Why Humans Have Cultures: Explaining Anthropology and Social Diversity

How and why do humans create so many different forms of life? This book presents an original and powerful answer to this central problem of anthropology.Why Humans Have Cultures asks three basic questions: what unity underlies cultural diversity? What are the origins of that diversity? How can we understand it? Michael Carrithers argues that it is the ways in which people interact with each other, rather than technological advances, that have been of crucial importance in human history. The human capacity for social interaction, whether on a grand scale or between individuals, is a prime mover in the continual process of social innovation. The imaginative and flexible nature of human social intelligence has created the vast and complex web of different cultures, societies, and histories which exist today.In this lucid and thought-provoking book, Michael Carrithers draws both on ancient and contemporary examples to show how this perspective forms a firm foundation for the study of culture, society, and history. It is necessary, he argues, to look at societies rather than technologies in order to produce challenging, useful, and reliable knowledge about ourselves.