Introduction Jan Abbink and Hans Vermeulen This volume consists of essays and studies by authors inspired by the work of Eric Wolf, a central figure in ...

The Saami assert that "to move on is better than to stay put" (jot'tit lea buorit go orrot). The senior (in more ways than one) author, Myrdene Anderson, found as a Saami ethnographer that her life history resonated well with this Saami philosophy. In addition, Anderson had adopted from her own heritage the adage that "one can't hit a moving target". The Saami would also be comfortable with that formula. Together, one might minimally collapse and paraphrase both adages as: "a (...) rolling agent invests in the moment". Devika Chawla, the junior author, interrogates Anderson in nuancing this philosophy. To what degree is our research overdetermined and underdetermined by such factors as life history, culture, personality, and narrative reflections? The inquiry proceeds to unpack the opacities and transparencies in semiosic constructions. (shrink)

This volume, written by a new generation of scholars engaged with contemporary global movements for social justice and peace, reflects their efforts in trying ...

Anthropology today seems to shy away from the big, comparative questions that ordinary people in many societies find compelling. Questions of Anthropology brings these issues back to the centre of anthropological concerns. Individual essays explore birth, death and sexuality, puzzles about the relationship between science and religion, questions about the nature of ritual, work, political leadership and genocide, and our personal fears and desires, from the quest to control the future and to find one's "true" identity to the fear of (...) being alone. Each essay starts with a question posed by individual ethnographic experience and then goes on to frame this question in a broader, comparative context. (shrink)

If the end of exoticism is one of the characteristics of our time, and if classical anthropology based its study of alterity on this exotic distance from the other, is anthropology still possible, and if so, to what end? The author uses these questions as a point of departure for a probing interrogation of ethnological practice, starting with Le;vi-Strauss. The author advocates an anthropology of 'proximity' in place of the usual anthropology of distance. He has studied such emblematic places of (...) Western modernity as the Parisian Metro, or such emblematic 'non-places' as airports, treating as valid anthropological objects phenomena that others might judge less 'pure' or 'significant' than systems of filiation or matrimonial alliance. He outlines an approach to anthropology that focuses on negotiating the social meanings we and others use in making sense of the world, and on the processes of identification that create the difference between same and other. (shrink)

Anthropology is a discipline very conscious of its history. Alan Barnard has written a clear, detailed overview of anthropological theory that brings out the historical contexts of the great debates, tracing the genealogies of theories and schools of thought. His book covers the precursors of anthropology; evolutionism in all its guises; diffusionism and culture area theories, functionalism and structural-functionalism; action-centered theories; processual and Marxist perspectives; the many faces of relativism, structuralism and poststructuralism; and recent interpretive and postmodernist viewpoints. This is (...) a balanced and judicious survey, which also considers the problems involved in assessing anthropological theories. (shrink)

Anthropology and the other cognitive science (CS) subdisciplines currently maintain a troubled relationship. With a debate in topiCS we aim at exploring the prospects for improving this relationship, and our introduction is intended as a catalyst for this debate. In order to encourage a frank sharing of perspectives, our comments will be deliberately provocative. Several challenges for a successful rapprochement are identified, encompassing the diverging paths that CS and anthropology have taken in the past, the degree of compatibility between (1) (...) CS and (2) anthropology with regard to methodology and (3) research strategies, (4) the importance of anthropology for CS, and (5) the need for disciplinary diversity. Given this set of challenges, a reconciliation seems unlikely to follow on the heels of good intentions alone. (shrink)

"Die eigentliche Optik Paul Richard Blums sollte man akkurat als holistisch bezeichnen. Es handelt sich um ein verborgenes Streben nach Ganzheitlichkeit, das diesem Buch eine methodologische Einheit gibt. ... Ein Mensch zu sein nach dem Zeitalter der Renaissance und Moderne ... bedeutet die Aufgabe, sich in einer strukturellen und inhaltlichen Offenheit zu situieren, die die verschiedenen Antworten auf die Frage: Was heißt es, ein Mensch zu sein? in der paradoxen Einheit eines neuen Humanismus zusammenbringt. ... Genau wie die Philosophie des (...) 20. Jahrhunderts ... das Fragen selbst ins Zentrum des Denkens stellte, so versucht Blum, Peter Wust folgend, das Prinzip insecuritas als Herzstück seiner Philosophie zu definieren." Balázs Mezei (Budapest). (shrink)

