Not ‘To Study or Not to Study,’ But How?
extension 5 word format
document in English
biology biology
 
presentation
published 02/10/2007
 
review : Completed
level : General public
requested 0 times
 
section Summary
 
 
To highlight what constitutes the foundation of Man, anthropologists, ethnographers, and theologians like Jonathan Smith, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Clifford Geertz constantly study “savage” societies, societies very different from our own. Scholars endlessly debate which characteristics all people possess and try to find a definition of religion that holds true for all societies and all religions, yet they never seem to consider the large discrepancies in research methods.
 
 

Table of Contents Not ‘To Study or Not to Study,’ But How? Table of Contents

 
  1. To highlight what constitutes the foundation of Man, anthropologists, ethnographers, and theologians like Jonathan Smith, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Clifford Geertz constantly study 'savage' societies, societies very different from our own.
  2. Anthropologists then can use their data to classify religions and 'attempt to distinguish: religion from other taxa of human experience and expression' various taxa within religion, [and]'taxa within a particular religion.?
  3. To solve this problem of ambiguous classifications, Smith proposes first '[selecting] a single taxic indicator that appears to function within the tradition as an internal agent of discrimination.?
  4. Claude LŽvi-Strauss views anthropology as a method of finding 'the unshakable basis of human society.?
  5. To best study societies, Lévi-Strauss also feels the need to study the most basic and primitive, to 'reach the extreme limits of the savage.?
  6. Geertz criticizes LŽvi-Strauss's method, saying he contradicts himself by claiming that his profession is a 'personal quest driven by a personal vision,?
  7. This inability to fully understand one culture and the lack of comparison resulting from the study of only one culture, leaves anthropologists with a seemingly hopeless dilemma
 
 
section Most downloaded documents over 30 days in biology
 
 
 
section Latest in the category biology
 
 
 
section From the same author