The Anthropology of Numbers [Paperback]

Until now the role of numbers in cultures has never been examined in detail from an anthropological perspective. This book is the first attempt to find out how people in a wide range of diverse cultures, as well as historical contexts, use and understand them.Until now the role of numbers in cultures has never been examined in detail from an anthropological perspective. This book is the first attempt to find out how people in a wide range of diverse cultures, as well as historical contexts, use and understand them.Why do the Nuer stipulate forty cattle in brideprice? Why is the number ten so important in North American mythology? What does the anthropologist Clifford Geertz really mean to say when he talks about the correspondence of Balinese time cycles? Numbers play some part, often quite central, in almost all known cultures, yet until now the subject has never been examined in detail from an anthropological perspective. This book is the first attempt to find out how people in a wide range of diverse cultures and in different historical contexts, use and understand numbers. The opening chapters provide the basis for looking at the way numbers operate in different contexts, by looking at the logical, psychological and linguistic implications. The following eight chapters deal with specific themes: ethnoscience, politics, measurement, time, money, music, games and architecture. The final chapter relates such operations to social, economic and cultural factors.List of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1. The ontology of number; 2. The cognitive foundations of numeracy; 3. Number and language; 4. Cosmology, society and politics; 5. Economy, society and politics; 6. Measurement, comparison and equivalence; 7. Time; 8. Money; 9. Music poetry and dance; 10. Games and chance; 11. Art and architecture; 12. The ecology of number; Notes; References; Index.'The book makes a lively, well-informed, and thoroughly unconventional contribution to its subject & it shoull3,