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Editorial Reviews Ingram An anthropologist challenges the myth of the Noble Savage, reviewing the actual social conditions in the developed and developing worlds and examining such phenomena as mental illness, poverty, disease, deviance, criminality, suicide, revolution, and more.
Spotlight Reviews (what's this) Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers. 8 of 8 people found the
following review helpful:
The previous reviewers have commented accurately on the case Dr. Edgerton makes against adaptivism and cultural relativism. Dr. Edgerton is a strong corrective against the Margaret Mead's utopian philosophy. He demonstrates madness, fetishism, mutilation, cannibalism, irrational beliefs, and just plain evil in primitive societies. In contrast, western civilization does not look bad.
55 of 62 people found the
following review helpful:
Proving the adage that "madness is more common in groups than in individuals", Edgerton provides case after case of cultures gone awry. What position are WE in to evaluate and pass judgement on another culture? If we value freedom, health, productivity, social stability, knowledge, growth, and peace, we are in a good position to criticize the evils and mistakes of any culture. My only negative criticism of the book is a part in the beginning, in
which Edgerton praises relativism for providing us with a much-needed dose
of skepticism and wariness. Relativism has indeed made us cautious about
passing judgement, but with the categorical refutations Edgerton has
collected in disproving the major thrust of relativism, why make
concilliations regarding its benefits? Because of his equivocation, I
withhold the final star...
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0 of 1 people found the
following review helpful:
It is even more astonishing that they pay any attention to his ideas about "the noble savage" or "primitive man." Rousseau knew NOTHING about these subjects. Nowadays, of course, we have fairly good knowledge of early man. At least we know that mankind spent about 4 million years as hunter-gatherers, living in tribes and fighting a bitter struggle to stay alive. Altogether, the hunter-gatherer population of England was about 10,000 people! Agriculture began just ten thousand years ago. Rousseau preached the loony doctrine that "primitive man" in the "state
of nature" represented the human ideal, and that everything since then was
decadence and decay. I am not sure why anyone ever listened to him, but it
is a fact that the traces are still with us e.g. in modern tourism, where
people are always rushing off to find "unspoiled nature." Me, give me a
fortnight in Paris, the ballet, and the opera.
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What they don't teach you in anthropology class,
September 7, 2000 
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The Fall of Cultural Relativism, November 7,
2001 
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