The philosophical roots of Malinowski's functionalism are in the academic circles of Krakow, where three figures seem to have exerted a particularly strong influence: Pawlicki, Straszewski, and Heinrich. The predominant trend in philosophy at that time was empiriocriticism, as developed by Mach and Avenarius. Also important were F. A. Lange's interpretation of Marburg neo-Kantianism. It should be noted that the historical philosophy field was extremely broad and diverse. Functionalism, a philosophically open concept, cannot be subordinated to any one philosophical system, (...) although the "openness" of functionalism is not absolute but complemented by its "closedness" to certain other philosophies. Praxism pervades functionalist theory and even creates its foundation. Malinowski approach is entirely scientific, but functionalism is never just empirical. Malinowski realized that pure experience is as impossible as pure reasoning. (shrink)

Since the inception of their discipline, anthropologists have studied virtually every conceivable aspect of other peoples' morality - religion, social control, sin, virtue, evil, duty, purity and pollution. But what of the examination of anthropology itself, and of its agendas, epistemes, theories and praxes? Conceived as a response to Patrick Tierney's hugely inflammatory book Darkness in El Dorado , whose allegations of immoral and negligent anthropological research in South America caused a storm of protest and debate, the book combines theoretical (...) papers and case studies from eminent scholars including Steven Nugent, Marilyn Silverman and Veronica Strang. Showing how the topic of ethics goes to the heart of anthropology, it raises the controversial question of why - and for whom - the anthropological discipline functions. (shrink)

Highlights the central issues currently being debated within cultural anthropology, and documents the most original theoretical trends now affecting the field ...

This work documents the ethical dilemmas faced by anthropologists and researchers in general when investigating Amerindian communities.

The study of religion by social anthropologists, as distinct from the classical philosophical approach of the Greeks and their medieval heirs, began in the late 19th century with Edward Tyler’s Primitive Culture (1871). Tyler’s approach was completely a priori in style in that it did not rest on systematic field work or empirical observation. The same approach characterized James Frazer’s famous book, The Golden Bough (1891). Baldwin Spencer, the founding father of Australian anthropology, was persuaded by Frazer to see the (...) sophisticated religious beliefs and rites of the Aboriginal groups he studied in central Australia as mere ‘magic’. By the 1960s, a new generation of anthropologists, influenced by Claude Lévi-Strauss and English thinkers like E. Evans Pritchard, had arrived on the scene. This new ‘turn’ in anthropology led a number of contemporary scholars to the radical position that Western anthropology itself is a socio-cultural phenomenon that can be investigated in a broadly anthropological way. To see what this involves, it is worthwhile examining a number of crucial misunderstandings of Australian Aboriginal beliefs and practices that have been the artefactual result of various anthropological approaches. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the nature of philosophy and its practices in Africa in the face of development challenges facing the continent. Philosophy in African has been seen as a tool for the search for meaning and a means for assuaging our existential predicaments. But central to the temper of recent philosophy inAfrica is the search for praxis, which somewhat limits philosophy to only a means of assuaging existential predicaments. This quest for praxis is destroying some aspects of philosophy, which (...) are equally important, that is analysis and theorizing. This is a major problem because the philosophy that emerges out of the urgency for praxis, without consideration for analysis and theory, is bereft of that rigorous criticality which arises from a thoroughgoing analysis and theorizing. This paper using the philosophical tools of analysis and criticism is asking for a return to rigorous philosophy through the analysis of concepts and theorizing. This paper submits that it is only through the process of analysis and theorizing that concepts are better understood and then placed at the service of developmentinitiatives in Africa, such that a model of integral development will emerge. A model based on certain considerations for context, culture and history. (shrink)

In this book, Samuel Collins argues not only for the importance of the future of culture, but also stresses its centrality in anthropological thought over the ...

