The current Western interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions is--among other reasons--both the result of and the stimulation for an entire library of books purporting to bring the Wisdom of the East to an audience for whom the wisdom of the West has failed. This book is not an example of that genre. It is an attempt to interpret Buddhism in the light of some current theories about religion. As a work of scholarship, rather than a homiletic tract or an apologetic treatise, its aim is to understand Buddhism as one historical variant of the generic human attempt to find meaning and hope in a sacred order that transcends the mundane order of existence; its aime is not to encourage or discourage either a devotional or a soteriological interest in Buddhism.

Buddhism and Society: Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes

Spiro, Melford E.

Religion & Spirituality

Allen& Unwin

Buddhism and society: A great tradition and its Burmese vicissitudes (A Harper paperback)

Harper&Row

One of the most prominent figures in psychoanalytic and psychological anthropology, Melford E. Spiro has produced an oeuvre of broad theoretical and ethnographic scope. One of the few anthropologists who are also trained in psychoanalysis, he has made the study of culture and personality a distinctive theoretical approach to anthropological work and has been a consistent and forceful critic of such popular intellectual movements as structuralism, hermeneutics, cultural determinism, and symbolic anthropology. This volume of Spiro's major theoretical writings concentrates on theories of culture and human nature, functional analysis, and religion. Spiro argues that important dimensions of the human family are the same everywhere and that a theory of human nature is both possible and necessary. He discusses religious beliefs, analyzing not only their structures but also the ways such beliefs are held and the meanings attributed to them. This analysis, Spiro shows, can be done most successfully by means of a theory of the human family, of infant and child development and socialization, of panhuman unconscious processes, and of universal psychodynamic constellations such as the Oedipus complex.

Culture and Human Nature: Theoretical Papers of Melford E. Spiro

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

University of Chicago Press

In this book Melford Spiro investigates ideologies of gender and sex relations in Burma, according to which men are superior and women are morally and sexually dangerous-despite the reality that women actually enjoy high economic, legal, and social status. Spiro argues that these sexist ideologies-prevalent in most of the human world-are an expression of male anxieties and insecurities.

Gender Ideology and Psychological Reality: An Essay on Cultural Reproduction

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Yale University Press

Kinship and Marriage in Burma: A Cultural and Psychodynamic Analysis

In a psychodynamic framework, Dr. Spiro examines cultural norms, religion, interpersonal relationships, and the roles of women and men in the village of Yeigyi, Upper Burma. The book is a remarkable contribution to knowledge concerning mate selection, marriage, domestic group composition, intrafamilial relationships and kinship in Burma. Usable as a college text in sociology/anthropology, the book is also an excellent reference work for scholars interested in kinship and marriage.

Kinship and marriage in Burma: A cultural and psychodynamic analysis

History

Asia

University of California Press

The current Western interest in Buddhism and other Eastern religions is--among other reasons--both the result of and the stimulation for an entire library of books purporting to bring the Wisdom of the East to an audience for whom the wisdom of the West has failed. This book is not an example of that genre. It is an attempt to interpret Buddhism in the light of some current theories about religion. As a work of scholarship, rather than a homiletic tract or an apologetic treatise, its aim is to understand Buddhism as one historical variant of the generic human attempt to find meaning and hope in a sacred order that transcends the mundane order of existence; its aime is not to encourage or discourage either a devotional or a soteriological interest in Buddhism.

Buddhism and society: A great tradition and its Burmese vicissitudes

In a psychodynamic framework, Dr. Spiro examines cultural norms, religion, interpersonal relationships, and the roles of women and men in the village of Yeigyi, Upper Burma. The book is a remarkable contribution to knowledge concerning mate selection, marriage, domestic group composition, intrafamilial relationships and kinship in Burma. Usable as a college text in sociology/anthropology, the book is also an excellent reference work for scholars interested in kinship and marriage.

Gender & Culture: Kibbutz Women Revisited

Gender and culture: Kibbutz women revisited

Schocken Books

A detailed examination of the physical, emotional, social, and academic growth of children in an Israeli kibbutz. Bibliogs

Children of the Kibbutz: A Study in Child Training and Personality, Revised Edition

Harvard University Press

Kibbutz Venture In Utopia

Harvard Univ. Press

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Books by Spiro, Melford E.