Closed Systems and Open Minds: The Limits of Naivety in Social Anthropology

The individual essays are of a very high standard and provoke theoretical and methodological questioning on a number of issues. --Alasdair MacIntyre, the Philosophical Quarterly

This is an original and stimulating...and we should be grateful to its authors for having brought into the open some important questions which are only too often slurred over or taken for granted. --J. H. M. Beattie, Man

This is an important book. [The writers] have written a series of essays on an important problem, that of the limits of the field of competence of the social anthropologist. . . . This book does much to show us that research is a hard and rigorous business. --John Middleton, American Anthropologist

In this book Mac Gluckman, a social anthropologist, and Ely Devons, an aconomist, report a methodological inquiry in collaboration with their sometime colleagues of the Univeristy of Manchester. Their stuffy focuses ultimately on two basic problems of social science: how an investigator delimits his field of study, and whether he is justitified in making naIve assumptions about the phenomena and concepts of other disciplines which impinge on his area of inquiry. . . . Anthropologists familiar with Gluckman's many contributions to social anthropology will not be surprised to find that Close Systems and Open Minds contains a message: the genius excepted, wise researchers will adopt a prudent policy of sound conservatism. The authors and their collaborators have raised basic issues of method. --Harry W. Basehart, Science

The individual essays are of a very high standard and provoke theoretical and methodological questioning on a number of issues. --Alasdair MacIntyre, the Philosophical Quarterly

This is an original and stimulating...and we should be grateful to its authors for having brought into the open some important questions which are only too often slurred over or taken for granted. --J. H. M. Beattie, Man

This is an important book. [The writers] have written a series of essays on an important problem, that of the limits of the field of competence of the social anthropologist. . . . This book does much to show us that research is a hard and rigorous business. --John Middleton, American Anthropologist

In this book Mac Gluckman, a social anthropologist, and Ely Devons, an aconomist, report a methodological inquiry in collaboration with their sometime colleagues of the Univeristy of Manchester. Their stuffy focuses ultimately on two basic problems of social science: how an investigator delimits his field of study, and whether he is justitified in making naIve assumptions about the phenomena and concepts of other disciplines which impinge on his area of inquiry. . . . Anthropologists familiar with Gluckman's many contributions to social anthropology will not be surprised to find that Close Systems and Open Minds contains a message: the genius excepted, wise researchers will adopt a prudent policy of sound conservatism. The authors and their collaborators have raised basic issues of method. --Harry W. Basehart, Science

-The individual essays are of a very high standard and provoke theoretical and methodological questioning on a number of issues.---Alasdair MacIntyre, the Philosophical Quarterly

-This is an original and stimulating...and we should be grateful to its authors for having brought into the open some important questions which are only too often slurred over or taken for granted.---J. H. M. Beattie, Man

-This is an important book. [The writers] have written a series of essays on an important problem, that of the limits of the field of competence of the social anthropologist. . . . This book does much to show us that research is a hard and rigorous business.---John Middleton, American Anthropologist

-In this book Mac Gluckman, a social anthropologist, and Ely Devons, an aconomist, report a methodological inquiry in collaboration with their sometime colleagues of the Univeristy of Manchester. Their stuffy focuses ultimately on two basic problems of social science: how an investigator delimits his field of study, and whether he is justitified in making -naIve- assumptions about the phenomena and concepts of other disciplines which impinge on his area of inquiry. . . . Anthropologists familiar with Gluckman's many contributions to social anthropology will not be surprised to find that Close Systems and Open Minds contains a message: the genius excepted, wise researchers will adopt a prudent policy of sound conservatism. The authors and their collaborators have raised basic issues of method.---Harry W. Basehart, Science