Psychological evidence suggests that laypeople understand the world around them in terms of intuitive ontologies which describe broad categories of objects in the world, such as ‘person’, ‘artefact’ and ‘animal’. However, because intuitive ontologies are the result of natural selection, they only need to be adaptive; this does not guarantee that the knowledge they provide is a genuine reflection of causal mechanisms in the world. As a result, science has parted ways with intuitive ontologies. Nevertheless, since the brain is evolved (...) to understand objects in the world according to these categories, we can expect that they continue to play a role in scientific understanding. Taking the case of human evolution, we explore relationships between intuitive ontological and scientific understanding. We show that intuitive ontologies not only shape intuitions on human evolution, but also guide the direction and topics of interest in its research programmes. Elucidating the relationships between intuitive ontologies and science may help us gain a clearer insight into scientific understanding. (shrink)

In this pathbreaking study, Micaela di Leonardo reveals the face of power within the mask of cultural difference. From the 1893 World's Fair to Body Shop advertisements, di Leonardo focuses on the intimate and shifting relations between popular portrayals of exotic Others and the practice of anthropology. In so doing, she casts new light on gender, race, and the public sphere in America's past and present. "An impressive work of scholarship that is mordantly witty, passionately argued, and takes no prisoners."--Lesley (...) Gill, News Politics "[Micaela] di Leonardo eloquently argues for the importance of empirical, interdisciplinary social science in addressing the tragedy that is urban America at the end of the century."--Jonathan Spencer, Times Literary Supplement "In her quirky new contribution to the American culture brawl, feminist anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo explains how anthropologists, 'technicians of the sacred,' have distorted American popular debate and social life."--Rachel Mattson, Voice Literary Supplement "At the end of di Leonardo's analyses one is struck by her rare combination of rigor and passion. Simply, [she] is a marvelous iconoclast."--Matthew T. McGuire, Boston Book Review. (shrink)

DO SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY STAND with the sciences or with the humanities? Most attempts to settle this question involve comparing these disciplines with the natural sciences on the one hand and with history on the other. If we take history as paradigmatic of the various forms of humanistic inquiry, we will certainly find many illuminating comparisons to be drawn between it and the social sciences, but history is not the only humanistic inquiry. In fact, there exists another whole realm of (...) the humanities that has been almost universally neglected as an area which might provide revealing comparisons with sociology and anthropology: that is aesthetic criticism. In the discussion which follows, I want to begin to remedy some of that neglect. (shrink)

In her paper ‘An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology’, Marilyn Strathern argues that feminist research cannot produce a paradigm shift in social anthropology. I present an argument for thinking that, on the relevant understanding of paradigm shift, it is possible for this to happen. I then object to Strathern’s arguments against the possibility.

What does it mean to know something - scientifically, anthropologically, socially? What is the relationship between different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing? How is knowledge mobilised in society and to what ends? Drawing on ethnographic examples from across the world, and from the virtual and global "places" created by new information technologies, Anthropology and Science presents examples of living and dynamic epistemologies and practices, and of how scientific ways of knowing operate in the world. Authors address the nature (...) of both scientific and experiential knowledge, and look at competing and alternative ideas about what it means to be human. The essays analyze the politics and ethics of positioning "science", "culture" or "society" as authoritative. They explore how certain modes of knowing are made authoritative and command allegiance (or not), and look at scientific and other rationalities - whether these challenge or are compatible with science. (shrink)

Engaging Anthropology takes an unflinching look at why the discipline has not gained the popularity and respect it deserves in the twenty-first century.While showcasing the intellectual power of discipline, Eriksen takes the anthropological community to task for its unwillingness to engage more proactively with the media in a wide range of current debates, from immigrant issues to biotechnology. Eriksen argues that anthropology needs to rediscover the art of narrative and abandon arid analysis and, more provocatively, anthropologists need to lose their (...) fear of plunging into the vexed issues modern societies present. (shrink)

Together the essays illuminate Fabianrs"s pluralist vision of an anthropology that always makes the other present by opening itself to conversational and ...

