The Nature of Cultural Things

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

Published by Random House, New York, 1964

About this Item

x+209 pages with charts, tables, bibliography and index. Small octavo (7 1/4" x 4 1/4") bound in original publisher's wrappers. First edition. If the study of culture as a field of scientific inquiry is to be comprehensively developed, its logico-empirical measuring and classifying operations must be laid bare. Professor Harris book is an account of what he believes to constitute the (ideal) logico-empirical operations in cultural anthropology. Basic to Harris point of view is the assumption that one can develop an observer oriented analysis of behavioral events that precludes the need to know the actor s goals, motives, and meanings. This observer-oriented analysis specifically denies that the first responsibility of the anthropologist is to set down events as seen by the people he is studying (Kluckhohn 1943: 300, cited by Harris, p. 93). Harris holds that actor-oriented analysis is essentially unreliable in its present operational format, What, then, are the logico-empirical classifying operations which are presumed adequate to impose order on the behavior stream? An observer-oriented classificatory structure of body movement might be developed from a variety of premises. For example, if one believes that this particular species (non-verbal man) responds in patterned ways to environmental pressures, one might systematically vary the environmental pressures and observe the differential body movements. Harris has chosen a different position, namely that man s nonverbal behavior affects the environment. The basic class of behavior to be described, then, is the movement of some body part(s) and the environmental effect caused by the movement of the part(s). Body part plus body motion plus environmental effect constitutes the classificatory unit called the actone, the basic building block in Harris system. Every new ethnographic approach deserves a trial. Until Har!is analysis has been tested a great deal more extensively than in the present work, it is impossible to tell how useful it will be. Condition: Pages age toned, previous owner's label to front end paper, light edge wear else a better than very good copy.

Seller Inventory # A2155

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Nature of Cultural Things
• Publisher: Random House, New York
• Publication Date: 1964
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Anthropology