Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History

Rating:
Summary: Marxism cannot explain all anthropological theories
Review: As an undergraduate anthropology student I found this book to be extremely unhelpful and inacurate. The editors are obviously Marxist and find a way to relate Marx and Marxist ideas to every article. I thought the footnotes would be helpful but they soon proved to be essays in the editor's opinions with little real information to back them up. The choice of articles included in this book were poor. Anthropologist and anthropology theorists who are influential in the discipline today such as James Clifford, Ruth Beher, and Edward Sapir were not included. Other anthropologists whose works were included such as Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead were poorly represented. I learned more about anthropological theory by reading various ethnographies than from this anthology.

Rating:
Summary: Marxism cannot explain all anthropological theories
Review: As an undergraduate anthropology student I found this book to be extremely unhelpful and inacurate. The editors are obviously Marxist and find a way to relate Marx and Marxist ideas to every article. I thought the footnotes would be helpful but they soon proved to be essays in the editor's opinions with little real information to back them up. The choice of articles included in this book were poor. Anthropologist and anthropology theorists who are influential in the discipline today such as James Clifford, Ruth Beher, and Edward Sapir were not included. Other anthropologists whose works were included such as Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead were poorly represented. I learned more about anthropological theory by reading various ethnographies than from this anthology.

Rating:
Summary: extremely useful text
Review: I used this text for an upper division undergraduate course in social theory. In general, I found the selection of articles to be wise and helpful; I didn't use all of them but used more than I would from any other compilation. The book doesn't adequately cover the recent period, but no text could, and the teacher should choose her own supplements to the core texts found herein. Unlike the first reviewer, my students and I found the extensive footnotes to be the book's most valuable resource. They kept the students' attention, contextualized obscure references, and clearly explained more challenging passages. I did not find that these footnotes interfered with the role of the teacher; instead, they freed the class to spend more time in fruitful interrogation of the authors' ideas and less time buried in minutae. I highly recommend this book for teachers of upperdivision theory courses, and for graduate students looking for an unfair advantage on their rivals as they take their core courses.

Rating:
Summary: Good collection of readings
Review: This book contains works by most of the classic anthropological theorists. And very importantly, it contains footnotes, which are very helpful. However, it contains few current readings. Also, this edition of the book removes some of the better, more current selections from the older edition. If you are looking for a solid anthropological reader, then you can't go wrong with this text, BUT...try and get the earlier edition if you can.

Rating:
Summary: Good collection of readings
Review: This book contains works by most of the classic anthropological theorists. And very importantly, it contains footnotes, which are very helpful. However, it contains few current readings. Also, this edition of the book removes some of the better, more current selections from the older edition. If you are looking for a solid anthropological reader, then you can't go wrong with this text, BUT...try and get the earlier edition if you can.