The United States: An Anthropological Case Analysis

This dissertation is a case study of Navahoo society based on anthropological patterns in an experimental writing process employing complicated thinking. The dissertation is to describe the complex relationship between the "beauty" and "culture" represented by Navoho society, which is inevitably in an effort to expound the possibility of transforming the research pattern in the study of aesthetics from inquiring the "essence of beauty" in philosophical terms to inquiring "what beauty is" in an unique cultural situation from the point of view of art anthropology. What's more, this essay discusses all the problems with a comparison of "beauty" concerned in Chinese culture, trying to explore the true meaning of "beauty" in a multicultural text.The beginning of this dissertation traces back the various traditional ways of how Greek people and Chinese people described "beauty", and then reveals how the inquiry of "the essence of beauty", which is firstly treated as a "real question", transforms to a "quasi-question". And based on this discussion, the essay presents some study strategies of this transformation. The essay also has a discussion about the "relatively simple" Navaho society, expounding the mechanism and thinking pattern of "beauty" in Navahoo society. After a further research into the specific cultural situation of Navaho society, the essay is trying to explore the delicate implication of "HOZHO's Ideas" which is closely related to the ideas of "beauty" embodied in Navahoo's culture. Meanwhile, the dissertation contrasts and compares the idea of Chinese "Harmony" with Hozho's idea of "cloud and wind", and studies in details the origin, development and changes of the "sandpicture" in Navahoo's traditions and "the ceremonial rites and regulations" in Chinese traditions, which undoubtedly lead to the adherence and regulation in the description of "beauty" in their culture respectively. Therefore, the essay reveals the complicated adherence and interaction mechanism between "beauty" and cultural situations.There are three chapters in this dissertation. In the forward, by analyzing the actuality of the discipline and the development of society, the text gives an overall discussion about the immediate significance of the study on "beauty" and the transformation necessity of the discipline's...