Atlas Trail
Debates at the Heart of the Social Sciences
From Levi-Strauss's search for universal structure to the critique that followed it, and from Boas's principle of cultural relativism to the field test Mead's Samoa research put it through: six stops through sociology and anthropology's own live disagreements, none of them presented as settled.
Stop 1 of 6.
Social Theory and Concepts
Levi-Strauss's search for universal mental structures beneath the surface of myth and kinship.
Stop 2 of 6.
Social Theory and Concepts
The critique that followed: poststructuralism questions whether structuralism's fixed interpretive structures hold up at all.
Stop 3 of 6.
Social Theory and Concepts
Boas's principle that a culture is understood on its own terms rather than measured against an outsider's standard.
Stop 4 of 6.
Ethnography and Cultural Practices
Mead put cultural relativism to the test in Samoa in 1928; Derek Freeman later disputed what she found, and the dispute is still unsettled.
Stop 5 of 6.
Social Theory and Concepts
A rival account of society altogether: held together by competition over power and resources, not shared consensus.
Stop 6 of 6.
Institutions and Social Structures
A stratification system scholars still debate as a human universal or a historically and culturally variable arrangement.
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