A Genealogy of Method

This volume considers the meaning of culture and anthropology’s role in defining it. Taking up the history of the discipline and the method of ethnography in turn, the book asks if the concept of culture might be productively reclaimed within a context that acknowledges history, change, and diversity.

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What does it mean to study culture – and what does culture finally mean? Whether we compare cultures or delve deeply into the dynamics of a single social order, anthropology’s task is to confront the interplay of the human condition and the cultural form. Tracing the genealogy of our touchstone method, ethnography, and investigating its relation to alternative disciplines that try to get at the heart of the human experience – philology, history, and social relations – this volume considers whether contemporary anthropology might, at last, be able to define culture, after more than a century of investigation.