{"title":"Weston La Barre","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"ghost-dance-book-weston-la-barre-9780042110035","title":"Ghost Dance","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49660937502993,"sku":"GOR002673404","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49997652230417,"sku":"GOR004900250","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53177009078545,"sku":"GOR001979554","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0042110033.jpg?v=1750939252"},{"product_id":"shadow-of-childhood-book-weston-la-barre-9780806123288","title":"Shadow of Childhood","description":"Neoteny is the retention into adulthood of juvenile traits. In a charming epigrammatic style, Weston La Barre argues that human beings are largely instinctless, learning animals because we are highly immature, long dependent, and slow growing, and many of our unique cultural traits, both good and bad, derive from our anatomical and behavioural neoteny. In chapter 1 of these three essays in psychoanalytic anthropology, La Barre sketches the differing contexts of neoteny in other animal species; the functionally specialized trimorphism of male, female, and infant in the human family; the relation of hunting to early religion; the rise of marriage and the family and the dangers of our archoses, the nonrational, culturally inherited beliefs that contaminate our reality processing. In chapter 2, La Barre considers the nature of belief in miracle as a lapse in our knowledge of objective cosmic reality, and the projection of familial experience of parents into mistaken expectations of the nonhuman environment. Of particular concern are current beliefs that there is other intelligent life in the universe. La Barre demonstrates how believers in extraterrestrial intelligence seriously neglect the staggeringly complex nature of life and its vicissitudes in Earth's known geology. In chapter 3, La Barre examines the origins of animistic fallacies in the developmental history of the individual human being. Recent American presidencies furnish examples of the neoteny undergirding political systems. A study of individual ontogenetic development shows how systems of magic and religion remain emotionally plausible because at earlier developmental stages we experience success from these uniquely human dispensations. Appendix 1 is a brief history of speculations concerning other worlds. Appendix 2 adduces astronomical and evolutionary-biological arguments against extraterrestrial intelligence. Weston La Barre argues persuasively that the kind of animal we are determines the kind of culture we have and what we need and use culture for \"Shadow of Childhood\" is not only sound anthropology and psychoanalysis but also an intense, tersely reasoned environmentalist argument. Barre demonstrates that, statistically, life is so preposterously improbable as to have occurred once in an enormous and very old universe, so that it is imperative to preserve the only known environment where life occurs.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49992646885649,"sku":"CIN0806123281G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0806123281.jpg?v=1721751537"},{"product_id":"they-shall-take-up-serpents-book-weston-la-barre-9780881336634","title":"They Shall Take Up Serpents","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50127081373969,"sku":"CIN0881336637G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0881336637.jpg?v=1750850939"},{"product_id":"ghost-dance-book-weston-la-barre-9781861717825","title":"The Ghost Dance","description":"In \u003ci\u003eGhost Dance\u003c\/i\u003e, it is through Chance's keen eyes and weary heart that readers embark on a journey of discovery and sorrow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn the run across the plains, Chance stumbles upon Running Horse, a Sioux warrior enacting the sacred and violent ritual of the Sun Dance. Quickly, Chance is pulled into the world of the Sioux people. As their civilization teeters on the brink of destruction, the Sioux perform the mournful and frightening Ghost Dance. Clashes with the white man are frequent; the Wounded Knee Massacre approaches, still in the unknown distance; and violence and anger threaten the traditions of a proud and once-great people. Nearby, in her quaint sod house, Miss Lucia Turner awaits the full impact of those clashes. Dust on the horizon signals great change coming to her once-simple life. Lucia will soon become a different kind of woman. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith \u003ci\u003eGhost Dance\u003c\/i\u003e, author John Norman brings the same vigor and passion of storytelling and imagination that enriches his classic Gor novels to a vivid story of historical upheaval and personal exploration.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50989698875665,"sku":"NGR9781861717825","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51053669056785,"sku":"NIN9781861717825","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52539104624913,"sku":"NLS9781861717825","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1861717822.jpg?v=1758794549"},{"product_id":"ghost-dance-book-weston-la-barre-9781861712769","title":"The Ghost Dance","description":"THE GHOST DANCE \u003cp\u003e The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion by Weston La Barre (1915-1996) is a classic search for the origins of religion, employing psychology and anthropology to explain elements of Greek, Egyptian, Jewish, Christian, shamanic and Native American religion. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e The Ghost Dance offers a fascinating exploration of the history and origins of religious belief from earliest times to the present day. The Ghost Dance takes its place beside other great studies of religion, such as those by Sigmund Freud, Geza Roheim or Mircea Eliade. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e WESTON LA BARRE \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e Weston La Barre is best known for his work in anthropology and ethnography, in which he drew on the theories of psychoanalysis and psychiatry. Born in Uniontown, PA, La Barre studied at Princeton and Yale, and later taught at Rutgers, Wisconsin and Duke universities. La Barre conducted field work across North and South America, and later through India, China, Africa and Europe. He studied the Plains Indians and their peyote cult with Richard Evans Schultes (which resulted in the 1938 book The Peyote Cult). La Barre's masterwork is The Ghost Dance: The Origin of Religion (1970), which draws together his explorations of shamanism, world religion, Native American culture, altered states of consciousness and the use of drugs in belief systems. His other books include The Human Animal (1954), They Shall Take Up Serpents (1962), Culture In Context (1990), and Muelos (1985). \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e BOOKS BY WESTON LA BARRE \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e The Peyote Cult --- The Aymara Indians of the Lake Titicaca Plateau --- The Human Animal --- Materia Medica of the Aymara --- They Shall Take up Serpents: Psychology of the Southern Snakehandling Cult --- Shadow of Childhood: Neoteny and the Biology of Religion --- The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion --- Culture in Context, Selected Writings of Weston La Barre --- Muelos: A Stone Age Superstition About Sexuality \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51052848447761,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51052850774289,"sku":"NIN9781861712769","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52484199809297,"sku":"NLS9781861712769","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1861712766.jpg?v=1751186174"},{"product_id":"peyote-cult-book-weston-la-barre-9781861713032","title":"THE Peyote Cult","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - 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