Beyond the vision : essays on American Indian culture (Civilization of the American Indian series)

Type

Book

Authors

William K. Powers ( Powers, William K. )

ISBN 10

0806120916

ISBN 13

9780806120911

Tags

Indigenous peoples -- North America -- Social life and customs, Spirituality -- Indigenous -- North America

Abstract

"For anthropologist William K Powers, the study of humanity demands that one live up to the "mandates of a vision." Theories, says the author, are like visions and "may be continually discarded and replaced" with new theories, each one contingent in some way upon the last. This collection of essays includes seven chapters on widely varying aspects of American Indian culture. Powers's observations are connected by a thread of structuralism that elucidates philosophical functionalism, sociobiology, and ethnomusicology. Even more strongly binding the pieces together is Powers's debt to Claude Levi-Strauss. The book is dedicated to the great anthropologist, whom Powers calls "bold and speculative, scientific and philosophical, theoretical and empirical.""--Amazon.

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