MixedThe Wall Street JournalDr. Makari’s whirlwind historical survey tells a compelling story of racial and ethnic animosity, but he might have paid more attention to religious conflicts ... Dr. Makari suggests that some combination of these psychological and sociological theories may be cobbled together to guide our thinking. This is probably the best that we can manage at present. What then can be done to limit the damage? Here Dr. Makari is less helpful. He suggests that all will be well if society becomes more equal, open and informed. He might as well add that social media should be better regulated, and the public better equipped for critical thought. Failing that, we may have to relive these nightmares of collective hatred again and again for a long time to come.
Nicholas Thomas
PositiveWall Street JournalThe old theories of world prehistory were all about migrations of supposedly homogenous racial groups. Modern approaches pay more attention to local adaptations and interactions and to the intermixture of migrants and earlier settlers ... Mr. Thomas broadly favors what is now the mainstream view, that the Lapita way of life was a relatively recent adaptation to local conditions and opportunities. It was a cultural complex that came together on the spot and spread through exchanges within local trade networks. The author delivers a fair account of current scholarship but regrettably he seems to pass over the classic Melanesian ethnography, Bronisław Malinowski’s \'Argonauts of the Western Pacific.\' Published a century ago, this masterpiece of observation and analysis provides a grounded, eyewitness account of inter-island trade, rivalry and alliances. It may be the most reliable guide to what life was like in the South Pacific in the millennium before European colonization.
Barnaby Phillips
PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)... Phillips...interviews a range of experts and interested parties. He delivers a balanced reconstruction of the Benin saga and probes the difficult choices facing European—and Nigerian—museums ... Phillips excels at tracing the roundabout ways in which objects could find their way into museums.
Charles King
MixedThe Wall Street JournalCharles King ’s lively, ambitious book makes a very large claim: that the eminent anthropologist Franz Boas (1858-1942) inspired an \'intellectual revolution\' in the first half of the 20th century ... it is a familiar narrative, routinely taught to first-year anthropology students in American universities. But it is much too simple. Boas did not invent a whole new theory of race and culture ... Mr. King tracks Boas’s \'intellectual revolution\' through the work of several female acolytes, and provides a particularly fascinating profile of Zora Neale Hurston ... So is Mr. King’s account history or myth? Like the Kwakiutl narratives collected by Boas in British Columbia, it is a bit of both.
