Why Do Men Barbecue?: Recipes for Cultural Psychology / Edition 1

by Richard A. Shweder

Overview

Why do American children sleep alone instead of with their parents? Why do middle-aged Western women yearn for their youth, while young wives in India look forward to being middle-aged? In these provocative essays, one of the most brilliant advocates of cultural psychology reminds us that cultural differences in mental life lie at the heart of any understanding of the human condition.

Drawing on ethnographic studies of the distinctive modes of psychological functioning in communities around the world, Richard Shweder explores ethnic and cultural differences in ideals of gender, in the life of the emotions, in conceptions of mature adulthood and the stages of life, and in moral judgments about right and wrong.

Shweder, a cultural pluralist, dares readers to broaden their own conceptions of what is good, true, beautiful, and efficient and to take a closer look at specific cultural practices—parent/child cosleeping, arranged marriage, male and female genital modifications—that we may initially find alien or disturbing. He invites us to reject both radical relativism (the view that whatever is, is okay) and imperial visions of universal progressive cultural development (for example, the idea that "the West is Best") and to engage in more deeply informed cultural critique.

The knowable world, Shweder observes, is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular. This work strives for the "view from manywheres" in a culturally diverse yet interdependent world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674011359
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2003
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	430
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Richard A. Shweder, a cultural anthropologist, is the William Claude Reavis Professor of Human Development, University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Anti-Postculturalism (or, The View from Manywheres)

1. Who Sleeps by Whom Revisited (with Lene Balle-Jensen and William Goldstein)

2. The "Big Three" of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the "Big Three" Explanations of Suffering (with Nancy C. Much, Manamohan Mahapatra, and Lawrence Park)

3. Cultural Psychology of Emotions: Ancient and New (with Jonathan Haidt)

4. "What about Female Genital Mutilation?" And Why Understanding Culture Matters

5. The Return of the "White Man's Burden" and the Domestic Life of Hindu Women (with Usha Menon)

6. Culture and Mental Development in Our Poststructural Age

7. A Polytheistic Conception of the Sciences and the Virtues of Deep Variety

8. Fundamentalism for Highbrows: The Aims of Education Address at the University of Chicago

Conclusion: From Manywheres to the Civilizing Project, and Back

Notes

References

Acknowledgments

Index

What People are Saying About This

In our globalized world there are, and will always be, many divergent views of what is real, good, and true, and how to think and feel and be a person. Rick Shweder's spirited and beautifully written essays remind us that it is not just right but necessary to recognize and understand differences in ideas and ways of life. His provocative insights give us an agenda for a cultural psychology we can really use in the turbulent years ahead.

Martha Minow

In fresh, brisk, and arresting language, Shweder challenges us to see the world in new ways or else come up with new arguments for holding on to the views we already have. This insightful and provocative book isn't just for anthropologists and other social scientists, but for those who value having to look twice at the world they think they know.
— Martha Minow, Harvard Law School

Hazel Rose Markus

In our globalized world there are, and will always be, many divergent views of what is real, good, and true, and how to think and feel and be a person. Rick Shweder's spirited and beautifully written essays remind us that it is not just right but necessary to recognize and understand differences in ideas and ways of life. His provocative insights give us an agenda for a cultural psychology we can really use in the turbulent years ahead.
— Hazel Rose Markus, Stanford University

Clifford Geertz

Richard Shweder is the authentic voice of a concerned and critical anthropology: unbuttoned, funny, courageous, and mercilessly precise. Why Do Men Barbecue? takes no prisoners. It is a major contribution to the exposure of all forms of ethnocentrism, with special and loving attention to our own.
— Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study

Richard E. Nisbett

How much cultural relativism is enough? Whether you consider yourself a modernist with universalist sympathies or a post-modernist with completely pluralist preferences, you will be given pause by the arguments in this book. You will be informed, amused, infuriated, moved, and prompted to doubt deep personal convictions - often within the space of a single paragraph. No serious student of psychological anthropology or cultural psychology can ignore Shweder's commentary on the great issues confronting those fields.
— Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan

Editorial Reviews

How much cultural relativism is enough? Whether you consider yourself a modernist with universalist sympathies or a post-modernist with completely pluralist preferences, you will be given pause by the arguments in this book. You will be informed, amused, infuriated, moved, and prompted to doubt deep personal convictions - often within the space of a single paragraph. No serious student of psychological anthropology or cultural psychology can ignore Shweder's commentary on the great issues confronting those fields.

Richard E. Nisbett

In fresh, brisk, and arresting language, Shweder challenges us to see the world in new ways or else come up with new arguments for holding on to the views we already have. This insightful and provocative book isn't just for anthropologists and other social scientists, but for those who value having to look twice at the world they think they know.

Martha Minow

Whether writing about the lives of Hindu women in rural India, comparing the family sleeping arrangements of different societies, or challenging feminist criticisms of female genital surgery in sub-Saharan Africa, Shweder describes the results of his ethnography of difference with elegance and wit. He avoids the dehumanizing fetishism of difference that characterizes all too much contemporary social science and social theory, and resists familiar relativist bromides demanding 'tolerance.'

Times Literary Supplement - Michele M. Moody-Adams

Richard Shweder is the authentic voice of a concerned and critical anthropology: unbuttoned, funny, courageous, and mercilessly precise. Why Do Men Barbecue? takes no prisoners. It is a major contribution to the exposure of all forms of ethnocentrism, with special and loving attention to our own.

