History and theory in anthropology /

Clear, compact, comprehensive histories of anthropological thought are scarce. This work is a welcome exemplar of all three. Notable founders are comprehensively presented, and there is excellent coverage of contemporary theorists. Early speculation about humankind, evolutionism, structural functionalism, and other foundational schools and scholars are covered well; recent anthropological forays into interpretivism, relativism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism are sketched critically and productively. A few problems and errors that should be corrected in subsequent editions include the minor--Mary Douglas did not teach at Wisconsin but at Northwestern--to the somewhat more consequential--Darwin's "sexual selection" is not the same as his (and contemporary) "natural selection." A twisted but understandable misreading of Thomas Kuhn in which the author defines "paradigms" as "large theories" also requires correction. This use of paradigm, as Fuller points out in Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (CH, Nov'00), offers theory as a Platonic essence uncritically available to any discipline, rather than as an intellectual construct to empirically evaluate and criticize. Originating in the author's course on anthropological theory, this work merits a place in the syllabus of similar courses, even marred by the occasional misplaced fact and concept. Upper-division undergraduates and above. C. S. Peebles; Indiana University-Bloomington