Ashley Montagu

Man's Most Dangerous Myth was first published in 1942, when Nazism flourished, when African Americans sat at the back of the bus, and when race was considered the determinant of people's character and intelligcnce. Ashley Montagu presented a revolutionary theory for his time: Breaking the link between genetics and culture, he argued that race is largely a social construction, and not constitutive of significant biological differences between people. This new edition contains Montagu's most complete explication of his theory and a thorough updating of previous editions. The sixth edition takes on the issues of the Bell Curve, IQ testing, ethnic cleansing, and other contemporary race relations topics, as well as contemporary restatements of topics in previous editions. A bibliography of over 3,000 published items on race, compiled over a lifetime of work, is of enormous research value. Also available is an abridged student edition containing the essence of Montagu's argument, its policy implications, and his thoughts on contemporary race issues for use in classrooms. Ahead of its time in 1942, Montagu's arguments still contribute essential and salient perspectives as we face issues of race in the 1990s.

From the Introduction: Communication is the name we give to the countless ways that humans have of keeping in touch-not just to words and music, pictures and print, but also to cries and whispers, nods and becks, postures and plumages: to every move that catches someone's eye and every sound that resonates upon another ear. Human communication, as the saying goes, is a clash of symbols; and it covers a multitude of signs. But it is more than media and messages, information and persuasion; it also meets a deeper need and serves a higher purpose. Whether clear or garbled, tumultuous or silent, deliberate or fatally inadvertent, communication is the ground of meeting and the foundation of community. It is, in short, the essential human connection.

Studies the manner in which tactile experience, or its lack, affects the development of behavior.

Ashley Montagu, who first attacked the term "race" as a usable concept in his acclaimed work, Man's Most Dangerous Myth , offers here a devastating rebuttal to those who would claim any link between race and intelligence. In now classic essays, this thought-provoking volume critically examines the terms "race" and "IQ" and their applications in scientific discourse. The twenty-four contributors -- including such eminent thinkers as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin, Urie Bronfenbrenner, W.F. Bodmer, and Jerome Kagan -- draw on fields that range from biology and genetics to psychology, anthropology, and education. What emerges in piece after piece is a deep skepticism about the scientific validity of intelligence tests, especially as applied to evaluating innate intelligence, if only because scientists still cannot distinguish between genetic and environmental contributions to the development of the human mind. Five new essays have been included that specifically address the claims made in the recent, highly controversial book, The Bell Curve. Must reading for anyone interested in racism and education in America, Race and IQ is a brilliantly lucid exploration of the boundary line between race and intelligence. - Publisher.

compilation of writings in anthropology

Wry wit and down-to-earth commonsense as the authors supply grains of truth in ideas we ordinarily dismiss.

The comparatively new science of ethology, or the study of the behavior of different species, has given rise to a number of hypotheses about manʹs instinctual nature. A conception of manʹs inborn aggressive drive -- a twentieth-century form of neo Ssocial Darwinism advanced by the eminent ethologist Konrad Lorenz, and popularized in books by Robert Ardrey -- has recently gained a wider acceptance than scientific objectivity can support. In this volume, edited by a distinguished anthropology and social biologist, fourteen experts offer a critique of this Hobbesian view of man, which is related to and possibly older than the doctrine of original sin. In the editorʹs words, their purpose is to put the record straight, to correct what threatens to become an epidemic error concerning the causes of manʹs aggression, and to redirect attention to a consideration of the real causes of such behavior. -- Back cover.

A series of essays by an anthropologist on wide and varied topics, such as the population problem, woman's make-up, furniture, chastity and sex, race and war, and religion.