Clifford Geertz

In our globalized world there are, and will always be, many divergent views of what is real, good, and true, and how to think and feel and be a person. Rick Shweder's spirited and beautifully written essays remind us that it is not just right but necessary to recognize and understand differences in ideas and ways of life. His provocative insights give us an agenda for a cultural psychology we can really use in the turbulent years ahead.

Hazel Rose Markus

Shweder's "recipes" are lucid, timely investigations of suffering, the domestic life of Hindu women, the sleeping arrangements parents of different nationalities and classes institute with their children, and female genital mutilation--to name a few.-- "Publishers Weekly" (3/1/2003 12:00:00 AM)

Whether writing about the lives of Hindu women in rural India, comparing the family sleeping arrangements of different societies, or challenging feminist criticisms of female genital surgery in sub-Saharan Africa, Shweder describes the results of his ethnography of difference with elegance and wit. He avoids the dehumanizing fetishism of difference that characterizes all too much contemporary social science and social theory, and resists familiar relativist bromides demanding 'tolerance.'--Michele M. Moody-Adams "Times Literary Supplement" (9/12/2003 12:00:00 AM)

Richard Shweder is the authentic voice of a concerned and critical anthropology: unbuttoned, funny, courageous, and mercilessly precise. Why Do Men Barbecue? takes no prisoners. It is a major contribution to the exposure of all forms of ethnocentrism, with special and loving attention to our own.--Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study

How much cultural relativism is enough? Whether you consider yourself a modernist with universalist sympathies or a post-modernist with completely pluralist preferences, you will be given pause by the arguments in this book. You will be informed, amused, infuriated, moved, and prompted to doubt deep personal convictions - often within the space of a single paragraph. No serious student of psychological anthropology or cultural psychology can ignore Shweder's commentary on the great issues confronting those fields.--Richard E. Nisbett, University of Michigan

In fresh, brisk, and arresting language, Shweder challenges us to see the world in new ways or else come up with new arguments for holding on to the views we already have. This insightful and provocative book isn't just for anthropologists and other social scientists, but for those who value having to look twice at the world they think they know.--Martha Minow, Harvard Law School

In our globalized world there are, and will always be, many divergent views of what is real, good, and true, and how to think and feel and be a person. Rick Shweder's spirited and beautifully written essays remind us that it is not just right but necessary to recognize and understand differences in ideas and ways of life. His provocative insights give us an agenda for a cultural psychology we can really use in the turbulent years ahead.--Hazel Rose Markus, Stanford University

From the Publisher

Whether writing about the lives of Hindu women in rural India, comparing the family sleeping arrangements of different societies, or challenging feminist criticisms of female genital surgery in sub-Saharan Africa, Shweder describes the results of his ethnography of difference with elegance and wit. He avoids the dehumanizing fetishism of difference that characterizes all too much contemporary social science and social theory, and resists familiar relativist bromides demanding 'tolerance.'
— Michele M. Moody-Adams

Times Literary Supplement

Cultural anthropologist and University of Chicago professor Shweder's "recipes" are lucid, timely investigations of suffering, the domestic life of Hindu women, the sleeping arrangements parents of different nationalities and classes institute with their children, and female genital mutilation-to name a few. Pillorying the "secular theodicy" of victimization, Shweder (and, in this particular essay, his co-authors Nancy C. Much, Manamohan Mahapatra and Lawrence Park) argues that those who suffer are not inherent victims. An expert on the cultural life of South Asian villages and towns, Shweder (Thinking Through Cultures) applies the doctrine of "karmic consequences" to current public health policy in the U.S., addressing the idea of a "sin tax" such as smokers experience. The American bent towards autonomy often doesn't jibe with the needs of the community, but Shweder persuasively asserts that "as we search around for postmodern ways to rethink our responsibilities to society and nature, it would not be surprising if we began to acknowledge the intuitive appeal of ideas such as sacred self, sacred world, karma, duty, pollution, and sin." In "Fundamentalism for Highbrows: The Aims of Education Address at the University of Chicago," he admits that the notion of an open mind is hard to define but cogently sets out his exacting "principles." Though Shweder is a vital essayist whose ear is tuned to cultural currents, the essays that cover anthropological issues may fail to interest general readers. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In eight provocative essays, cultural anthropologist/psychologist Shweder (Univ. of Chicago; Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology) urges readers to consider the customs and practices of other cultures from their own point of view. In a detailed introduction, he discusses cultural studies, cultural psychology, and cultural positions within anthropology. The essays then cover such issues as co-sleeping parents and children, differences in emotional expressions between and among cultures, and the danger of generalization in the social sciences. In the most provocative essay, Shweder argues that the First World should reconsider its automatic disgust at the Third World custom of female circumcision, which female members of practicing ethnic groups often see as a rite of passage and source of pride and power rather than a tool of oppression. He concludes with an impassioned plea for anthropology to embrace pluralism. This is an essential purchase for academic libraries supporting programs in anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics, and cultural and gender studies and is recommended for readers willing to have their beliefs challenged or even changed.-M.C. Duhig, Lib. Ctr. of Point Park Coll. & Carnegie Lib. of Pittsburgh Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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