Counterpoints (Masterplots II: Nonfiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Rodney Needham
- First Published: 1987
- Type of Work: Cultural anthropology
- Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology
- Subjects: Race, Science or scientists, Human race, Sociology, Learning or scholarship, Research, Ethnology
Form and Content
Counterpoints is both a study of the concept of opposition (exemplified by pairs of terms such as black/white, woman/man, left/right) and a reply to the author’s critics. British social anthropologist Rodney Needham contends that what is meant by “opposition” must be reexamined before the term can be employed as an analytical tool in ethnography (the scientific study of individual cultures). Far from being a precise, fundamental, and utterly simple way of ordering the world, the concept is exceedingly complex, imprecise, and ambiguous. Though...
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