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Personality and the Cultural Construction of Society

Personality and the Cultural Construction of Society

by David K. Jordan and Marc J. Swartz

448 Pages, 6.12 x 9.25 x 1.50 in

Paperback
9780817356347
Published: May 2010

$44.95

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eBook
9780817384081
Published: March 2010

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Description
Contents
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Pyschological anthropology is a vital area of contemporary social science, and one of the field's most important and innovative thinkers is Melford E. Spiro. This volume brings together sixteen essays that review Spiro's theoretical insights and extend them into new areas. The essays center on several general problems: In what ways is it meaningful to speak of a social act as having "functions"? What elements and processes of human personality are universal, and why? What is the relationship between religion and personality? Why? What are the pyschological underpinnings of social manipulation?

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I: NONTELEOLOGICAL FUNCTIONALISM

1. Melford Spiro and the Scientific Study of Culture / Kevin Avruch

2. Natural Objects and Substitutive Acts: The Symbolic Process in the Anthropologies of Durkheim and Freud / Michael E. Meeker

3. Culturally Constituted Defenses and the Theory of Collective Motivation / Cananath Obeyesekere

4. Eufunctions, Dysfunctions, and Oracles: Literary Miracle Making in Taiwan / David K. Jordan

5. Aggressive Speech, Status, and Cultural Distribution among the Swahili of Mombasa / Marc J. Swartz

PART II: CULTURE AND PERSONALITY, GENDER ROLES, THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX, AND DREAMS

6. Culture and Personality: A False Dichotomy / Roy G. D'Andrade

7. On the "Petticoat Government" of the Eighteenth-Century Cherokee / Raymond D. Fogelson

8. Male and Female in Four Changing Cultures / George and Louise Spindler

9. Cloths of Heaven: Freud, Language, and the Negation in Pitjantjatjara Dreams / Aram Yengoyan

10. From Empathy to Alienation: Problems in Human Belonging / George De Vos

PART III: RELIGION AND PERSONALITY

11. Religion beyond the Functionalist Frontier / Manning Nash

12. Recruitment to Monasticism among the Sherpas / Robert A. Paul

13. Ritual Trance and Catharsis: A Psychobiological and Evolutionary Perspective / William Wedenoja

14. Human Nature as "Deep Structure": Implications for Comparative Study / Erika Bourguignon

PART IV: AGGRESSION, DEPENDENCY, AND THE SKILLS OF SOCIAL MANIPULATION

15. Aggression, Social Skill, and Strategy in Daily Life: A Baboon Case History / Shirley C. Strum

16. Whatever Happened to the Other Eye? / F. G. Bailey

Works Cited

Contributors

Index

David K. Jordan and Marc J. Swartz both hold Professor Emeritus rank at the University of California-San Diego.

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