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Social Science Cultural

A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature

Essays in Honour of Richard Slobodin

edited by Richard J. Preston

Publisher
Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2010
Category
Cultural, Social Scientists & Psychologists, Ethnopsychology
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781554587681
    Publish Date
    Apr 2010
    List Price
    $48.99
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9781554580408
    Publish Date
    Sep 2009
    List Price
    $89.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781554585700
    Publish Date
    Jan 2020
    List Price
    $39.99

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Description

A Kindly Scrutiny of Human Nature is a collection of essays honouring Richard (Dick) Slobodin, one of the great anthropologists of the Canadian North.

A short biography is followed by essays describing his formative thinking about human nature and human identities, his humanizing force in his example of living a moral, intellectual life, his discernment of people’s ability to make informed choices and actions, his freedom from ideological fashions, his writings about the Mackenzie District Métis, his determination to take peoples experience seriously, not metaphorically, and his thinking about social organization and kinship.

Contributors include Sam Ajzenstat, Michael Asch, David J. Damas , Harvey A. Feig, Kenneth Little, Antonia Mills, Richard J. Preston, Mary Black Rogers, and Robert Wishar. An unpublished paper about a 1930s caribou hunt in which he participated finishes the collection, giving Dick the last word.

About the author

 

Richard J. Preston is nominally retired (Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, McMaster University) and hopes to continue his forty-plus-year span of sojourning and work with the people of the James Bay region, focusing on the cultural dimensions of globalization and tracing the emergence of the Cree concept of community. His publications include Cree Narrative: Expressing the Personal Meanings of Events, second edition (2002), and a great many papers.

 

Richard J. Preston's profile page

Editorial Reviews

''These essays are loving, thoughtful and well-crafted. The book is a little gem, in fitting tribute to the thoughtful and well-crafted work of Richard Slobodin, one of the founders of the McMaster University Department of Anthropology.... Harvey Feit's contribution, in addition to being a tribute to his friend and colleague, offers a substantial review of the literature and attendant controversies about band organization and land tenure amoung eastern Algonquians in relation to Slobodin's Gwich'in ethnography.... It is a must read for students wanting a succinct and even-handed review of this controversy anthropology.''

Anthropologica, 52, 2010