This article deals with some deep forms o f prejudice in American anthropology in terms o f its dominant ideas and its products. The foundation o f this prejudice seems to be Western individualism. I t expresses itself by excluding contrary ideas from its public forums (publications, symposia, and so forth) and by elaborating and escalating ideas in conformity with it. In spite of its cross-cultural protestations, American anthropology will become White American anthropology unless our fraternity consciously takes a more open-minded approach to other competing assumptions-rooted in other cultures-about man and what makes him run. There is a world o f difference between a truly cross-cultural science o f man and a White centered science o f man with cross-cultural decorations
Filial piety has been central to Chinese social fabric since ancient times and thoroughly adopted and propagated by the Japanese since the sixth century A.D. However, it was an impediment to the industrial, military and political development of China but not to that of Japan. Our hypothesis is that dissimilarities in kinship structure, and hence in secondary groupings, between the two societies led the content of filial piety to build human relationships differently in the two societies. Support for this hypothesis is found in the difference between tsu or clan in China and dozoku (prevailing in rural areas) and iemoto (prevailing in urban areas) in Japan. Membership and advancement in the Chinese secondary group are restricted to males born and females married into it. Membership and advancement in the Japanese secondary groups are not so confined. Yet the content of filial piety permeates all three. The dozoku, but especially the iemoto, provided the Japanese a larger and firmer infrastructure of human grouping on which to build their modern enterprises whether they be religious, educational, economic, political or military.
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