Not ‘To Study or Not to Study,’ But How?
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published 02/10/2007
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SummaryTo 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
- 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.
- 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.?
- 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.?
- Claude LŽvi-Strauss views anthropology as a method of finding 'the unshakable basis of human society.?
- 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.?
- Geertz criticizes LŽvi-Strauss's method, saying he contradicts himself by claiming that his profession is a 'personal quest driven by a personal vision,?
- 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
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