Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 448 pages
• Published by: Oxford University Press, USA October 29, 1998
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0195126629
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195126624
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 1.4 pounds

From Library Journal
For most of the 20th century, social scientists have assumed that all human beings essentially "think alike"-that seeming differences in the ways people conceive of the world are due to "superficial" cultural differences rather than to "actual" physical differences. This unquestioned tenet of anthropology arose in reaction to the Darwinian concepts of the previous century, where "different" was assumed to mean inferior to Western cognition. In this important book, Shore argues that the dichotomy between the cultural and the physical is false, since humans are necessarily culture-bearing creatures. In making this argument, he discusses diverse cultural models such as American baseball, Australian aborigine initiation, and the spatial arrangement of Samoan villages. While the ideas discussed here are important, the book is not easy reading and will be of interest mainly to anthropologists (psychologists, alas, should pay greater attention to cross-cultural differences, but do not). Academic and research libraries with anthropology collections will consider this a necessary purchase.
Mary Ann Hughes, Neill P.L., Pullman, Wash.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Review

"A book of remarkable power and breadth, Culture in Mind addresses questions at the core of anthropological theory, and gives us a set of concepts and models we can really work with. Clearly argued and captivatingly developed through subtle analyses of ethnographic materials, the book resolves the old paradoxes of shared culture and motivated personal knowledge to build an account of meaning and cognition that will revitalize cultural anthropology."--Fredrik Barth


Reader Reviews
Shore's Culture in Mind remains at the forefront of cognitive anthropology. His sophisticated development of schema theory (a.k.a. cultural models) clarifies the manner by which individuals create meaning, a process Shore entitles "epistemogenesis." In Shore's elaborate organization of schemas, he enables cultural theorists to preserve individual agency, the idiosyncratic creation of meaning by the person, within a relatively conservative account of cultural transmission. By adjusting the scale of analysis (from the individual scale of personal mental models, to the larger scale of conventional models, to the still larger scale of socially instituted models, to the largest scale of foundational schemas), Shore captures the nature of culture in mind--the manner by which a person gains her individual as well as her cultural understandings of the world, a thoroughly reciprocal process! This fruitful examination of schemas allows one to understand how the personal and idiosyncratic may exist simultaneously with the collective, social world. One of Shore's most interesting discussions is that of the "psychic unity of mankind" doctrine. This idea came about as a much needed response to the institutionalized racism of the 19th century, a trend as present in anthropology as elsewhere. But the cost of this doctrine, which would lead to the paradox of cultural relativism side-by-side with the assertion of universally similar human minds, became too great; a fact we all know from the rampant relativism of social theory in the later 20th century. Shore's elegant account of cognitive anthropology helps us undo this paradox by understanding how universally similar nervous systems, through a prolonged enculturation process--a process rife with the transmission of schemas and models--can be widely divergent in their representation of and engagement with the world. Shore addresses nearly every critique leveled against cognitive science in general, and cognitive anthropology in particular, as a means to make sense of "culture." This book is best read in conjunction with a study of the works of Roy D'Andrade, Dorothy Holland, Claudia Strauss, and Naomi Quinn. While Shore does a concise job of expressing his robust organization of schema theory, the sheer complexity of the ideas and their endless consequences require a careful--and repeated--review of the text. But the investment is worth it! A MUST READ for all students of culture.