Comments on: The 30 Essential Books in Anthropology

By: Alan Spector

Alan Spector — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 18:11:56 +0000

In reply to Caroline. Sharp list.

By: Dansep

Dansep — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 22:34:18 +0000

In reply to dan.

I think White was abandoned – even by evolutionists and cultural materialists – by the late ’60s. His framework was too simple-minded to provide much to work with, and couldn’t survive better ethnography and argument. (Kroeber polished him off much earlier in my view, pointing out that his “evolution” was just a blinkered version of a single history.) Anyway, there are several good antidotes. A piece in the New York review some decades ago by Sahlins tackled Marvin Harris (remember him?) under the title “Culture as Protein and Profit”. Same argument works against White. More recent is the work by James Scott (e.g., on How Not to be Governed). His argument, among other things, suggests what a close look at the ecology of SE Asian rice production shows: intensification is generally a formula for producing poor peasants who work harder for less. Why would anyone want to do that? (See also: Stone Age Economics)

By: Dansep

Dansep — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 22:26:09 +0000

Coming to this after seeing the 70 list, and have a couple of comments. One is an observation that a fair number of the books on the latter are enormously influential, but not by anthropologists at all: e.g., Said or Anderson. So perhaps shows the porosity of disciplinary canons. Also what, for me, are startling omissions, including Fabian’s Time and the Other. Am also flabbergasted that Recapturing Anthropology was missed – given the key essays in it by Abu-Lughod, Appadurai, Trouillot and Ortner. How did that slip by?? It would be interesting to revisit this exercise every 5 years or so to see what falls away and what emerges as “must read.”

By: dan

dan — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 01:32:28 +0000

Where are the books of Leslie White?

By: James

James — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 16:11:53 +0000

Your are missing one essential books in anthropology: “Beyond Nature and Culture”, by Philippe Descola.

How could you forget it ?

By: Jamie

Jamie — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 10:51:20 +0000

One thing that might be worth thinking about is the difference between ‘essential’ and ‘influential’.
Ruth Benedict’s the chrysanthemum and the sword (flawed as it is) is one of a few ethnographies that is more influential in the place it wrote about (Japan) than perhaps it is in the discipline today.
Fei Xiaotong’s From the Soil is a key text that started much of what we recognize as anthropology in China today.
Although it may not be ‘essential’ reading for anthropology in general

There were a lot of anthropology books that influenced wider fields from the 1980s onwards too

Lila Abu-lughod ‘veiled sentiments’

Aihwa Ong’s ‘Flexible Citizenship’ was hugely influential in migration studies

Anna Tsing’s ‘Friction’ globalization theory

James Scott ‘Seeing like a state’ and ‘Weapons of the Weak’ political science

Judith Farquhar Knowing Practice medical anthropology and sociology

Janet Carsten ‘After Kinship’ a variety of medical fields and queers studies

By: Pnina werbner

Pnina werbner — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 08:38:28 +0000

Lots of books missing from the list, including jean Briggs, Sharon Hutchinson, tristes tropiques, many others. If I had to choose one of my own books I’d choose pilgrims of love: the anthropology of a global Sufi cult. But I like most of the initial list.

By: Icon

Icon — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:29:40 +0000

Mary Douglas. Purity and Danger.
Pierre Bourdieu. Theory of Practice.
Philippe Descola. Beyond Nature and Culture.
Victor Turner. The Ritual Process. Structure and Antistructure.

By: Olivier

Olivier — Fri, 17 Mar 2017 13:10:45 +0000

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism / Rémi Savard, Canada, derrière l’épopée, les autochtones

By: c

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 12:56:18 +0000

can’t agree more!