Hierarchy, History, & Human Nature: The Social Origins of Historical Consciousness

Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. first edition. hardcover. Book VG+: touch of shelf wear else clean, tight, unmarked./DJ VG+: clean, unclipped. 8vo 384pp. from front flap: "Why have reliable histories been written in some literate civilizations but not in others? Anthropologist Donald Brown here argues that the answer lies in stratification: hereditarily stratified societies--such as India, with its caste system--tend to develop mythological views of the past and are marked by pronounced religiosity, which produces hagiography in place of biography, iconography in place of realistic portraiture, and orthodoxy in place of independent social-scientific investigation. By contrast, civilizations with open social stratification typically develop both sound historical views of the past and sound concomitants to history." #01940.