Anthropology Beyond Culture

334 Pages·2002·1.39 MB·English

by  Richard G. Fox

Anthropology beyond Culture
WENNER-GREN INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM SERIES
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Series Editor: Richard G. Fox, President, Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research, New York.
ISSN: 1475-536X
Since its inception in 1941, the Wenner-Gren Foundation has convened
more than 125 international symposia on pressing issues in anthro-
pology. Wenner-Gren International symposia recognize no boundaries—
intellectual, national, or subdisciplinary. These symposia affirm the
worth of anthropology and its capacity to address the nature of human-
kind from a great variety of perspectives. They make new links to related
disciplines, such as law, history, and ethnomusicology, and revivify old
links, as between archaeology and sociocultural anthropology, for
example. Each symposium brings together participants from around the
world, for a week-long engagement with a specific issue, but only after
intensive planning of the topic and format over the previous 18 months.
In fulfilling its mission to build a world community of anthropologists
and to support basic research in anthropology, the Foundation now
extends its distinctive and productive pattern of pre-symposium plan-
ning to the preparation and publication of the resulting volumes. Never
before has the Foundation taken responsibility for publishing the papers
from its international symposia. By initiating this series, the Foundation
wishes to ensure timely publication, wide distribution, and high prod-
uction standards. The President of the Foundation serves as the series
editor, and the symposium organizers edit the individual volumes.
Some landmark volumes from the past are: Man’s Role in Changing the
Face of the Earth in 1956 (William L. Thomas); Man the Hunter in 1968
(Irv DeVore and Richard B. Lee); Cloth and Human Experience in 1989
(Jane Schneider and Annette Weiner); and Tools, Language, and Cognition
in Human Evolution in 1993 (Kathleen Gibson and Tim Ingold). Reports
on recent symposia can be found on the foundation’s website,
www.wennergren.org, and inquiries should be addressed to
[email protected].
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Edited by
RICHARD G. FOX AND BARBARA J. KING
Oxford • New York
First published in 2002 by
Berg
Editorial offices:
150 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JJ, UK
838 Broadway, Third Floor, New York, NY 10003-4812, USA
© Richard G. Fox and Barbara J. King 2002
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any
means without the written permission of Berg.
Berg is the imprint of Oxford International Publishers Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of
Congress.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 185973524X (Cloth)
1859735290 (Paper)
Typeset by JS Typesetting, Wellingborough, Northants.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and
King’s Lynn.
To Dr. Frank Wadsworth, former Chairman of the
Wenner-Gren Board of Trustees.
He sold an old castle in Austria in order to secure the
future of a foundation in New York.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Figures xi
Participants at the 2000 Wenner-Gren Symposium xiii
Foreword
Sydel Silverman xv
Introduction: Beyond Culture Worry
Richard G. Fox and Barbara J. King 1
Part1: Leaving Culture Worry Behind
1 Toward a Richer Description and Analysis of Cultural
Phenomena
Fredrik Barth 23
2 Adieu, Culture: A New Duty Arises
Michel-Rolph Trouillot 37
3 Culture and Anthropology in Ethnographic Modernity
Yoshinobu Ota 61
Part2: Emergent Sociality
4 On Patterned Interactions and Culture in Great Apes
Barbara J. King 83
5 Anthropology as the Whole Science of What It Is to Be
vii
viii Contents
Human
Christina Toren 105
6 The Broader Implications of Borderline Areas of
Language Research
Stuart Shanker 125
Part3: Patterns and Continuities
7 Archaeology and Culture: Sites of Power and Process
Rita P. Wright 147
8 Language as a Model for Culture: Lessons from the
Cognitive Sciences
Penelope Brown 169
9 Cultural Variation in Time and Space: The Case for a
Populational Theory of Culture
William H. Durham 193
Part4: The Politics of Culture
10 The Politics of Culture in Post-apartheid South Africa
Richard A. Wilson 209
11 “Culture” as Stereotype: Public Uses in Ecuador
Xavier Andrade 235
12 All Kulturvölker Now? Social Anthropological
Reflections on the German-American Tradition
Christopher M. Hann 259
References 277
Index 307
Acknowledgments
We are most grateful to Sydel Silverman, who, while President of
the Wenner-Gren Foundation, provided initial support as we
developed this symposium and who was a major contributor at the symp-
osium itself. We are also much in debt to Laurie Obbink, the conference
co-coordinator for the foundation, and, Mark Mahoney, the foundation’s
resources administrator, who made sure the symposium ran smoothly
and all creature comforts were provided. Laurie efficiently handled post-
symposium communications with participants and prepared the
manuscript for copy-editing.
To our copy editor, Jane Kepp, we offer many thanks for the fine edit-
ing that clarified our meaning and simplified our prose. Kathryn Earle
at Berg Publishers has supported this endeavor in many ways, including
suggesting the photo of Carhenge for the cover. We appreciate her efforts
on behalf of this volume and in support of the Wenner-Gren Inter-
national Symposium series.
Judy Fox, Jane Kepp, Molly Mullin, Sydel Silverman, and Willow
Powers gently prodded us with good comments and criticisms, which
sometimes tempered our statements and always made us better aware
of the consequences of what we had to say.
Richard G. Fox
Barbara J. King
ix