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51 results in Anthropological theory

Page 1 of 3

The Life of Form
  • Anthropology, Wittgenstein, and the Problem of Context
  • Paolo Heywood
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    March 2026
    Print publication:
    31 March 2026
  • 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.

Marriage and the Moral Imagination
  • Janet Carsten
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    December 2025
    Print publication:
    31 December 2025
  • This fresh and engaging book opens up new terrain in the exploration of marriage and kinship. While anthropologists and sociologists have often interpreted marriage, and kinship more broadly, in conservative terms, Carsten highlights their transformative possibilities. The book argues that marriage is a close encounter with difference on the most intimate scale, carrying the seeds of social transformation alongside the trappings of conformity. Grounded in rich ethnography and the author's many decades of familiarity with Malaysia, it asks a central question: what does marriage do, and how? Exploring the implications of the everyday imaginative labour of marriage for kinship relations and wider politics, this work offers an important and highly original contribution to anthropology, family and kinship studies, sociology and Southeast Asian studies.

Shapes in Revolution
  • The Political Morphology of Cuban Life
  • Martin Holbraad
  • Published online:
    07 November 2025
    Print publication:
    20 November 2025
  • Revolutions are cosmogonic. More than any other modern political form, their deliberate goal is to precipitate change as a total, all-embracing project: not just a radically new political order but one that reaches deep into the fabric of social relationships, seeking to transform people at their very core, recasting the horizons that give their lives shape and meaning. Combining ethnographic and historiographic research, Shapes in Revolution tells the story of this radical process of life-formation, with all of its rugged contradictions and ambiguities, as it has unfolded in Cuba. As well as a novel anthropological perspective on revolutions, the upshot is a fresh approach to the study of political forms and their power to format people and their relationships into particular shapes. Articulating politics through the shapes it gives to people and their lives, the work proposes relational morphology as a new departure for political anthropology.

‘Unruly’ Children
  • Historical Fieldnotes and Learning Morality in a Taiwan Village
  • Jing Xu
  • Published online:
    31 October 2024
    Print publication:
    14 November 2024
  • How do we become moral persons? What about children's active learning in contrast to parenting? What can children teach us about knowledge-making more broadly? Answer these questions by delving into the groundbreaking ethnographic fieldwork conducted by anthropologists Arthur and Margery Wolf in a martial law era Taiwanese village (1958-60), marking the first-ever study of ethnic Han children. Jing Xu skillfully reinterprets the Wolfs' extensive fieldnotes, employing a unique blend of humanistic interpretation, natural language processing, and machine-learning techniques. Through a lens of social cognition, this book unravels the complexities of children's moral growth, exposing instances of disobedience, negotiation, and peer dynamics. Writing through and about fieldnotes, the author connects the two themes, learning morality and making ethnography, in light of social cognition, and invites all of us to take children seriously. This book is ideal for graduate and undergraduate students of anthropology and educational studies.

History and Theory in Anthropology
  • 2nd edition
  • Alan Barnard
  • Published online:
    09 December 2021
    Print publication:
    16 December 2021
  • In the past twenty years, there have been exciting new developments in the field of anthropology. This second edition of Barnard's classic textbook on the history and theory of anthropology has been revised and expanded to include up-to-date coverage on all the most important topics in the field. Its coverage ranges from traditional topics like the beginnings of the subject, evolutionism, functionalism, structuralism, and Marxism, to ideas about globalization, post-colonialism, and notions of 'race' and of being 'indigenous'. There are several new chapters, along with an extensive glossary, index, dates of birth and death, and award-winning diagrams. Although anthropology is often dominated by trends in Europe and North America, this edition makes plain the contributions of trendsetters in the rest of the world too. With its comprehensive yet clear coverage of concepts, this is essential reading for a new generation of anthropology students.

