Graham Wallas (31 May 1858 - 9 August 1932) was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of EconomicsWallas joined the Fabian Society in April 1886, following his acquaintances Sidney Webb and George Bernard Shaw. He was to resign in 1904 in protest at Fabian support for Joseph Chamberlain's tariff policy.Wallas argued in Great Society (1914) that a social-psychological analysis could explain the problems created by the impact of (...) the industrial revolution on modern society. He contrasts the role of nature and nurture in modern society, concluding that humanity must depend largely on the improvements in nurture, and put his faith in the development of stronger international operation.Here are a few excepts from Wallas's preface to this book:The Greek thinkers started modern civilization, because they insisted that the trading populations of their walled cities should force themselves to think out an answer to the question, what kind of life is good. 'The origin of the city-state,' says Aristotle, 'is that it enables us to live; its justification is that it enables us to live well.'Within each nation, industrial organization may cease to be a confused and wasteful struggle of interests, if it is consciously related to a chosen way of life for which it offers to every worker the material means. International relations may cease to consist of a constant plotting of evil by each nation for its neighbors, if ever the youth of all nations know that French, and British, and Germans, and Russians, and Chinese, and Americans, are taking a conscious part in the great adventure of discovering ways of living open to all, and which all can believe to be good. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Both a critical history of anthropological theory and methods and a challenging essay in the sociology of science, "The Invention of Primitive Society" shows how, since Darwin, anthropologists have tried to define the original form of human society. The first generation - from Henry Maine to Lewis Henry Morgan - initiated the search. By the end of the century, the theory of 'totemism', developed by McLennan, Robertson Smith and Frazer, claimed to describe the initial state of religion and society. These (...) Victorian models were refined and developed by great theorists, including Engels, Durkheim and Freud, and became the basis of academic anthropology. But, as Adam Kuper points out, there was no original 'primitive society': the search and its goal were illusory, and when we study constructions of the primitive we study mirror-images of ourselves. (shrink)

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.