Merryl Wyn Davies > Quotes

“Charles Montesquieu (1689–1755) as the common ancestor of all modern anthropology. Anthropology begins in 1748 with the publication of his The Spirit of the Laws. It is a product of the Enlightenment.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“sociobiology – the study of the genetic basis of human behaviour.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“The word “anthropology” derives from the Greek and literally means “the study of man” or “the science of man”. But the “man” of anthropology was a special kind of “man”.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“But it came back with a vengeance in the 1970s and 80s through the development of sociobiology – the study of the genetic basis of human behaviour.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Utilitarianism and socialism: uniquely British schools of radicalism and approach to social reform less interested in the past and more focused on the future.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Indianology”: both popular ideology about American Indians – especially of the Noble Savage variety – and a major field of study centring on the otherness of the Other.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Physical anthropology began as the study of the races of man.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Polygenesis means the origin of different races (or species) from different stocks.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Named either “social” or “cultural” anthropology, this is the principal branch of the discipline in which grand theory – or theorization of any kind – is developed.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Substantivists argue against the universal “law” of economics, especially the idea of “economic rationality”. Instead, they emphasize economics as embedded in culture. Different spheres of exchange operate differently in various societies.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Marxism or dialectical materialism: a self-proclaiming ideology and “sect”, clearly part of progressivism. Marx and Engels based their thinking on the work of American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–81), best known for his study of Iroquois Indians.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Progressivism: the identification of human cultural history with progress on an upward escalator from “nasty and brutish” to the modern West that is always on top whenever you pick up the story.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Primitive, savage and simple are prejudicial, discriminating and supremacist terms.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Genetics in anthropology concerns the genetic variation of different racial groups.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Primitivism: the reverse idea, including nostalgia for primitive simplicity and the idea of degeneration, humankind marching downhill from the beginning, though some are saved by civilization.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Natural law: not recurrent behaviour but codes, behavioural prescriptions and restrictions common to all peoples and part of nature’s (i.e., biological in origin) or God’s (i.e., moral and cultural in origin) plan.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Julian H. Steward (1902–72) introduced ecological anthropology in his Theory of Culture Change (1955). He argued that environment and technology play a major role in determining the social organization of culture and can be correlated with an evolutionary framework.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“It is the rite of passage that makes an anthropologist.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Material culture is the study of the techniques of producing the material goods and means of production of societies by anthropologists.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“German idealism: based on the dualistic separation of mind (the substance of history) and matter (the substance of nature).”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Diffusion is the transmission of things from one culture, people or place to another. The essence of diffusion is contact and interaction.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Formalists argue that economics is a science and that economic anthropology is closely related. Economic rationality is a basic “law”. People choose what is in their best interest and reject what is not.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Anthropologists study people. They study how people live, human society past and present. Anthropology is also about how we think about people thinking about people, now and in history. And sometimes it is about power relations between people, peoples, cultures and societies, colonialism and globalization.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Anthropology did not create colonialism, but its origins are certainly an epiphenomenon of colonialism.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Nationalism: the predominant Western ideology of the last three centuries works to shape national traditions of anthropology and other social sciences.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“The Darwinian model of human evolution – descent with modification by natural selection – is a theory of monogenesis. The success of Darwinism as a theory turned physical anthropology into the study of human evolution.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Positivism: broadly a label for Empiricism, a methodology comprising observation plus induction or deduction.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“The other similarity is that the environment of evolutionary adaptation occurs in prehistoric times – the ideal speculative domain.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Rationalism: the belief in an ordered universe governed by laws that conform with and are comprehensible by human reason.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide

“Structuralism: the belief in a structured universe or inherent and coherent structuring in nature’s order that is not imposed by the observer; the structures are therefore universal. It is a derivative of natural law.”
― Merryl Wyn Davies, Introducing Anthropology: A Graphic Guide