Nature and Culture in Western Discourses

Download or read book Nature and Culture in Western Discourses written by Stephen Horigan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How unique is man? How much are we bound by a common nature? To what extent is culture an expression of instinct? Such questions have haunted the development of social theory. In this fascinating book, Stephen Horigan argues that our thinking on these matters has been bedevilled by the enlightenment distinction between nature and culture. He criticizes this on the grounds that terms such as 'nature', 'culture', 'human', and 'animal' are ambiguous. He uses the themes of wildness and primitivism and cases of 'feral' children to illustrate his argument.