In and Out of Each Other's Bodies ― Theory of Mind, Evolution, Truth, and the Nature of the Social

Maurice Bloch (anthropology, London School of Economics) offers a collection of essays and lectures on the nature of human sociality, the ethnography of truth, and where he would like to see anthropology as a discipline go. He introduces two concepts of the social, the transactional and the transcendental. He argues in defense of "the transcendental social," pointing out how religion, which is the classic transcendental social, is a misleading category for anthropologists in that invokes the historical peculiarities of the Abrahamic religions. He elucidates "the criteria and concepts that ordinary people hold concerning what is true and why," drawing some interesting conclusions from his own fieldwork about why sight but not sound is a universal metaphor for veridicality. In the last section he argues for a "cognitive anthropology grounded in fieldwork" and turns to the work and influence of Claude Levi-Strauss. Most of these chapters have been published or presented before. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)