Word: anthropologist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...pleased that Anthropologist Derek Freeman has challenged Margaret Mead's work on Samoa [Feb. 14]. When I lived there in the early 1970s, I asked an elderly Samoan what he thought of Mead's book Coming of Age in Samoa. He replied that the only one who came of age in Samoa was Margaret Mead...
...anthropologist Richard Lee has described an unusual Christmas in a Kung San village in the Kalahari Desert To show his appreciation for the tribe generosity, Lee slaughtered the fattest ox in the neighborhood as a Christmas gift. The Kung responded only with abuse and ridicule, and Lee had to infer that such displays of wealth and superiority are inappropriate. "The interesting thing is the competitive aspect of gift-giving, and that generosity can be interpreted in lots of different ways in different societies...
...sarcasm stops when the insurance man learns of a mysterious cult (the "Names" of the title). The ritual murders committed by these ragged, nomadic zealots are as easy as ABC. Their formula, revealed by Owen Brademas, an aged American anthropologist, is based on polyglot alphabets twisted into a system of worship. The killers simply match the initials of elderly or crippled villagers with those of towns. When the sacrificial names collide, their hammers fall. For Brademas, these deaths reveal a new layer of violence: "We thought we knew this setting. The mass killer in his furnished room, in his century...
Think about the role scientists play in these movies. In "Close Encounters of the Third-Kind," they are a sinister pack of bureaucrats who stifle the simple, pure-hearted spirits of the U. F. O. witnessers. Indiana Jones, the anthropologist hero of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," is spared the ark's deadly wrath only because he refuses to look at it, hardly the most scientifically curious of approaches. The various technicians who tromp through the haunted house in "Poltergiest" are useless, for all their sophisticated machinery, in the face of the specters who have set up shop there...
...lawyer who is also a chocolate addict [July 12], I was intrigued by Anthropologist Jennie Keith's suggestion that chocolate may be used to get someone in your power. If this is true, the possibilities are limitless. Rather than arming myself with lawbooks and briefs the next time I must face a hostile opposing counsel, grumpy judge of recalcitrant witness, I might just fill my briefcase with Hersey Golden Almond bars...