J. a. Barnes

The study of kinship is a fundamental part of the study and the practice of social anthropology. This volume examines the work of three distinguished anthropologists that bear on kinship and determines what theoretical models are implicit in their writings and assesses to what extent their claims have been validated. The anthropologists studied are from France, the UK and USA: Claude Levi-Strauss, Meyer Fortes and G.P. Murdock. First published in 1971.

HUMPING MY DRUM by J.A.Barnes PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION: After a lifetime of not keeping a diary, John Barnes has reconstructed his past from a good memory and those few documents that do record his life and times. His story starts with his childhood in Reading, his schooldays and undergraduate career. Although six years of war interrupted his academic progress, they gave him experiences in the Fleet Air Arm that may have prepared him for the rigors of his first anthropological fieldwork in Northern Rhodesia. The life of an academic is seldom smooth and various universities in England and Australia augmented his scholastic duties with ample tests of his diplomatic and political skills. In pages crowded with the names of colleagues, friends, family and rivals, Barnes brings a social scientist's eye to bear on the disciplines of anthropology and sociology themselves.

John Barnes's collection of essays covers a variety of topics in sociology and anthropology, including lineage systems, social networks, colonialism, underlying assumptions of social science, and the significance of time in social analysis. Together they identify the author's particular view of social science: he is primarily interested in 'what really happens'. Rather than revamp articles written with a distinctive set of assumptions to bring them into line with current intellectual fashion, Professor Barnes has chosen to let them stand as they are, products of identifiable theoretical stance and modes of exposition. But introductory notes to each chapter set out the context in which the piece was originally written and draw attention to later publications and events that bear on it. An introduction discusses in detail the author's view of social science as the construction of models rather than a search for social laws, while the final chapter presents a model of the modelling process itself.

The study of kinship is a fundamental part of the study and the practice of social anthropology. This volume examines the work of three distinguished anthropologists that bear on kinship and determines what theoretical models are implicit in their writings and assesses to what extent their claims have been validated. The anthropologists studied are from France, the UK and USA: Claude Levi-Strauss, Meyer Fortes and G.P. Murdock. First published in 1971.

A long established standard student reference. To aid understanding of how many of the tables can be used, there is a section of practical worked examples. Useful formulae are also included.

Defining lies as statements that are intended to deceive, this book considers the contexts in which people tell lies, how they are detected and sometimes exposed, and the consequences for the liars themselves, their dupes, and the wider society. The author provides examples from a number of cultures with distinctive religious and ethical traditions, and delineates domains where lying is the norm, domains that are ambiguous and the one domain (science) that requires truthtelling. He refers to experimental studies on children that show how, at an early age, they acquire the capactiy to lie and learn when it is appropriate to do so. He reviews how lying has been evaluated by moralists, examines why we do not regard novels as lies and relates the human capacity to lie to deceit among other animal species. He concludes that although there are, in all societies, good pragmatic reasons for not lying all the time, there are also strong reasons for lying some of the time.

John Barnes's collection of essays covers a variety of topics in sociology and anthropology, including lineage systems, social networks, colonialism, underlying assumptions of social science, and the significance of time in social analysis. Together they identify the author's particular view of social science: he is primarily interested in 'what really happens'. Rather than revamp articles written with a distinctive set of assumptions to bring them into line with current intellectual fashion, Professor Barnes has chosen to let them stand as they are, products of identifiable theoretical stance and modes of exposition. But introductory notes to each chapter set out the context in which the piece was originally written and draw attention to later publications and events that bear on it. An introduction discusses in detail the author's view of social science as the construction of models rather than a search for social laws, while the final chapter presents a model of the modelling process itself.