What if anthropology's fundamental assumptions about cultural and social context were shaped by a philosopher many anthropologists have never engaged with? This book explores how, from the early twentieth century to the present day, anthropological ideas about context have been shaped by Ludwig Wittgenstein's evolving philosophy, often without anthropologists fully realizing it. It shows how Wittgenstein's philosophical journey mirrors anthropology's own theoretical transformations. Through careful analysis of key figures from Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown to Geertz and contemporary theorists, Paolo Heywood reveals unexpected connections between philosophical developments and anthropological practice. The result is a surprising genealogy of how we came to think about culture, society, and everyday life the way we do. This intellectual history illuminates the hidden philosophical assumptions that continue to shape anthropological work today. It reveals how disciplines are shaped by ideas they've forgotten they borrowed, and the surprising ways such ideas evolve in new contexts.

‘In this subtle and perceptive book, Heywood allows Wittgenstein and anthropology to cast light on each other in new and unexpected ways. Erudite and eminently readable, the book provides a clear-headed assessment of the useful - and the less useful - habits of thought left behind in Wittgenstein's wake. The result is a bold diagnosis of the power and the limits of the shift away from form and towards 'life' in philosophy and anthropology.’

Matei Candea - Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK

‘The Life of Form is erudite. It is elegantly argued and written. It is intellectually wide-ranging and acute. It is daring. It dares anthropologists—and not merely anthropologists—to dispel the bad weather of the metaphysical downpours and muddy flash floods that compromise their endeavors and instead find shelter under the lean-tos where open-minded enquiry into our human condition and the lessons that might flow from it actually reside. It will provoke irritation, admiration and conversation, as all of the best of work does.’

James D. Faubion - Radoslav Chair in Anthropology Emeritus, Rice University, USA

‘Meticulously argued, and with a wit that is all the more effective for being so courteous and controlled, this quietly insurgent book exposes many of the dominant shibboleths and pieties of the last few decades to the unforgiving light of a bracing logical and genealogical analysis. It is a liberating call for a revival of intellectual ambition.’

James Laidlaw - William Wyse Professor Emeritus, University of Cambridge, UK

‘Anthropology has often found inspiration in the anti-formalist, anti-metaphysical ‘later’ Wittgenstein, as the field underwent its own turn against formalism. Heywood unsettles Anthropology's Wittgenstein and provocatively retells the story. He carefully retraces Wittgenstein's historical entanglements with the discipline while reconsidering how they experienced, alone and together, shifting understandings of ‘context’.’

Michael Lempert - author of From Small Talk to Microaggression: A History of Scale

‘The Life of Form is a brilliant, deeply learned and provocative book about causal explanation and social context which along the way tells good stories about Wittgenstein, Malinowski, Gellner, Leach and any number of other colorful, combative intellectuals. No one who reads it will see anthropology in the same way again.’

Tanya Luhrmann - Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University, USA

‘This is a major intervention into anthropological theory and self-understanding. Tracking Wittgenstein’s movement from logic to language and then to life as contexts in which human understanding finds its form, Heywood shows that anthropologists have followed the same trajectory. The sting in the tail is that context itself finally becomes formless, leaving only the high modern ordinary and everyday as the excessively fluid grounds of anthropological interpretation. Heywood brilliantly shows where we are now and how we got here, and gives new clarity to the urgent question of where we might want to go next.’

Joel Robbins - Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK

‘Wittgenstein's thought has held in thrall several generations of social anthropologists, but his epigrammatic style often tempts selective reading. Paolo Heywood's scrupulous examination of his entire intellectual trajectory is a real service. His critical genealogy of the philosopher's influence will force anthropologists to reconsider much that they have taken for granted.’

Webb Keane - author of Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination