What I Read on My Holidays #3

Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, by Thomas Hylland Eriksen

A timely review, since Lenin mentions that it’s one of his most recent purchases in the book meme doing the rounds.

This is an example of a book that does exactly what it says on the cover, but nothing more than that. Indeed, what surprised me above all was the extent of the overlap between social anthropology and sociology as disciplines. Extract the archetypal anthropological studies of Trobriand Islanders, hairy Ainus (that's the Ainus of Japan), and County Mayo farmers and you’re left with a standard introduction to Junior Cert sociological theory. There’s no great depth to Eriksen’s explanations of the difference between Marx and Weber, for instance, only an attempt to ensure that all relevant divergent perspectives are mentioned, just so that the reader is made aware of their existence and can follow up on them if he or she so desires. The suggested further reading for them at the end of each chapter gives some indication of the target audience: Lay readers with no previous knowledge of the subject.

I can’t complain about that; as I say, it calls itself an introduction, and that’s all it is. My disappointment arises only from presupposing there was more to social anthropology than comparative cultural studies.