Description
Stanley J. Tambiah discusses the life of Edmund Leach (1910-1989), one of Britain's foremost social and cultural anthropologists, and a man of extraordinary versatility, originality and intellectual breadth. His substantial contributions to anthropology deal with topics including kinship and social organization, hill tribes and valley peoples, tenure and peasant economy, aesthetics, British structural-functional methodology, the structuralism of Levi-Strauss, biblical narratives and the myths of Classical Greece. Leach was not wedded to any settled orthodoxy: what makes his work exciting is his experimentation with new ideas, and his expansions of the horizons of the discipline. His distinctive view of the comparative method allows him to transcend the stale dichotomy between 'them primitives' and 'us moderns', finding instead a dialectic between 'us' and 'them' which opens up the possibility for illuminating common human propensities and capacities.
Intellectual biography of Edmund Leach, a leading social anthropologist of his generation, with illustrations.
About the Author
Stanley J. Tambiah is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1954. He joined the faculty at the University of Cambridge, where he taught for ten years, and was a Fellow of King's College. He went to the University of Chicago in 1973, and moved to Harvard Univesity in 1976. He began field work in Sri Lanka (1956-59), the island of his birth, and and later worked in Thailand. He is the author of eight books.
Reviews
'... a more important contribution of Tambiah's is to have clarified Leach's understanding of structuralism and functionalism and to explore how he reconciled them in quite innovative ways. ... he offers an interpretation of Leach's work from the point of view of a distinguished contemporary ...'. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Book Information
ISBN 9780521521024
Author Stanley J. Tambiah
Format Paperback
Page Count 538
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 840g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 33mm
Intellectual biography of Edmund Leach, a leading social anthropologist of his generation, with illustrations.
About the Author
Stanley J. Tambiah is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1954. He joined the faculty at the University of Cambridge, where he taught for ten years, and was a Fellow of King's College. He went to the University of Chicago in 1973, and moved to Harvard Univesity in 1976. He began field work in Sri Lanka (1956-59), the island of his birth, and and later worked in Thailand. He is the author of eight books.
Reviews
'... a more important contribution of Tambiah's is to have clarified Leach's understanding of structuralism and functionalism and to explore how he reconciled them in quite innovative ways. ... he offers an interpretation of Leach's work from the point of view of a distinguished contemporary ...'. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Book Information
ISBN 9780521521024
Author Stanley J. Tambiah
Format Paperback
Page Count 538
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 840g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 33mm
