Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society

"Anthropology: Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society" builds on a collaborative, international project sponsored by UNESCO to offer an overview of social and cultural anthropology. Not a textbook in the ordinary sense, this volume explores the "militant middle ground" between theory and practice, humanistic and scientific approaches, and symbolic and materialist perspectives. Rejecting conventional layout, noted anthropologist Michael Herzfeld brings his collaborators - specialists in their various fields - into a broader conversation about the ways in which social and cultural anthropology can illuminate aspects of the human condition that less intimate approaches cannot reveal.

This volume is not just about an academic discipline; it is about the theoretical and ethical commitments that have enabled anthropologists to play a leading role in the critique of racism and other forms of intolerance. The wide range of topics that Herzfeld covers has produced a book that will provide students with a vital overview of the state of the field. But, perhaps more important, readers will find their eyes opened to the complexities of culture and society at a time of vastly intensified communication and contact.

Not a textbook in the ordinary sense, this work offers a vision of how anthropology - a discipline that operates through intimate knowledge of local societies - can offer vastly increased understanding of society and culture even in this age of mass communication. In its examination of topics ranging as far afield as the mass media, environmental and development issues, kinship and suffering in transnational settings, the politics of both the nation-state and the local community, the arts, cosmologies of science as well as religion, and the relationship between social life and history, this book is not just about an academic discipline; it is about the theoretical as well as ethical commitments that have enabled anthropologists to play a leading role in the critique of racism and other forms of intolerance.