This book collects published and unpublished work over the last dozen years by one of today's most distinguished and provocative anthropologists. Johannes Fabian is widely known outside of his discipline because his work so often overcomes traditional scholarly boundaries to bring fresh insight to central topics in philosophy, history, and cultural studies. The first part of the book addresses questions of current critical concern. The second part extends the work of critique into the past by examining the beginning of modern (...) ethnography in the exploration of Central Africa during the late nineteenth century: the justification of a scientific attitude and the collecting of ethnographic objects. A final essay examines how the Congolese have returned the 'imperial gaze' of Belgium by the work of critical memory in popular history. The ten chapters are framed by two meditations on the relevance of theory and the irrelevance of the millennium. (shrink)

Globalization is often described as the spread of western culture to other parts of the world. How accurate is the depiction of "cultural" flow? In Counterworks , ten anthropologists examine the ways in which global processes have affected particular localities where they have carried out research. They challenge the validity of anthropological concepts of culture in the light of the pervasive connections which exist between local and global factors everywhere. Rather than assuming that the world is culturally diverse, this book (...) proposes that culture is itself a representation of the similarities and differences recognized between forms of social life. The authors address issues of globalization in terms of diverse histories and traditions of knowledge, which may include the construction of difference as cultural. In its attention to specific local situations, such as Bali, Cuba, Bolivia, Greece, Kenya and the Maoris in New Zealand, Counterworks argues that the apparent opposition between strong westernizing, global forces and weak concept of culture, which supposes cultures to be integrated and possessed of essential properties, need rethinking in a contemporary world where a marked sense of culture has become a wide-spread property of people's social knowledge. This book will have wide appeal to anthropologists, to students of comparative studies in history, religion and language, and to anyone interested in the phenomenon of postmodernism. (shrink)

Now, in Emergent Forms of Life and the Anthropological Voice, path-breaking scholar Michael M. J. Fischer moves the discussion to a consideration of the ...

The Scenic Imagination argues that the uniquely human phenomenon of representation, as manifested in language, art, and ritual, is a scenic event focused on a central object designated by a sign. The originary hypothesis posits the necessity of conceiving the origin of the human as such an event. In traditional societies, the scenic imagination through which this scene of origin is conceived manifests itself in sacred creation narratives. Modern thought is defined by the independent use of the scenic imagination to (...) create anthropological models of the origin of human institutions, beginning with the social contract scene in Hobbes’s Leviathan that puts an end to the reciprocal violence of the state of nature. Eric Gans follows the work of the scenic imagination in selected writings of twenty thinkers including Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Durkheim, Boas, and Freud and concludes his book with a critical examination of contemporary writing on the origins of religion and language. In the process, he demonstrates that the originary hypothesis offers the most cohesive explanation of the origin and function of these fundamental institutions. (shrink)

Originary Thinking deals with generative anthropology, a radically new conception of human science founded on the hypothesis that humanity emerged in a communal event in which intraspecific violence was deferred by the production of a linguistic sign. The author pursues in the areas of religion, ethics, philosophy of language, theory of discourse, and aesthetics, the exploration begun in his The Origin of Language (1981) and continued in The End of Culture (1985) and Science and Faith (1990). The present volume adds (...) two significant new elements: (1) originary analysis-a methodology for rethinking the fundamental categories of the human in terms of the originary scene. On the basis of an originary model of aesthetic experience, the author presents an outline of Western aesthetic history from the classical era to the postmodern. The fundamental premise behind Originary Thinking is that the return to the specificity of a scene of origin is the necessary guarantee of openness in human science. (shrink)

The introductory essay to this collection correctly observes that there are many “challenges for rapprochement” between anthropology and (the rest of) cognitive science. Still, the possibilities of fruitful interchanges provide some hope for the parties getting back together, at least on an intermittent basis. This response offers some views concerning the “incompatibility” of psychology and anthropology, reviews why cognitive anthropology drifted away from cognitive science, and notes two areas of contemporary interest within cognitive anthropology that may lead to a re-engagement.

