Daniel G. Bates

My view of "introductory" books is that they are worthless. The authors claim that a theme of their work is that "individuals are active decision makers", creating their culture as much as culture on its part is writing their scripts. (i). What this is really saying, except that "cultural anthropologists" never admit it, is that there is no such thing as causative "culture". We should have taught "Relational" anthropology. Anyway, this text is like a monument to why anthropology departments whithered away and students bloated the Economics schools so they find actual "work" sufficient to pretend to earn a living. If they stuck to "cultural anthropology" they could at least pretend to explain why they no longer know how to do any actual "work".… (mere)