Books in the Routledge Classic Texts in Anthropology series

While the world has undoubtedly been shrinking, at the same time it has grown more complex. The likelihood of culture clashes leading to outright conflict is high, perhaps higher than ever. As Andrea Smith convincingly argues in her new introduction to this classic work, certain questions are as valid today as in 1949, when Mirror for Man was first published.

Originally published: 1993. With new preface.

Anthropology is a kind of debate between human possibilities -- a dialectical movement between the anthropologist as a modern man and the primitive peoples he studies. This brilliant, tough-minded book contains chapters ranging from encounters in the field to essays on the nature of law, schizophrenia and civilization, and the evolution of the work of Claude Levi-Strauss. Diamond views the anthropologist who refuses to become a searching critic of his own civilization as not merely irresponsible, but a tool of Western civilization.

This book examines evolution being handled in anthropology from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

This expanded and radically revised new edition should prove useful reading for those who are interested in anthropological theory and current post-colonial debates, or simply curious about the ways in which we systematically misunderstand other peoples.