Human Motives and Cultural Models

by Edited by Roy G. D'Andrade , Claudia Strauss

• ISBN13: 9780521412339
• ISBN10: 0521412331
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1992-06-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A full understanding of human action requires an understanding of what motivates people to do what they do. For too many years studies of motivation have drawn from different theoretical paradigms. Typically, human motivation has been modeled on animal behavior, while culture has been described as pure knowledge or symbol. The result has been insufficient appreciation of the role of culture in human motivation and a truncated view of culture as disembodied knowledge. The anthropologists in this volume have attempted a different approach, seeking to integrate knowledge, desire, and action into a single explanatory framework. This research builds on recent work in cognitive anthropology on cultural models.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Preface

1. Models and motives Claudia Strauss

Part I. Cultural Models as Motives: 2. Schemas and motivation Roy G. D'Andrade

3. Ghost busters in anthropology Richard A. Shweder

Part II. How Do Cultural Models Become Motives?: 4. How cultural systems become desire: a case study of American romance Dorothy C. Holland

5. The motivational force of self-understanding: evidence from wives' inner conflicts Naomi Quinn

6. The directive force of morality tales in a Mexican community Holly F. Mathews

7. Learning to be an American parent: how cultural models gain directive force Sara Harkness, Charles M. Super and Constance H. Keefer

Part III. Cultural Models as Motives Reconsidered: 8. Motivated models Catherine Lutz

9. What makes Tony run? Schemas as motives reconsidered Claudia Strauss

10. Afterword Roy G. D'Andrade

Index.