Ways of Knowing: New Approaches in the Anthropology of Knowledge and Learning

Questions about how humans come to know themselves and their worlds have always been at the heart of anthropology, and are necessarily part of a broader intellectual history. This book brings together anthropologists to discuss how they come to know what they know about the societies they study. A c [...]
Visa längre beskrivning

Questions about how humans come to know themselves and their worlds have always been at the heart of anthropology, and are necessarily part of a broader intellectual history. This book brings together anthropologists to discuss how they come to know what they know about the societies they study. A central methodological concern is how anthropologists work and come to know others; it likens this process to an artisanal craft. Does what we learn and know shape who we are? A way of knowing is more than a perspective on the world but an all-embracing engagement with it. This volume's innovative contribution is the actual implementation of this rethinking and the determined search for coherence in the way fieldwork is conducted, the construction of an argument and the theoretical stance that emerges. As a whole the papers variously address whether there are irreducibly different kinds of knowing (e.g. language and perceptual) and whether anthropologists should seek complexity or simplicity in their understanding of other societies.