Readings for the Last Week of May

Welcome to the Summer Reading Group's guide for the last week of May readings. After reviewing the readings from our first meeting you may notice that there are some fundamental tensions between the british "social" and american "cultural" anthropological traditions. Some of these tensions are explicit carry overs from what Rivers, Malinowski, and Radcliff-Brown brought to the forefront of british social anthropology, and how that conflicted with the research program of Boas and his students. Some of the most significant points of tension and distinction between the two traditions stem from debates concerning the comparability of cultures, the utilization of generalization in social theory, and relativity of "cultural" experience. In order to better understand the root questions of anthropology this reading group session is dedicated to investigating these issues of comparability, generalization, and relativity further.


The first set of readings in Group 2A are selected to give a broad overview of the current state of these debates.

Group 2A: Comparison, Generalizability, and Relativity

Fox, Richard G. (2002). "The study of historical transformation in American anthropology." In Andre Gingrich & Richard G. Fox, ed. Anthropology, by Comparison. London, UK: Routledge, 167-184.

Strathern, Andrew (1995). Universals and Particulars: Some Current Contests in Anthropology. Ethnos. 23:2, 173-186.

Brown, Matthew (2008). Cultural Relativism 2.0. Current Anthropology. 49:3, 363-383.

(variables of relativity)

Group 2B: Comparison, Generalizability, and Relativity

Boas, Franz (1896). The Limits of the Comparative Method of Anthropology. Science. 4.104, 901-908.

Ingold, Tim et al. (1996). “Social Anthropology is a generalizing science or it is nothing.” In Tim Ingold, ed. Key Debates in Anthropology. London, UK: Routledge, 17-54.

Geertz, Clifford (1986) Anti Anti-Relativism. American Anthropologist. 86:2, 263-278.

Tresch, John (2001). On Going Native: Thomas Kuhn and Anthropoological Method. Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 31:3, 302-322.

Latour, Bruno (1993). “Relativism.” Selections from We Were Never Modern.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 91-129.

(from Bruno Latour's We Were Never Modern)

P.S. If you like to join us then please let us know what will be a good time for you to come. It sounds like a consensus has emerged that it will be best to meet on either Friday evening after 6pm or Saturday afternoon to evening time. Let us know what you'd prefer and we can hammer out the details of the meeting before the end of the week.