The Challenge of Anthropology
     Old Encounters and New Excursions

Hardback: 431 pages: ISBN: 1-56000-119-4
Paberback: 431 pages: ISBN: 1-56000-827-X

Publisher: Transaction Publishers
www.transactionpub.com
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This collection of essays is the best guide to the whole range of my interests. Apart from a couple of technical articles meant for the experts, it is written for the general reader as well as the professional.

From the jacket:

The social sciences are in a state of retreat from the principles of science. A fashionable relativism leads to the fragmentation of disciplines. Amidst the growing intellectual chaos Robin Fox holds out for a scientific anthropology, that embraces all the traditional areas of the subject and yet looks outward to the new biology, cognitive science, and the natural sciences. This companion volume to the author's highly successful Encounter with Anthropology, uses the same format of the author's essays and biographical comments to act as a barometer of the state of the discipline. It rounds off the collected writings of one of the last holistic anthropologists. Fox is willing to back his belief in the unity of the discipline with practice. His is an anthropology of contemporary meaning and value.
     His essays are intended to show the range of possibilities of anthropology for the student, general reader and expert. He covers a vast array of topics: sexual evolution, the sociology of food, the psychobiology of aggression, war and ideology, rules and pragmatics, Frazer and Vergil, social complexity, prejudice and cognition, change in kinship systems, myth and psychology, primate sexuality and Marxism, among others. Surprises include reassessments of the female orgasm, Hume's theory of causation, and Browning as a commentator on the law. For Fox, nothing human is alien to the science of mankind, and in deploring the fragmentation of his discipline he tries to erase the boundary between humanistic and scientific approaches by showing that even the rational pursuit of truth can be carried out with wit, grace, humor and "fresh language and pleasing irreverance." (Saturday Evening Post) The Challenge of Anthropology is unique. It provides a wealth of knowledge for students and scholars in all the social sciences, and for the nonspecialist who wants a lively introduction to the state of the art.

Comments and Reviews:

"Fox's collection of essays is erudite, witty, irreverent, creative, cryptic at times, challenging all the time, and free of academic cant… they are varied enough that everyone can find something to disagree with." Helen Fisher, The New York Times Book Review

"Seven parts comprise this wonderfully personal, lively and very intelligent book… it is the product of a great and subtle mind at work. Fox dares anthropologists to read the book and assimilate its arguments, to own up to what is real and get down to the work of changing course. Bravo!" Michael McGuire, UCLA, Prof., Dept. of Psychiatry, in Politics and the Life Sciences

"With an irreverent, lively, and pleasant style, Fox provides both students and scholars an introduction to the state of "his art" with knowledge based on wide-ranging experience." Phil Harris, in Behavioral Sciences

"Fox brings a clear and witty style to his position. The book is not a consistent series of arguments about a single issue, but instead moves among those subjects that have interested Fox over his career… The success of the book lies in its clear thematization and combination of a high level of sophisticated analysis with a self-assured wit." Jonathan Friedman (University of Lund) in American Anthropologist

"The book is a masterful, charming and well-documented argument that anthropologists must take serious note of what they are abandoning in the sometimes helter-skelter pursuit of fads, fashions and over-specializations… This may well be Robin Fox's best book yet." Napoleon Chagnon, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, UCSB, author of Yanomamo: The Fierce People

"This book of essays by a leading anthropologist is a delight to read, and also very "good to think." Robin Fox writes with verve and passion, secure in his command of social theory and history, at once insightful scholar and intellectual provocateur." Eric R. Wolf, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emeritus, City University of New York, author of Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century, Sons of the Shaking Earth, etc.