Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture Reissue Edition
Author(s): Marvin Harris (Author)
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: December 17, 1989
Edition: Reissue
Language: English
Print length: 288 pages
ISBN-10: 0679724680
ISBN-13: 9780679724681
Book Description
One of America’s leading anthropolgists offers solutions to the perplexing question of why people behave the way they do.
Why do Hindus worship cows? Why do Jews and Moslems refuse to eat pork? Why did so many people in post-medieval Europe believe in witches?
Marvin Harris answers these and other perplexing questions about human behavior, showing that no matter how bizarre a people’s behavior may seem, it always stems from identifiable and intelligble sources.
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
allenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. Harris shows that no matter how bizarre a people’s behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions.
From the Back Cover
This book challenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. Harris shows that no matter how bizarre a people’s behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions.
About the Author
Marvin Harris taught at Columbia University from 1953 and from 1963 to 1966 was Chairman of the Department of Anthropology. He has lectured by invitation at most of the major colleges and universities in the United States. In addition to field work in Brazil, Mozambique, and Ecuador on the subjects of cross-cultural aspects of race and ethinic relations, the effects of colonialism, and problems of underdevelopment seen in ecological perspective, Harris pioneered in the use of videotape techniques in the study of family life in this country.
Author of several books, among them the influential
Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture and the popoular undergraduate text Culture, Man and Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology, Harris wrote frequently for Natural History magazine and was a frequent contributor to the professional journals, American Anthropologist and Current Anthropology. His others books inlcue Cannibals and Kings and Cultural Materialism.
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