HIERARCHY, HISTORY, AND HUMAN NATURE. The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness.

Aus der Bibliothek von Prof. Wolfgang Haase, langj�igem Herausgeber der ANRW und des International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT) / From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - sehr guter Zustand / very good condition - Why have reliable histories been written in some literate civilizations but not in others? Anthropologist Donald Brown here argues that the answer lies in stratification: hereditarily stratified societies�such as India, with its caste system�tend to develop mythological views of the past and are marked by pronounced religiosity, which produces hagiography in place of biography, iconography in place of realistic portraiture, and orthodoxy in place of independent social-scientific investigation. By contrast, civilizations with open social stratification typically develop both sound historical views of the past and sound concomitants to history. Drawing on the historical writings of South Asia and China, Southeast Asia, the ancient Mediterranean world, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, Brown demonstrates how their differing conceptions of historiography relate to differences in the nature of the societies. The social construction of cultural forms can thus be understood as creating a set of constraints, either positive or negative, not only on history but also on its recording. At a time when the social sciences are increasingly concerned with uniqueness and subjectivity, this book offers a new objective interpretation of both differences and similarities among great civilizations. ISBN 9780816510603