The Anthropological Circle
Symbol, Function, History

Marc Augé explores and clarifies the relationship that anthropology enjoys with history and politics, and intellectual divisions within anthropology itself.

Marc Augé (Author), Martin Thom (Translated by)

9780521285483, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 7 January 1982

140 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.8 cm, 0.22 kg

Anthropology is both outside of history and within it. Histories of anthropology tend to summarise particular authors' intellectual differences; but, as Marc Augé argues in this book, first published in English in 1982, these differences may in fact be intrinsically derived from intellectual divisions within anthropology as obvious as they are irreconcilable. Augé identifies, in contemporary debates in French anthropology, the paths that perhaps allow us to transcend these oppositions. On doing so, he explores and clarifies the relationship that anthropology enjoys with history, on the intellectual plane, and with politics, on the historical plane. His argument is stimulating and challenging, and will interest all social anthropologists and sociologists concerned with the theoretical foundations of their disciplines, as well as demonstrating to historians and political scientists what anthropology has to offer them.

Preface
Introduction: anthropology without history or anthropology in history?
1. The anthropological circle: i. Two axes and four poles
ii. Evolution, culture, symbol
iii. Evolution, culture, function
iv. Symbol, function
v. Symbol, function, culture
vi. Culture, symbol
2. Some questions concerning the current state of anthropology: i. The philosopher's questions
ii. Meaning, non-meaning and structure: Claude Lévi-Strauss
iii. Symbol and function: Victor Turner
iv. Instances and determination
3. From moral crisis to intellectual doubt: i. The object of anthropology
ii. Ethnocentrism and anti-ethnocentrism
iii. Scientific practice, militant practice
Conclusions: i. New sites, new stakes
ii. Here, today
iii. Social logics
iv. A myth, a necessity: interdisciplinarity
Index.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM]