Roger Sandall is a retired anthropologist and film maker who had the mixed fortune to spend some time filming the tribal rituals of Australian Aboriginals, only to find that the film was literally put into cold storage, not to be seen by human eyes for fear of giving offence. At the same time he observed the progressive takeover of academic Anthropology and related social sciences by the new wave of political correctness and relativism. These essays can be described as a mordant and somewhat mournful reflection on some of the tribal customs of progressive modernists.

The essays are grouped in three parts. Those in the first part, "Romantic Primitivism: The Anthropological Connection" are designed for a broad and general readership, to alert outsiders to some of the foibles of cultural relativists. These are the people who Ian Jarvie described as "absolutists at home" (in condemning the sins and shortcomings of the western world) and relativists abroad (it's all relative really, however cruel and irrational).

The essays in Part II "Academic Primitivism: The Political Implications" examine the way that romantic tribalism impacted on Karl Polanyi, Isaiah Berlin and Professor Ivan Sutherland, the ill-fated superior of Karl Popper in New Zealand.

The main theme of the collection is that all cultures and civilisations need to be judged by much the same set of standards, allowing for a tolerable amount of pluralism. This means that the violent and cruel initiation ceremonies of the Australian and New Guinea natives need to be viewed with the same jaundiced eye as the sadistic rites of passage in some military academies. It means that the revival of the notion of the "noble savage", originally popularised by Rousseau, is nothing short of disastrous in its implications for policies for indigenous people. Compared with the degenerates of western civilisation, the noble savage, supposedly, has a greater connection to nature and true reverence for it, a deeper spirituality and a genuine sense of community.

The essay on Karl Polanyi indicates the capacity of unworldley academics to take on board irrational and destructive views. He thought he had located the epitome of successful central planning in the West African slave-owning, large-scale human sacrificing kingdom of Dahomey. Sandall has cast a critical eye over Berlin's tolerance of cultural pluralism, claiming that Berlin accepted and promulgated the idea of Herder and the 18th century German romantics that all culture are "incommensurable" - possibly the first use of that loaded term which recently did so much damage in the hands of Feyeraband and Kuhn. This interpretation of Berlin's thought is vigorously disputed by his admirers.

Sandall's writing is clear and vigorous throughout, so anyone will find value in most of the essays, though some may be daunted by the final two pieces in the collection.

I am an Anthropology student and I chose to do a reivew of this book as my final term paper in my college career. Sandall is an extraoridinary writer and he presnets the hokey jargon associated with romantic primitivism and communalism clearly and cleverly. Many college students assume that the entire world is on the same level of social development-(unilineal evolution, psychic unity, etc)divided only by MISUNDERSTANDING. If you suffer from this dreamy belief, than I urge you to read The Culture Cult as soon as possible.

Sandall explains how a New Stone Age exists today. "One community after another is wiped out as countless millions of dollars of welfare payments were pissed against the wall, and petrol sniffing became widespread among juvenilles." (Sandall, 2001: 14). The self determination for Aboriginal peoples has become somewhat of a joke in the realm of education. Thousands of Aborinines are illiterate, but had grandparents who could read and write. This is progress???

Sandall addresses tribal collectivism, idyllic fantasies held by romantic primitivists, and an array of questions cut to the chase, e.g., "Why do some cultures succeed, and some fail?" or "Will cultural anthropology be phased out because it is too genral?"

This is a great read, I couldn't put it down.