Robert B Edgerton s Life Of Psychological Anthropology

Robert B Edgerton teaches in the department of psychiatry and anthropology at the University of California at Los Angeles. He is the president of society of psychological anthropology there. He is also a fellow at the center of advanced study in the behavioral science. Edgerton was born on November 28, 1931. Edgerton has written about many topics throughout his anthropology career. These topics include: mental retardation, social, deviant behavior and social well-being. Other major publications Edgerton wrote were, Beliefs and translational practices and The troubled heart of Africa: the history of the Congo imprenta. I reached out to Edgerton by email, but his in-box was full and unfortunately I couldn t find further information†¦show more content†¦Sickness, suffering and premature death happens in all societies but how they occur can vary. Maladaptive practices and beliefs can contribute to sickness, suffering and premature death. Many societies have flaws with people being unhappy. This discontent then turns in to rebellion which can destroy a culture and/or society. Societies, cultures and their populations can die in many different ways they can die physically, mentally, spiritually or emotionally. Also in culture adaptation should be reconsidered when cultures start to die. Many cultures go extinct due to warfare. With all of these topics it creates a broad explanation to what culture is and how they can be categorized. I believe that Edgerton did a fine job of describing what makes Societies Sick in their own way. He did this though defining maladaptation â€Å"I shall first define it as the failure of a population or its culture to survive because of the inadequacy or harmfulness of one or more of its beliefs or institutions.† He then continues to define maladaptation as â€Å"when enough members of a population are sufficiently dissatisfied with one or more of their social institutions or cultural beliefs that the viability of th eir society is threatened.† This is a successful manor to start the book off with because it then leads in to how maladaptation affects societies and can make them sick in the many different ways that it does. Each maladaptive