An Anthropology of Deep Time
  • Geological Temporality and Social Life
  • Richard D. G. Irvine
  • Published online:
    04 May 2020
    Print publication:
    28 May 2020
  • In the face of debates about the Anthropocene - a geological epoch of our own making - and contemporary concerns about ecological crisis and the Sixth Mass Extinction, it is more important than ever to locate the timeframe of human activity within the deep time of planetary history. This path-breaking book is a timely critical review of the anthropology of time, exploring our human relationship with the timescale of geological formation. Richard D. G. Irvine shows how the time-horizons of social life are a matter of crucial concern, and lays bare the ways in which human activity becomes severed from the long-term geological and ecological rhythms on which it depends.

The Anthropology of the Future
  • Rebecca Bryant, Daniel M. Knight
  • Published online:
    18 March 2019
    Print publication:
    28 March 2019
  • Study of the future is an important new field in anthropology. Building on a philosophical tradition running from Aristotle through Heidegger to Schatzki, this book presents the concept of 'orientations' as a way to study everyday life. It analyses six main orientations - anticipation, expectation, speculation, potentiality, hope, and destiny - which represent different ways in which the future may affect our present. While orientations entail planning towards and imagining the future, they also often involve the collapse or exhaustion of those efforts: moments where hope may turn to apathy, frustrated planning to disillusion, and imagination to fatigue. By examining these orientations at different points, the authors argue for an anthropology that takes fuller account of the teleologies of action.

From Anthropology to Social Theory
  • Rethinking the Social Sciences
  • Arpad Szakolczai, Bjørn Thomassen
  • Published online:
    04 January 2019
    Print publication:
    17 January 2019
  • Presenting a ground-breaking revitalization of contemporary social theory, this book revisits the rise of the modern world to reopen the dialogue between anthropology and sociology. Using concepts developed by a series of 'maverick' anthropologists who were systematically marginalised as their ideas fell outside the standard academic canon, such as Arnold van Gennep, Marcel Mauss, Paul Radin, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Gregory Bateson, the authors argue that such concepts are necessary for understanding better the rise and dynamics of the modern world, including the development of the social sciences, in particular sociology and anthropology. Concepts discussed include liminality, imitation, schismogenesis and trickster, which provide an anthropological 'toolkit' for readers to develop innovative understandings of the underlying power mechanisms of globalized modernity. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, the book is clearly structured. Part I introduces the 'maverick' anthropologists, while Part II applies the maverick tool-kit to revisit the history of sociological thought and the question of modernity.

Comparison in Anthropology
  • The Impossible Method
  • Matei Candea
  • Published online:
    12 November 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018
  • Why and how do social and cultural anthropologists make comparisons? What problems do they encounter in doing so, and how might these be resolved? What, if anything, makes one comparison better than another? This book answers these questions by exploring the many ways in which, from the nineteenth century to the present day, comparative methods have been conceptualised and re-invented, praised and rejected, multiplied and unified. Anthropologists today use comparisons to describe and to explain, to generalise and to challenge generalisations, to critique and to create new concepts. In this multiplicity of often contradictory aims lie both the key challenge of anthropological comparison, and also its key strength. Matei Candea maps a path through that entangled conversation, providing a ground-up re-assessment of the key conceptual issues at the heart of any form of anthropological comparison, whilst creating a bold charter for reconsidering the value of comparison in anthropology and beyond.

The Anthropology of Childhood
  • Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings
  • 2nd edition
  • David F. Lancy
  • Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    18 December 2014
  • How are children raised in different cultures? What is the role of children in society? How are families and communities structured around them? Now available in a revised edition, this book sets out to answer these questions, and argues that our common understandings about children are narrowly culture-bound. Enriched with anecdotes from ethnography and the daily media, the book examines family structure, reproduction, profiles of children's caretakers within the family or community, their treatment at different ages, their play, work, schooling, and transition to adulthood. The result is a nuanced and credible picture of childhood in different cultures, past and present. Organised developmentally, moving from infancy through to adolescence and early adulthood, this new edition reviews and catalogues the findings of over 100 years of anthropological scholarship dealing with childhood and adolescence, drawing on over 750 newly added sources, and engaging with newly emerging issues relevant to the world of childhood today.

