Bøger af Alan Macfarlane

Alan Macfarlane first went to work with the Gurungs of central Nepal in December 1968. Since then he has re-visited the village of Thak north of Pokhara some twenty times. His wife Sarah Harrison went with him for all of his visits from his second visit of 1986 onwards. Alan has taken some 120 hours of film and Sarah has taken many photographs and made extensive field diaries and field notes. The films, with accompanying notes in this book, describe the social world of the Gurungs. They cover children and education, feasts and sports, music and ritual, economy and power in the village. The second part describes the life of Gurungs in towns and cities around the world.

From the preface: 'This is a book which synthesizes a lifetime of reflection on the origins of the modern world. Through forty years of travel in Europe, Australia, India, Nepal, Japan and China I have observed the similarities and differences of cultures. I have read as widely as possible in both contemporary and classical works in history, anthropology and philosophy.' Prof Macfarlane is also the author of The Culture of Capitalism, The Savage Wars of Peace, The Riddle of the Modern World and The Making of the Modern World, among many others. This is the third book published by Odd Volumes, the imprint of The Fortnightly Review.

This is one volume in a series of books on the conditions of creativity, where we explore individual lives though long filmed interviews, set within the context of some text and a summary of the interview. This volume deals with a set of people concerned with computing: Andy Hopper, Ken Moody, Herman Hauser, Jean Bacon and Ben Shneiderman. All the interviews are available on the Internet. In the electronic version it is possible to go directly to the interviews.

England has long been famous for its Common Law system and this has spread over much of the world through the influence of the British Empire. Yet there have been few studies of how it worked at the local level in past centuries. Based on intensive studies of the records of one English village in Essex, (Earls Colne) and on the wider court records, Alan Macfarlane and his colleagues have reconstructed the life of an Elizabethan woman and of her battles with some of the most powerful men in England.

Account of life at a northern boarding school

Yukichi Fukuzawa is arguably the greatest Japanese socialthinker of the last three centuries. In numerous books, inparticular An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1973) andAutobiography (1972) he outlined his many ideas, not leaston the raised status of women.By setting up bookshops, universities, schools, modernaccounting, and modern manufacturing he became oneof the principal architects of modern Japan, where hisimage is still on the highest-denomination Japanesebanknote. Through his travels to the West and readingof western philosophy, he discovered the secret essenceof civilization and modernity and explained this to hiscountrymen and women.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.

F.W. Maitland is sometimes thought of as merely a greatlegal historian of England. Yet in over three thousandpublished pages, including his History of English Law(1895) with F. Pollock (of which Maitland wrote all but one chapter), his Collected Papers in three volumes (1911), The Constitutional History of England (1919) and many other works he reveals himself to be one of the profoundest thinkers on how our modern world emerged, on a level with Montesquieu and Tocqueville. Maitland's works onTrusts, on Equity, on Government and on the great traditionof English Common Law explain, in brilliant and simpleprose, how the quintessential institutions of successfuldemocracy and capitalism were established in Englandand then America.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.

Montesquieu is widely regarded as one of the founders ofmany of the social sciences. His broad erudition and deepconcentration led to his great work The Spirit of the Laws, published in 1748. Before that, he had written other notableworks including the Persian Letters, published in 1721. Byconsidering his life and his work in relation to each other, and all his works alongside each other, we can see insidethe mind of one of the greatest of modern thinkers. He wasthe first great global thinker who could base his work on sources from around the world. Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellow of King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.co

Alan Macfarlane is Emeritus Professor of Anthropological Science at the University of Cambridge, a Life Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. He has published more than forty books, including more than a dozen on the English.Alan Macfarlane writes as both an insider (British parents, brought up and educated and living in England, working on English history), and as an outsider (five-eighths Scots, working as an anthropologist in Nepal, Japan and China).The book explains very simply some of the key features that those who wish to understand the English might like to know about, and what has caused some of the special nature of the English. It is a companion to 'Understanding the English, A personal A-Z'.

century onwards who have influenced my work, I havechosen four representatives. For the eighteenth centuryEnlightenment there is the philosopher and historianDavid Hume. For the nineteenth century there is thelawyer and comparative anthropologist Sir Henry Maine.For the years between 1920 and the 1950's there is theWeberian sociologist Norman Jacobs with his comparisonof Japan, China and the West. For the second half of thetwentieth century there is the philosopher, sociologist andanthropologist Ernest Gellner.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.

Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political scientists of all time. His Democracy in America (1835,1840) and Ancien Regime (1856) are classics. Yet his work is not always easy to understand since it needs to be seen as a work which combines his essays, letters, travels and other materials. Through an examination of all of these, we can see that Tocqueville, more than any other thinker, understood the deep roots of individualism, equality andfraternity and in doing so the origins of the modern world.His three-way comparison of France, England, and Americais unique and deeply illuminating.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com

The theme of this book is the transformation of a childthrough infancy, boarding schools and university, fromthe home to the wider society. By combining photographsand scans of documents, Alan Macfarlane presents anaccount of his 'education' from his birth in Assam, India, in 1941 through to the end of his undergraduate degree atOxford University in 1963. This is part of a wider study ofcomparative education between China and the West.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.co

The development of modern computers and Artificial Intelligence since the middle of the twentieth century is the greatest technological revolution since the invention of writing. This book explains how and why it happened, and what are the likely consequences of an exponential growth in the power of computers and robots - and how we can come to terms with this. Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellow of King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com

