? Originally published under the auspices of the Swiss-American Historical Society, this book is a collection of essays on topics of interest to persons of Swiss origin, especially those whose ancestors came to America after The book derives its title from its first and longest chapter, a description of the Swiss-American population in State by state, Mr.
In all, this scarce volume refers to nearly 2, Swiss or Swiss-Americans. This edited volume mainly focuses on the practice of taking and displaying various body parts as trophies in both North and South America.
The editors and contributors which include Native Peoples from both continents examine the evidence and causes of Amerindian trophy taking. Additionally, they present objectively and discuss dispassionately the topic of human proclivity toward ritual violence. This book fills the gap in literature on this subject. Failure and Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion presents a provocative critique of the unwillingness of modern scholars to publically distinguish research into comparative religion from confessional studies written within denominationally-affiliated institutions.
The book offers the 19th Century founders of the study of religion as a bracing corrective to contemporary timidity. The issue was analysed and documented by Wiebe a quarter of a century ago. Here, marking Wiebe's work, a wide range of contributors reassess the methodology and ambition of contemporary religious research. Moves such as this were probably what people thought of as fighting against windmills, too Marret But as Radin points out, without any illusions at being able to change anything, "at times it is of value to tilt against them simply in order to call the attention of the world to the fact that they are present.
Or as Diamond xviii puts it: "At a time of low civil courage and wild careerism, amply reflected in the academy, but evident everywhere in our civilization, Radin is a figure that heartens. He has never retreated into jargon, nor has he deflected his concern from the great, recurring, troubling themes in human history. Above all, he has never merely analyzed the lives of people called primitive; by some alchemy of insight he transmuted himself into their spokesman.
He did not go to extremes to please, but mostly everybody, as far as I can tell, respected him. Yet, liked or disliked, he is usually loved, for love is what he subtly demands in return for the gift of his being, the man and his work inseparable" Diamond xvii. Radin's personality, and his love, is perhaps best seen in his obituary for Robert Lowie Radin , on, or rather for whom he writes four pages without even once expressing anything but respect and mourning.
His basic idea, I think, was that anybody who did not have his huge background was not to be called an ethnologist, and those that had his background would automatically agree with him on the method. This approach, I think, might have largely been framed by the way Radin saw himself as a human being as such and in his culture. Becoming conscious must assuredly have been a painful and traumatic experience, one to which he offered a most tenacious and continuous resistance. And he was right" Radin The history of mankind and of civilization being thus a religious history, it is not surprising that Radin focuses on myth as a key to the interpretation and understanding of culture.
However, "It may seem virtually unbelievable that, to this day, Radin is in practice the only anthropologist in the narrow sense of the word [ Basic to an understanding of Radin's idea about these cultural functions of thought is, I think, an understanding of his ethical requirements on humans and especially ethnographers, who are necessarily oscillating between the opposition of humility and hybris since the day they got conscious.
As Goldenweiser says in his review of Social Anthropology: "Dr. Radin has admirably succeeded in being a Winnebago but finds it more difficult to cease being one.
But Radin's problem, I think, lay deeper, and can be exemplified by a look at his work on the Trickster cycle. Trickster is, for Radin i. This is the Aristotelian thought of zoon politikon. Hybris on this point, which "life is always forcing upon us," "must end in tragedy and disaster" Radin No wonder mankind offered resistance to the traumatic experience of becoming conscious: it subjected us to a constant battle against our own hybris.
This is why Radin demands humility from an ethnographer, just as he demands it from an historian: "Modesty and a due humility in the presence of the long and chequered course of human events and the forces at work behind them" Radin Modesty and humility thus also means a reserved interpretation of ethnographic data, and recognition of the limits set for such interpretation. The only "adequate and accurate" presentation of ethnographic data is one "that is wholly free from manifest preconceptions and theoretical bias" Radin viii.
It thus comes as no surprise that Radin was more interested in ethnographers than in ethnography Dietschy It is really a marvel that they have done so well" Radin And it should also come as no surprise, and no paradox, that academia had a slight problem with these positions and the critique following from them.
Nobody likes to be ethnographically studied and criticised, but especially not ethnographers themselves. Honesty and Integrity The acknowledgment of one's limitation is, I think, what Radin means by "honesty," and it is his public acknowledgment that others termed "integrity. If I may respond for Radin, then the maker of bricks has to make his bricks in an attempt at perfection, because he does not and can not know the architect's design: it simply is not there, but is constructed with the bricks.
If one brick is bad, then the building might tumble down. If the supposed or self-appointed architect looks upon the brick making as a humble handicraft, he is blinded by hybris; if the brick maker is not attempting perfection, he is not integer. Attempting perfection, for the ethnographer, means to conduct long term field studies — a lifetime Radin — in an attempt to really understand the people.
Like the people in this story, Radin basically chose integrity over existence. But I don't think he would have expressed this as a choice. For him, it was a human necessity. No more, he says, and yet should have said, No less. This is the sort of theory that drives people crazy who are looking for an exact method, with a list of proceedings to follow, because it depends on common sense and a shared understanding of the "obvious".
It, of course, is the obvious for Radin, and a common sense that apparently was not that common, as can be seen by hoe Radin felt obliged to defend it; nevertheless, it is the obvious.
Koppers was probably not the only one who looked for an exact method in vain. Radin may thus be right in his critique of Plato, but in fact, he also is drawing upon "great intellectual gifts, encyclopedic vision, and [a] religious-spiritual goal" to understand "man's cultural evolution. His axioms, his "ideas," seem not to differ terribly from Plato's, at least in the study of culture; for Plato, it is impossible to define the "Good", as one can only see it, and it seems that for Radin, it is impossible to define "culture".
One of his most famous and influential work is his The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian Radin In its introduction, he states that ideally, an ethnographic account should come from a member of the society, or at least an investigator who became a member of the society he studies. But no well-qualified ethnologist, he says, is prepared to spend the necessary time — one's life — in a 1 I am not sure if this is true, but I have not found a definition of "culture" anywhere.
As this is a position I have held for a long time e. Even though members of a society are mostly not able to give "a well- rounded and complete account" of their culture, however, their "personal reminiscences and impressions, inadequate as they are, are likely to throw more light on the workings of the mind and emotions of primitive man than any amount of speculation from a sophisticated ethnologist or ethnological theorist" Radin And I think that this title is about as close as one can come to Radin's ideal ethnography.
Culture and individual - psychoanalysis The approach to the individual is psychology. But in contrast to C. Threatening Anthropology. DIVAn archival history of governmental investigations of anthropologists in the s, based on over 20, pages of documents obtained by the author under the Freedom of Information Act.
Primitive Man as Philosopher. Writing in the s, when anthropology was.
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