The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind

Robin Fox, anthropologist, poet, and essayist, is University Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University and author of Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective and The Red Lamp of Incest: An Enquiry into the Origins of Mind and Society.

A lively, digressive work of startling range. -- Evan R. Goldstein Chronicle of Higher Education 20110206 The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind, is an exciting synthesis of earlier work like the anthropological classic Kinship and Marriage (1967) and [Fox's] latest wide-ranging thoughts. In a way reminiscent of the breadth of Charles Hill's recent masterpiece Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order, Fox ranges from a discussion of the Ten Commandments to an analysis of the great warrior epics and Sophocles' King Oedipus, from incest taboos and the myth of Isis and Osiris to the ambiguous nature of human rights, from the plot of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights to Karl Popper's thoughts on the desirability of "open" as against "closed" societies. But his most topical and provocative comments are found in a chapter entitled "The Kindness of Strangers: Tribalism and the Trials of Democracy." -- Roger Sandall American Interest 20110701 Here is a veteran writer and thinker sounding off on a huge variety of subjects, ranging from why monarchy may not be such a bad form of government after all to why James Cameron's Avatar exemplifies an important anthropological thesis...The charm of this book...lies in this very eclectic approach. -- Bradley Winterton Taipei Times 20110619 In this stocktaking of the human condition past, present, and future, Fox draws on publications made throughout his illustrious anthropological career. Readers are treated not only to Fox's wide-ranging ideas on the topic, but also to insights into Fox the scholar, especially a chapter devoted to his enthrallment with the Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. Though Fox makes an evolutionary argument, his goal is not to layout an evolutionary sequence leading to ourselves, but to make connections between what we see in ourselves as humans today and how this relates to our evolutionary past. -- D. Read Choice 20111201