Economics and culture are in a complex, developing relation to each other. Yet, to introduce ?culture? into economic theory requires, first of all, an appropriate understanding of culture itself. The crucial point of this paper is that culture in its development and structure is only understandable if one considers it in connection with the autonomous structural development of the forms with which the subjects experience and construct their world. In recognition of the socio?cultural organization of human society, there is no (...) absolute autonomy of individuals in comparison to society and economics, while together with this interdependency the development of rationality exceeds mere instrumentality. Through ontogenesis, every individual is located ?within the boundaries of society?. What are consequences for economic theory? First of all: Economics is a cultural science in a double sense. Its object is the changing world of economic phenomena that are bound in a very specific cultural context. However, culture is not only relevant for the phenomena of socio?economic life, but also for the phenomena of economic science, i.e. for the development of economic thought. (shrink)

In the theory of the early state it was fundamentally new and important from a methodological point of view to define the early state as a separate stage of evolution essentially different from the following stage, the one of the full-grown or mature state. ‘To reach the early state level is one thing, to develop into a full-blown, or mature state is quite another’ (Claessen and Skalník 1978b: 22). At the same time they (as well as a number of other (...) authors) indicated quite soundly that not all early states were able to become and actually became mature ones (see e.g., Claessen and Skalník 1978a; Claessen and van de Velde 1987b; Shifferd 1987). Thus there was formed exactly an evolutionary sequence of statehood in the form of a two-stage scheme: the early state – the mature state. And that explained a lot in the mechanisms and directions of the political evolution. However, the former of these two stages of the evolution of statehood (the early state) has been studied rather thoroughly, whereas the latter (the mature state) has not become the subject of a similarly close examination. Unfortunately, the analysis of the mature state has been little advanced in those several contributions to the subsequent volumes of the Early State project (further referred to as Project) where the subject was touched upon. In the present paper after a brief analysis of the Project participants' views on the mature state I will present my own approach to the distinction of the stages of the evolution of statehood which to my mind develops and supplements Claessen – Skalník's ideas on the subject. However, this has made it necessary to suggest new formulations of the main characteristics of each stage of the evolution of the state. (shrink)

A more and more important role is played by new directions in historical research that study long-term dynamic processes and quantitative changes. This kind of history can hardly develop without the application of mathematical methods. The history is studied more and more as a system of various processes, within which one can detect waves and cycles of different lengths – from a few years to several centuries, or even millennia. This issue is the third collective monograph in the series of (...) History & Mathematics almanacs and it is subtitled Processes and Models of Global Dynamics. The contributions to the almanac present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of global historical, political, economic and demographic processes, as well as their mathematical models. This issue of the almanac consists of two main sections: (I) Analyses of the World Systems and Global Processes, and (II) Models of Economic and Demographic Processes. We hope that this issue of the almanac will be interesting and useful both for historians and mathematicians, as well as for all those dealing with various social and natural sciences. (shrink)

Finally, this volume offers a self-reflective look at the social and political location of anthropologists in relation to the questions of culture, power, and ...

The postmodern critique of Objectivism, Realism and Essentialism has somewhat shattered the foundations of anthropology, seriously questioning the legitimacy of studying others. By confronting the critique and turning it into a vital part of the anthropological debate, A Passage To Anthropology provides a rigorous discussion of central theoretical problems in anthropology that will find a readership in the social sciences and the humanities. It makes the case for a renewed and invigorated scholarly anthropology with extensive reference to recent anthropological debates (...) in Europe and the US, as well as to new developments in linguistic theory and, especially, newer American philosophy. Although the style of the work is mainly theoretical, the author illustrates the points by referring to her own fieldwork conducted in Iceland. A Passage to Anthropology will be of interest to students in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses Axel Honneth's theory of recognition as a specific constellation, i.e. as a theoretical endeavour spanning over and interrelating positions in the fields of anthropology, social theory, and politics. As essential components in this constellation I discern an anthropology of recognition, a social philosophy of different forms of recognition, a morality of recognition, a theory of democratic ethical life as a social ideal, and a notion of political democracy as an ambitious reflexive form of social cooperation. (...) A tentative attempt is also made to elucidate the motivational history that underlies and animates Honneth's theoretical endeavour and accounts for its specific 'spirit'. (shrink)