Book Review of "Anthropological Thought" by Venkata Mohan

This book was an incredible read. While it offered many insightful ideas, what I loved most was how it was organized: it presented different categories within anthropology, followed by the anthropologists who made key contributions to each field.This made the content easy to follow and helped in connecting related ideas and thinkers across topics. Here are some insights and quotes that stood out to me. 

• In the section on E.B. Tylor, he defines culture as: “Culture… is the complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” The most important word in this definition is “acquired.” Culture is not inherited—it is learned. This definition was one of the first scientific attempts to explain culture, shifting the focus toward how it is socially transmitted.

• While critiquing Ruth Benedict’s study, the book raised an important question about individual differences within cultures: “Are not the individual differences sufficiently large that it becomes difficult to describe any culture in terms of a typical personality?” This critique challenges the assumption that a single cultural personality can represent an entire group, highlighting the complexity and variation among individuals within any society.

• Another anthropologist whose work was fascinating to read about was Leslie White, who had an evolutionary perspective on culture. He believed that: “Culture is a system that grows by increasing its control over the forces of nature.” White described culture as an “energy-capturing system.” Different cultures have access to different amounts of energy depending on how technologically advanced they are, which in turn shapes their ability to sustain certain cultural practices.

• I explored Clifford Geertz’s work further in his book The Interpretation of Cultures, but one idea from Anthropological Thought stood out: When analyzing an event, try to understand the culture that is being expressed through it. This encourages a more open-minded and nuanced perspective. You can remain objective while still engaging with the cultural meaning. By observing what a culture is trying to communicate through actions or events, you are practicing anthropology.