Anthropological Conversations
Talking Culture across Disciplines
By (author) Caroline B. Brettell Southern Methodist University
Publication date:
23 October 2014Length of book:
232 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
234x161mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780759123823
Cultural anthropologists can be an intellectually adventurous crowd: open—even eager—to building bridges across disciplines in the name of understanding human behavior and the human experience more broadly. In this first-of-its-kind book, Caroline Brettell explores the cross-disciplinary conversations that have engaged cultural anthropologists both past and present.
Brettell highlights a handful of conversations between the discipline of anthropology on the one hand and history, geography, literature, biology, psychology and demography on the other. She also pinpoints how these exchanges address three enduring issues of anthropological concern: the temporal and the spatial dimensions of human experience; the scientific and the humanistic dimensions of the anthropological enterprise; and the individual and the group/population as units of analysis in research. Anthropological Conversations offers detailed accounts of particular ethnographic methodologies and findings (and the theoretical trends informing them) as a means of grasping the big-picture issues. Brettell clearly shows that, by engaging with other fields, cultural anthropologists have been able to think more deeply about what they mean by culture; through this book, she invites readers to continue the conversation.
Brettell highlights a handful of conversations between the discipline of anthropology on the one hand and history, geography, literature, biology, psychology and demography on the other. She also pinpoints how these exchanges address three enduring issues of anthropological concern: the temporal and the spatial dimensions of human experience; the scientific and the humanistic dimensions of the anthropological enterprise; and the individual and the group/population as units of analysis in research. Anthropological Conversations offers detailed accounts of particular ethnographic methodologies and findings (and the theoretical trends informing them) as a means of grasping the big-picture issues. Brettell clearly shows that, by engaging with other fields, cultural anthropologists have been able to think more deeply about what they mean by culture; through this book, she invites readers to continue the conversation.
Brettell has made an extremely valuable contribution to the literatures on thinking anthropologically and across disciplines. Six chapters devoted to 'conversations' between anthropology and history, geography, literature, biology, psychology, and demographics give readers a survey of the various topics and approaches that have crossed those lines and key scholars involved in such projects. The writing is clear and accessible, suitable for all audiences, and the content includes both historical and contemporary examples. . . .The book will be useful for anthropological readers in a variety of contexts (e.g., methods, disciplinary history, general philosophy of the field) and also very useful for non-anthropologists to get a sense of and appreciation for ways that anthropological approaches and works might be relevant to their own fields and for encouraging further conversations across disciplinary lines. Summing Up: Highly recommended. For all general and academic audiences.