Présentation de l'éditeur
For some time I have felt the need of a textbook in ethnography. Be Heving that the facts about the Hfe of primitive people are in the highest degree significant for the development of social evolution, I have resorted to all the available texts, and to various devices, to get a learnable selection of these facts before my students. In this effort I feel that I have been but partially successful. Most books on ethnography are either very special or, if they aim to be general, are too diffuse, controversial, technical, or otherwise unfitted for the beginner. In the effort to be encyclopedic some of them have, for example, introduced unrelated and unessential details about tribes concerning which little is known except such scattering details as a legend or two, or some few facts about one or two aspects of their social life. My plan is to select a few tribes under the main races about which we know, on reliable authority, practically all the typical and significant facts ;and then to describe such groups according to one general systern, treating first of their environmental and racial characters, and then setting forth the main aspects of their self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, self-gratification, religion, and regulative organization. Such a method of treatment follows the system originally used by Professor William Graham Sumner of Yale University and will, I think, help the student to gain a perspective of the life of these people. This book lays no claim to originality of material any more than would an elementary textbook in history. It is supposed to supply a set of facts drawn from the most reliable sources upon which the development of a science of society may rest. I have excluded everything that is not a matter of agreement on the part of nearly all competent authorities. These facts I have not attempted to interpret, leaving matters of that sor
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
Présentation de l'éditeur
Originally published in 1917. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.
