Friends & Lovers

Fülszöveg

FRIENDS AND LOVERS An anthropological look at friendship
We love our friends; we want to be friends with our lovers. Western culture seems to make an important distinction between friendship and love. If we fail to find the one partner who will fulfill all our needs — emotional, social, sexual and economie — that is what we mean by being in love, isn't it ? — we think we have failed as human beings.
Or have we ? Robert Brain thinks we may just have allowed our peculiar Western notions of romantic love to induce a sense of failure — and with it unnecessary loneliness and unhappiness.
Using his anthropological skills and knowledge he takes us out of the strict confines of our upbringing; in Mali best friends throw excrement at each other; among the Bangwa of the Cameroons a princess may have male and female wives as well as warrior lovers, Chinautleco best friendship between males is extravagant in its promises and obligations but is not usually carnally homosexual.
The... Tovább

Fülszöveg

FRIENDS AND LOVERS An anthropological look at friendship
We love our friends; we want to be friends with our lovers. Western culture seems to make an important distinction between friendship and love. If we fail to find the one partner who will fulfill all our needs — emotional, social, sexual and economie — that is what we mean by being in love, isn't it ? — we think we have failed as human beings.
Or have we ? Robert Brain thinks we may just have allowed our peculiar Western notions of romantic love to induce a sense of failure — and with it unnecessary loneliness and unhappiness.
Using his anthropological skills and knowledge he takes us out of the strict confines of our upbringing; in Mali best friends throw excrement at each other; among the Bangwa of the Cameroons a princess may have male and female wives as well as warrior lovers, Chinautleco best friendship between males is extravagant in its promises and obligations but is not usually carnally homosexual.
The anthropological evidence is that man is not innately aggressive, keeping together only out of need. Blood brotherhood ceremonies, artificial twinning, the mutual obligations of co-godparents, and the use of trading are evidence of the desire to ceremonialise affection and friendship. Sexual union may be for pleasure, marriage simply to extend dynasties, and one-to-one relationships 'for ever' are rare.
Robert Brain is dazzling, erudite, controversial, informative and quite possibly outrageous. He believes our cold comfort culture has overvalued romantic love, misunderstood passion, and downrated the joys of affectionate and loyal friendship — does real liberation start here ?
'Easily the most remarkable book on the human arrangement since de Rougemont's Love in the Western World.' GORE VIDAL
'Marvellously lucid. Friendship, surely, has never had its
anthropological due till now.'
VICTOR TURNER committee on social thought,
university of chicago Vissza