Human Nature As Capacity

What is it to be human? What are our specifically human attributes, our capacities and liabilities? Such questions gave birth to anthropology as an Enlightenment science. This book argues that it is again appropriate to bring the human to the fore, to reclaim the singularity of the word as central to the anthropological endeavor, not on the basis of the substance of a human nature - To be human is to act like this and react like this, to feel this and want this - but in terms of species-wide capacities: capabilities for action and imagination, liabilities for suffering and cruelty.

The contributors approach the human with an awareness of these complexities and particularities, rendering this volume unique in its ability to build on anthropology's ethnographic expertise. Review: This is an engaging collection which is enhanced by the editor's agenda and his clear and challenging statement of purpose.

The notion of 'going beyond' is important, and is well realised in his broad, scholarly, and well-argued introduction - a substantial contribution to anthropological theorising about human beings as such, as that enterprise now stands. * Michael Carrithers, Durham University