The current Western interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions is--among other reasons--both the result of and the stimulation for an entire library of books purporting to bring the Wisdom of the East to an audience for whom the wisdom of the West has failed. This book is not an example of that genre. It is an attempt to interpret Buddhism in the light of some current theories about religion. As a work of scholarship, rather than a homiletic tract or an apologetic treatise, its aim is to understand Buddhism as one historical variant of the generic human attempt to find meaning and hope...
The current Western interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions is--among other reasons--both the result of and the stimulation for an entire lib...
Spiro challenges the argument of Bronislaw Malinowski that the matrilineal society of the Trobriand Islands produced a psychological constellation -- a matrilineal complex -- different from Freud's Oedipus complex and the generalization regarding the restrictive provenance of the Oepidus complex to which it gave rise. Spiro undertakes a reanalysis of Malinowski's data and shows that there is enough to suggest the presence of a strong Oedipus complex. Melford E. Spiro is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the Anthropology...
Spiro challenges the argument of Bronislaw Malinowski that the matrilineal society of the Trobriand Islands produced a psychological constellation -- ...
This volume illustrates Melford Spiro's explorations of key relationships among culture, society, and human nature. He addresses such fundamental issues as the limitations of cultural relativism, the problem of explanation in the social sciences, and the importance of a comparative approach to the study of social and cultural systems. Spiro believes that deep motivational and cognitive structures underlie human behavior. He argues that these structures can be explained by the evolutionary history of our species and by social experience.
This volume illustrates Melford Spiro's explorations of key relationships among culture, society, and human nature. He addresses such fundamental issu...
Based on a study of the Israeli kibbutz movement, Gender and Culture discusses the differences in male and female orientations to marriage, the family, and work. Spiro describes the counterrevolution in the kibbutz movement as it evolved over a quarter century period. The kibbutz Spiro first studied, Kiryat Yedidim, was thirty years old at the time, and he returned there twenty-five years later. Spiro initially found that the pioneers of the kibbutz movement, in their attempt to implement their vision of a society based on sexual equality, had created a revolution in the character...
Based on a study of the Israeli kibbutz movement, Gender and Culture discusses the differences in male and female orientations to marriage...
Though the people of Burma, now called Myanmar, are formally Buddhist, their folk religion a type of animism or supernaturalism is so unlike classical Buddhism that it seems contradictory. For years scholars of religion and anthropology have debated the questions: Do these folk beliefs make up a separate religious system? Or is there a subtle merging of supernaturalism and Buddhism, a kind of syncretism? In either case, how exactly does folk religion fit into the overall religious pattern? Melford Spiro's Burmese Supernaturalism has been one of the major works in this debate, both for its...
Though the people of Burma, now called Myanmar, are formally Buddhist, their folk religion a type of animism or supernaturalism is so unlike classical...
