Just Finished Reading: Social and Cultural Anthropology – A Very Short Introduction by John Monaghan and Peter Just



As you may be aware this is a huge subject to cover in a short introductory book. Rightly the authors didn’t attempt to just hit the highlights but, instead, concentrated on the business of doing anthropology drawing on their years of experience in the field and relating that back to wider issues. This made for both a fascinating and at times intimate insight into the many human cultures out there.


The two authors have spent a great deal of time in Indonesia and Mexico studying and living with indigenous peoples there. They brought back their experiences, insights and not a few cultural objects back to their teaching jobs. Starting with a brief historical introduction the authors moved on to the vitally important fieldwork element of anthropology along with discussions of the pitfalls and dangers of living with the people being studied. Insights, they point out, are however often only possible when incidents occur right in front of your eyes. Moving onto the ideas of both Culture and Society in more detail the authors point out that many things we in the west have taken for granted simply do not apply to all societies in all places. It appears on the face of it, despite our common human heritage, that we are almost infinitely variable and malleable. From apparently trivial aspects of deciding what is good to eat to the structure of all types of relationships everything it seems is up for grabs. It is not only the diversity that is surprising but the fact that often aspects of life are not simply variations around a common theme – but the fact that the themes themselves are sometimes radically different. What is considered normal in one place can be seen as strange, bizarre or inexplicable somewhere else. Anthropology brings you face to face with every assumption we have all made about the human condition and cannot help but to question each and every one of them.


I have long held the belief that much of what we do, profess as good, hold sacred and aim for in life is, by and large, a purely human construct brought about by each cultures long and accidental history - If things had been different or if we had accidentally been born in another culture or another time we would hold very different beliefs and think of them as being not only right but natural and, probably, universal. This slim volume managed to stretch even that belief almost to breaking point. I was simply unaware of the huge variety of lifestyles, beliefs and frankly bizarre ways of organising our societies. I knew that humanity was plastic but I didn’t quite realise just how plastic we are. If students of anthropology were not relativists when they started their courses I’m betting that the ones who could cope with the shock would be at the end. Although I can say with confidence that there are many ways for us to live I cannot say with any confidence that there is a best way to live – indeed I have almost come to the conclusion that I cannot really say that there are better ways to live than others. Such statements would, it appears, merely show my own cultural bias which a study of anthropology all too readily highlights. If you are at lest willing to entertain the possibility that everything you think you know is a product of your cultural upbringing and nothing more then I can recommend this book to you – but beware, it might start you on the road to questioning everything you do and everything you believe.