The ceremonial animal : a new portrait of anthropology /

James (Oxford Univ.) continues an admirable tradition in British social anthropology: masters compose an introduction to their discipline that is at once sophisticated and clear to ordinary readers. She is an excellent successor to E. E. Evans-Pritchard (Social Anthropology, 1951), John Beattie (Other Cultures, CH, Feb'65), and Edmund Leach (Social Anthropology, CH, Sep'82). Her book's title is a key to her foundational observation that human beings exist and function in patterned social relationships. She builds on the great anthropological insight that humanness is not located in persons, but in communities and relationships. James begins with a section on the basic questions in anthropology and a critical discussion of theory. Other chapters deal with art, ritual and religion, language, the social shaping of persons, gender, livelihood, the state, and global relationships. She returns to religion as a basic set of patterned relationships in human life, a perspective that 19th-century anthropology started out with. The author presents a nonreductionist anthropology that requires both ethnographic field research and engagement with texts; that is globally and politically engaged; and that is both historical and nomothetic. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. All college and university collections. R. Berleant-Schiller emerita, University of Connecticut