ABSTRACT
This essay is based on the assumption that the way anthropologists present themselves and their knowledge to the reading public can tell us something about the intellectual foundation of their discipline. I have selected three works covering a period from early Classic to post-Classic eras: Robert Lowie’s Are We Civilized? (1929), Clyde Kluckhohn’s Mirror for Man (1949), and Marvin Harris’s Our Kind (1989). However, I shall not discuss them in strict chronological order. I will compare the Lowie and Harris books first, then present Kluckhohn’s volume as a “mirror” for the first two. Other books of similar nature will be discussed in context. 1
