The Chosen Primate: Human Nature and Cultural Diversity

This is, without doubt, probably one of the best introductions to anthropology produced in recent years. Firstly, style: the author is witty and uncondescending. He treats the reader with respect. Secondly, content: the book is a work of synthesis but it is, simultaneosly, a work of great originality. Kuper links social anthropology to evolutionary anthropology in important and subtle ways. Recent trends in cultural anthropology - in particular the postmodern variety - have presented human beings in such a rarified way you would wonder sometimes if the planet itself was necessary for their existence. Culture has been conceived by this misguided trend as some kind of evanescent noosphere with no connection with materiality. Kuper is a wonderful antidote to this. On the other hand, his work is equally a powerful critique of the misguided trend known as `sociobiology'. In short, a wonderful subtle journey between the Scylla of biological reductionism and the Charbadis of idealist relativism. I very strongly recommend this book to all: specialists and general reader alike. It is yet another text in what is turning into something of renaissance of `Social' anthropology (one thinks of the work of Carrithers and Ingold as well.