The Ontological Turn
  • An Anthropological Exposition
  • Martin Holbraad, Morten Axel Pedersen
  • Published online:
    06 April 2017
    Print publication:
    10 March 2017
  • A new and often controversial theoretical orientation that resonates strongly with wider developments in contemporary philosophy and social theory, the so-called 'ontological turn' is receiving a great deal of attention in anthropology and cognate disciplines at present. This book provides the first anthropological exposition of this recent intellectual development. It traces the roots of the ontological turn in the history of anthropology and elucidates its emergence as a distinct theoretical orientation over the past few decades, showing how it has emerged in the work of Roy Wagner, Marilyn Strathern and Viveiros de Castro, as well a number of younger scholars. Distinguishing this trajectory of thinking from related attempts to put questions of ontology at the heart of anthropological research, the book articulates critically the key methodological and theoretical tenets of the ontological turn, its prime epistemological and political implications, and locates it in the broader intellectual landscape of contemporary social theory.

The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man
  • Mental and Social Condition of Savages
  • John Lubbock
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    23 January 2014
  • Though professionally a banker and politician, John Lubbock (1834–1913) is best remembered for his scientific writings. As a boy, he was tutored by his father's friend, Charles Darwin, in natural history. He went on to make contributions to archaeology, anthropology and entomology. In this illustrated anthropological treatise, Lubbock applies evolutionary theory to the development of human civilisations, outlining the progression from ancient forms of art, relationships, religion, ethics, language and law to their counterparts in the present day. He argues that the social structures of ancient cultures can be interpreted through interaction with contemporary primitive cultures. Published in book form in 1870, the material for this work was first delivered as a lecture series at the Royal Institution. Lubbock's Pre-historic Times as Illustrated by Ancient Remains, and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages (1865), in which he coined the terms Palaeolithic and Neolithic, is also reissued in this series.

The Subject of Virtue
  • An Anthropology of Ethics and Freedom
  • James Laidlaw
  • Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013
  • The anthropology of ethics has become an important and fast-growing field in recent years. This book argues that it represents not just a new subfield within anthropology but a conceptual renewal of the discipline as a whole, enabling it to take account of a major dimension of human conduct which social theory has so far failed adequately to address. An ideal introduction for students and researchers in anthropology and related human sciences.Shows how ethical concepts such as virtue, character, freedom and responsibility may be incorporated into anthropological analysisSurveys the history of anthropology's engagement with morality Examines the relevance for anthropology of two major philosophical approaches to moral life.

The Cambridge Companion to Horseracing
  • Edited by Rebecca Cassidy
  • Published online:
    05 September 2013
    Print publication:
    28 March 2013
  • People have been racing horses for thousands of years, all over the world. Yet horseracing is often presented as an English creation that was exported, unaltered, to the colonies. This Companion investigates the intersection of racing and literature, art, history and finance, casting the sport as the product of cross-class, cosmopolitan and international influences. Chapters on racing history and the origins of the thoroughbred demonstrate how the gift of a fast horse could forge alliances between nations, and the extent to which international power dynamics can be traced back to racetracks and breeding sheds. Leading scholars and journalists draw on original research and firsthand experience to create portraits of the racetracks of Newmarket, Kentucky, the Curragh, and Hunter Valley, exposing readers to new racing frontiers in China and Dubai as well. A unique resource for fans and scholars alike, reopening essential questions regarding the legacy and importance of horseracing today.

Bodies and Persons
  • Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Melanesia
  • Edited by Michael Lambek, Andrew Strathern
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    28 March 1998
  • Large-scale comparisons are out of fashion in anthropology, but this book suggests a bold comparative approach to broad cultural differences between Africa and Melanesia. Its theme is personhood, which is understood in terms of what anthropologists call 'embodiment'. These concepts are applied to questions ranging from the meanings of spirit possession, to the logics of witchcraft and kinship relations, the use of rituals to heal the sick, 'electric vampires', and even the impact of capitalism. There are detailed ethnographic analyses, and suggestive comparisons of classic African and Melanesian ethnographic cases, such as the Nuer and the Melpa. The contributors debate alternative strategies for cross-cultural comparison, and demonstrate that there is a surprising range of continuities, putting in question common assumptions about the huge differences between these two parts of the world.

