Arnold Perey (born
1940) is an
anthropologist, writer, and teaches on the
faculty of the
Aesthetic Realism Foundation. His
education includes a BA in anthropology (minor in physics) from the
University of Chicago, a doctorate
from the
Columbia University Department of
Anthropology, and the study of Aesthetic Realism from
1968 to the present: first with
Eli Siegel, the
educator who founded this philosophy, and then with Ellen Reiss,
the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism. His articles have been
published online and in print, in professional journals and the
popular media.
Perey conducted field research in
Papua New Guinea
among the
Oksapmin
people in the Mountain Ok area (
Victor Emanuel Range) and in the
United States with members of the
Paiute-Shoshone nation at Stillwater
(Fallon, Nevada).
Perey has taught at CUNY (
City University of New York),
Drew
University,
Seton Hall University, and at the
Aesthetic Realism Foundation
from 1973 to the present.
Brief biographies of Perey are in
Who's Who in the World,
Who's Who in America,
Who's Who in Engineering and Science,
Who's Who in
American Education, on the Aesthetic Realism Foundation
website and
perey
Getcited.org.
Perey utilized the method of Aesthetic Realism
as the basis of his anthropological doctoral dissertation
Oksapmin [Papua New Guinea] Society and World View
(Columbia, 1973). He wrote:
:The method that best gets to the
principles at the bottom of the rich and bewidering culture I
observed and somewhat shared in Oksapmin is Aesthetic Realism. It
also explains the deepest feelings of the Oksapmin people and of
myself. It is the point of this dissertation, its thesis, that
Oksapmin culture has an aesthetic structure and that this structure
is an aesthetic oneness of opposites (p. 1).
He has developed
this approach in subsequent publications and lectures, considering
diverse cultures and arts in Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia,
and Oceania. On his website
Aesthetic Realism: A New
Perspective for Anthropology extracts from a number of these
analyses are posted. He states:
:Anthropology is art and science
at once. As a science, It needs to be fully objective so it can
describe cultures and emotions in a way that makes them clear to a
person living anywhere in the world. It also is art, because
anthropology at its best is beautiful, is kind, gives aesthetic
pleasure. The anthropology of the future will be conscious of both
its sides, the cognitive and affective, and try to have them
unified. If it succeeds in being both accurate and beautiful, it
will (1) be a vivid means for people to know and care about human
beings of other cultures whose skin may be another color; and (2)
it will oppose the contempt with which people see the difference of
other people. "Contempt," explained Eli Siegel, founder of
Aesthetic Realism, "is the lessening of what is different from
oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it." That is,
anthropology will oppose racism at its basis:
contempt for
difference. Perey states that the Aesthetic Realism method
assists the anthropologist "to do a steadily improving job with
both accuracy and kindness, with both the objective and subjective
dimensions of this exciting field."
<!-- As an editor in
Wikipedia Perey has offered input for such articles as
Margaret
Mead, the
Chemehuevi Native American nation, the
Yanomami Native
American people,
Sociological functionalism, the
Koisan people of southern
Africa, the anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski, the culture
of
Papua New Guinea, and the
structural anthropologist
Claude Levi-Strauss. -->
Books
Gwe, Young Man of New Guinea—a novel against
racism (2004) ISBN 0-9760590-4-5Were They Equal?
About Tortoise, Hippopotamus, Elephant—And You (2005) ISBN
0-9759813-1-5External links
Aesthetic Realism: A New Perspective
for Anthropology Perey's official website A New Perspective
Perey's blog Aesthetic
Realism Foundation's biography of Perey
Wikis
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