Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
1. Framing History2. Change3. Processes4. Individuals 5. Nature vs. Culture: A Mistaken Conundrum6. Retreat of the Social? Where to? 7. Language and Culture8. Against -isms9. For a Mindful Anthropology
Synopsis
This book argues that the breaking and re-making of frames of analysis underlie the history of theorizing in anthropology. Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew J. Strathern note that this mode of analysis risks fabricating over-essentialized dichotomies between viewpoints. The authors advocate a mindful, nuanced, people-centered approach to all theorizing-one that avoids total system approaches (-isms) and suggest that theory should relate cogently to ethnography. Mindful anthropology, as this book envisages it, is not a specific theory but a philosophical aspiration for the discipline as a whole.