The Development of Cognitive Anthropology
  • Roy G. D'Andrade
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    27 January 1995
  • In an historical account of the growth and development of the field of cognitive anthropology, Roy D'Andrade examines how cultural knowledge is organised within and between human minds. He begins by examining the research carried out during the l950s and l960s which was concerned with how different cultures classify kinship relationships and the natural environment, and then traces the development of more complex and sophisticated cognitive theories of classification in anthropology which took place in the l970s and l980s. In an analysis of more recent developments, the author considers work involving cultural models, emotion, motivation and action. He concludes with a summary of the theoretical perspective of cognitive anthropology.

History and Theory in Anthropology
  • Alan Barnard
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 June 2000
  • Anthropology is a discipline very conscious of its history, and Alan Barnard has written a clear, balanced and judicious textbook that surveys the historical contexts of the great debates and traces the genealogies of theories and schools of thought. It also considers the problems involved in assessing these theories. The book covers the precursors of anthropology; evolutionism in all its guises; diffusionism and culture area theories, functionalism and structural-functionalism; action-centred theories; processual and Marxist perspectives; the many faces of relativism, structuralism and post-structuralism; and recent interpretive and postmodernist viewpoints.

Cultural Models in Language and Thought
  • Edited by Dorothy Holland, Naomi Quinn
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    30 January 1987
  • The papers in this volume, a multidisciplinary collaboration of anthropologists, linguists, and psychologists, explore the ways in which cultural knowledge is organized and used in everyday language and understanding. Employing a variety of methods, which rely heavily on linguistic data, the authors offer analyses of domains of knowledge ranging across the physical, social, and psychological worlds, and reveal the importance of tacit, presupposed knowledge in the conduct of everyday life. The authors argue that cultural knowledge is organized in 'cultural models' - storylike chains of prototypical events that unfold in simplified worlds - and explore the nature and role of these models. They demonstrate that cultural knowledge may take either proposition-schematic or image-schematic form, each enabling the performance of different kinds of cognitive tasks. Metaphor and metonymy are shown to have special roles in the construction of cultural models. The authors also demonstrates that some widely applicable cultural models recur nested within other, more special-purpose models. Finally, it is shown that shared models play a critical role in thinking, allowing humans to master, remember, and use the vast amount of knowledge required in everyday life. This innovative collection will appeal to anthropologists, linguists, psychologists, philosophers, students of artificial intelligence, and other readers interested in the processes of everyday human understanding.

The Ethnographer's Eye
  • Ways of Seeing in Anthropology
  • Anna Grimshaw
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    23 April 2001
  • Grimshaw's exploration of the role of vision within modern anthropology engages with current debates about ocularcentism, investigating the relationship between vision and knowledge in ethnographic enquiry. Using John Berger's notion of 'ways of seeing', the author argues that vision operates differently as a technique and theory of knowledge within the discipline. In the first part of the book she examines contrasting visions at work in the so-called classical British school, reassessing the legacy of Rivers, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown through the lens of early modern art and cinema. In the second part of the book, the changing relationship between vision and knowledge is explored through the anthropology of Jean Rouch, David and Judith MacDougall, and Melissa Llewelyn-Davies. Vision is foregrounded in the work of these contemporary ethnographers, focusing more general questions about technique and epistemology whether image-based media are used or not in ethnographic enquiry.

An Anthropology of Ethics
  • James D. Faubion
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    14 April 2011
  • Through an ambitious and critical revision of Michel Foucault's investigation of ethics, James Faubion develops an original program of empirical inquiry into the ethical domain. From an anthropological perspective, Faubion argues that Foucault's specification of the analytical parameters of this domain is the most productive point of departure in conceptualizing its distinctive features. He further argues that Foucault's framework is in need of substantial revision to be of genuinely anthropological scope. In making this revision, Faubion illustrates his program with two extended case studies: one of a Portuguese marquis and the other of a dual subject made up of the author and a millenarian prophetess. The result is a conceptual apparatus that is able to accommodate ethical pluralism and yield an account of the limits of ethical variation, providing a novel resolution of the problem of relativism that has haunted anthropological inquiry into ethics since its inception.

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