Are there any methods whereby we may understand the cultures of modern nation-societies both as to their detailed components and as to their total configurational characteristics? Anthropologists receive such queries because modern ethnological field work and other anthropological methods have been able to produce reliable descriptive analyses of so-called primitive tribes and small communities that are both comprehensive and detailed. And, on the basis of such data collected in a wide variety of cultures around the world, science has acquired not only a rich store of knowledge concerning the substantive varieties of human social behavior, but also a fairly elaborated theoretical apparatus regarding culture in general. With such knowledge and theory it is possible to explain and even to predict many human behaviors and attitudes that were formerly beyond the reach of science.
Book Review: The Challenge of Human Social Behavior
