Anthropology: A Continental PerspectiveOriginally published in German, Christoph Wulf’s Anthropology sets its sights on a topic as ambitious as its title suggests: anthropology itself. Arguing for an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to anthropology that incorporates science, philosophy, history, and many other disciplines, Wulf examines—with breathtaking scope—all the ways that anthropology has been understood and practiced around the globe and through the years. Seeking a central way to understand anthropology in the midst of many different approaches to the discipline, Wulf concentrates on the human body. An emblem of society, culture, and time, the body is also the result of many mimetic processes—the active acquisition of cultural knowledge. By examining the role of the body in the performance of rituals, gestures, language, and other forms of imagination, he offers a bold new look at how culture is produced, handed down, and transformed. Drawing such examinations into a comprehensive and sophisticated assessment of the discipline as a whole, Anthropology looks squarely at the mystery of humankind and the ways we have attempted to understand it. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Paradigms of Anthropology
| 11 |
Core Issues of Anthropology
| 163 |
Single Discipline and TransdisciplinaryResearch | 291 |
Notes | 305 |
369 | |
391 | |
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According actions activities appear approach areas aspects associated attempt become behavior birth body brain Cambridge central character Chicago Christoph Wulf complexity concept context continuity create cultural anthropology death discipline diversity effects evolution examine example existence experience expression feelings field first focus Frankfurt am Main function gender Germany gestures gives hand historical and cultural Homo human human body ideas images imaginary imagination important individual influence interpretation issues knowledge language learning linked living London means mental methods mimetic processes nature objects organs original Paris perception performative philosophical play possible practices present produce questions reference regarded relate relationship result rituals role sciences seen sense situations social society space staging structure studies symbolic theory thought tion understanding University Press York