Is there a basic difference in thinking between Western and non-Western societies? This long-debated yet highly topical problem forms the central question to which distinguished contributors in the fields of psychology, linguistics, history, and sociology and, more particularly, of social anthropology and philosophy, address themselves in this interdisciplinary collection. They are: Barry Barnes, Benjamin N. Colby and Michael Cole, Ruth Finnegan, Ernest Gellner, Robin Horton, J. M. Ita, Hilary Jenkins, Steven Lukes, Nobuhiro Nagashima, S. J. Tambiah, W. H. Whiteley, and Sybil Wolfram.
The central ideas of this classic work are reformulated and refined in the various contributions with different possible dichotomies discussed such as: ‘traditional/modern’, ‘industrial/non industrial’, or ‘scientific/non-scientific’, and ‘thinking, ‘ analyzed in terms of its thought processes, content, logic or social background.
The material in the book, which is dedicated to Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, falls within the general area of the comparative sociology of knowledge, and will thus particularly interest philosophers, social anthropologists, and sociologists. The volume is however conceived in an interdisciplinary spirit and will be of interest to anyone seriously concerned to examine the nature of thinking in our own and other societies.
关于作者
Ruth Finnegan OBE, FBA, Emeritus Professor Open University. Her work has mainly been on oral performance, narrative, the ethnography of music, and communicating (including extra-sensory perception). Her publications include Oral Literature in Africa, The Hidden Musicians, Communicating: the Multiple Modes of Human Communication, Why Do We Quote? and, most recently, the novels Black Inked Pearl, Voyage of Pearl of the Seas, and The Helix Pearl. Born in Ireland, she now lives in Old Bletchley, southern England.