James C. Faris

Review article : Beginning Anthropology

Readers who had anticipated this book expecting an extension and expansion of the work of Hirst and colleagues (Hirst, 1979; Hindess and Hirst, 1977; Cutler, Hindess, Hirst and Hussain, 1977) into new terrain, classical anthropological space heretofore mired in functionalist and teleological reasoning, with concept and theory surrendered to one form or another of rationalist determination are likely to be disappointed. It is nevertheless, to us, an extremely provoking book with some very important portions, which deals with fundamental and significant issues. We will discuss why we thirik it is so important, why we think it is flawed, and try to put forward the outlines of another reading of the material at hand. It is the outline of what we would have them do. As we will argue, this is not so outrageous as it may seem, for it is a project implicitly suggested by the text itself. Basically Hirst and Woolley are concerned to deny coherence to the orthodoxy of standard anthropological and sociological discourse. They bring into fundamental question the validity of underlying rationalist epistemological foundations of the disciplines. The book is divided into three sections: biology and culture, mental illness and personality, and witchcraft and rationality. The first section deals with evolution and culture, human evolution, and human social forms and other animal societies. The second section, the largest, expands from initially-developed notions to indicate something of the varieties of explanation of a plethora of phenomena falling under the category of ’mental illness’ in space and time. Radical psychiatry and orthodox behaviorism are both here subject