Abstract

I evaluate Professor Nancy Munn’s criticism in her 1994 review of Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern’s 1991 book Partial Connections that Strathern does not refer to “classic sources.” For one end (getting included in collections of important articles on a topic), I suppose that the material would be better presented with reference to classic sources. More specifically, it would be better for Strathern to refer to the rationale presented by E. Evans-Pritchard for focusing on primitive societies: that it is best to start with simple and move towards more complex. Strathern implies a rejection of this rationale, but it seems her work would benefit from being recast in a more traditional academic format.