Starry Nights: Critical Structural Realism in Anthropologyoffers nothing less than a reinventing of the discipline of anthropology. In these six essays four published here for the first time Stephen Reyna critiques the postmodern tenets of anthropology, while devising a new strategy for conducting research. Combative and clear,Starry Nightsprovides an important critique of mainstream anthropology as represented by Geertz and the postmodern legacy, and envisions a mode of anthropological research that addresses social, cultural and biological questions with techniques that are theoretically rigorous and practically useful.
Preface
Introduction
PART I: EPISTEMOLOGY
Chapter 1.Literary Anthropology and the Case against Science
Chapter 2.What Is Th eory? Something, Time-Being, Art
PART II: ONTOLOGY
Chapter 3.Dialectics of Force: Contradiction, Logics, and Conservation of D?lires
PART III: CRITICAL SCIENCE
Chapter 4.Right and Might: Of Approximate Truths and Moral Judgments
Chapter 5.Perpetual Peace? Dreaming in the Time-Being of Empire
Index
This is an important and timely collection of essays by one of the leading exponents of a scientific, materialist anthropology& I could see the usefulness of this collection in seminars on theory at the graduate and undergraduate level.? David Sutton, Southern Illinois University
Stephen P. Reynais a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Salle and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.?