We live in a shrinking world where civilisations are colliding and people from all over the world are encountering former strangers as neighbours. So we need to understand each other's history and culture. To help with this deeper appreciation of the huge variety of humankind, here is a simple description of the basic features of five of the greatest current world civilisations - the Sino-sphere, Japano-sphere, Islamo-sphere, Euro-sphere and Anglo-sphere. Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellow of King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com

Life at a British boarding school 1955-60

Here I explain three ways in which we learn about our world - through participation, conversation and by absorbing creative works. I look at how this experience is worked upon, reshaped and communicated through our imagination and writing. Finally I look at how our interpretations are influenced by the wider cultural context. Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellow of King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com

Thomas Malthus was one of the three founders of moderneconomics, alongside Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Hewas also the founder of modern demography (populationstudies). In his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), turned into a greatly expanded and in many ways differentbook in the second edition of 1803, Malthus laid out hisfamous laws of population, later amended to tendencies.The influence of this book has been immense, not merelyon theoretical discussions in economics and the socialsciences, but also in the practical legislation of the earlynineteenth century and the policies of those who ruled theBritish Empire. His theories also provided the key to theidea of natural selection for both Alfred Russell Wallaceand Charles Darwin.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com

Adam Smith was one of the three founders of modernclassical economics, along with Malthus and Ricardo. Yethe was much more than an economist. He was a truepolymath with a vast width of knowledge and a close friendof the philosopher David Hume. To understand him wehave to look not just at his famous Wealth of Nations (1776)but also his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Lectureson Jurisprudence (1982) and his Essays on PhilosophicalSubjects (1982). Bringing his life and work together we seea man who decisively shaped our modern world and laidout the blue-print for modern affluence.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.

In many areas of the world destruction of natural resources and the rapid growth of populaton are among the most important problems facing individuals and governments. This book, first published in 1976, utilises the tools of social anthropology and population studies to examine the causes and consequences of populations growth.

This book is a collection of interviews conducted by one of England's leading social anthropologists and historians, Professor Alan Macfarlane. The current volume on two of England's foremost physiologists and a vision scientist is yet another addition to the series of several such books.

This book is a collection of interviews conducted by a leading British social anthropologist and historian, Professor Alan Macfarlane. Filmed over a period of several years, the three conversations in this volume are a part of the series Creative Lives and Works.

This refreshing guide has been written by Alan Macfarlane, a Fellow of King's College for over forty years and currently a Life Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. It is written in collaboration with Patricia McGuire, the King's College Archivist, illustrated by Bridget Strevens Marzo who studied at King's, and assisted by the Fellow Librarian Peter Jones.

We live in a confused and confusing world. Populationgrowth, rapidly changing technologies, large migrations ofpeoples and ideas are changing everything faster. This is abrief historical overview of eight of the major problems weface and some radical ways of thinking about them. Theseinclude robots and work, computers and the internet, theincrease in life and health, the challenge to democracy, multiculturalism, educational changes, war and peace.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.co

I have spent the last sixty years trying to understand the world. I have studied for two doctorates at Oxford and London and travelled through Nepal, Japan and China. Here I will describe what I have found about asking questions, guessing, testing, assembling evidence, creative writing and the conditions of creativity. Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellow of King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com

We live in a confused and confusing world. This is partlycaused by the massive growth of inter-civilisational contactsdriven by economic, cultural and communication changes. Itis urgent that we understand each other if we are to surviveand thrive, yet most of us know very little about the worldoutside our own civilisation.This book describes the central features of four greatcivilisations, their history and culture: China, Japan, Europeand the Anglosphere. Through a comparison of their deeper cultural logic and through investigating their dreams and nightmares, their religious, economic, political and social similarities and differences, we may come to a deeper appreciation of their worlds and our own.Drawing on fifty years of travel through these different civilisations and teaching about them at the University of Cambridge, Alan Macfarlane explores how we can remain different and yet live in some sort of harmony through mutual appreciation and understanding.

British education is designed to teach about society andpower, play and performance, the head and the heart, thespirit and character. It is a preparation for a certain kind of'modernity.' This book explains how education can make usmodern and the way in which such an education is differentfrom that of Europe and China.Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor ofAnthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellowof King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com

Alan Macfarlane, a Fellow of King's College for over forty years and currently a Life Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, shares his own unique personal insight into some of the historical, social and cultural aspects of a highly unusual institution.

This book describes the nature of English historical records over the period 1200-1800. It surveys the records created by the state, the estates of landlords, and the Church. The work arises from an intensive research project (1973-81), which involved the manual and computerised analysis of all the surviving records for two parishes, in Westmorland and Essex, up to 1800. The book considers the administrative and judicial process, which led to the compilation of the documents, the survival and quantity of each class, the location and form of the material, and the hidden omissions, inaccuracies and deceptions.

This is a collection of interviews conducted by one of England¿s leading social anthropologists and historians, Alan Macfarlane. The current volume is on three foremost imperial and global historians,Christopher Bayly, Richard Rathbone and Richard Drayton.

Creative Lives and Works is a collection of interviews conducted by one of England's leading social anthropologists and historians, Alan Macfarlane. The current volume is on three of Britain's foremost lawyers and judges who give a wide sketch of the legal system through their own experiences and interpretations.