Anthropology and the will to meaning : a postcolonial critique /
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Author / Creator: | Argyrou, Vassos, author. |
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Imprint: | London ; Sterling, VA : Pluto Press, 2002. |
Description: | 1 online resource (v, 129 pages) |
Language: | English |
Series: | Anthropology, culture, and society Anthropology, culture, and society. |
Subject: | |
Format: | E-Resource Book |
URL for this record: | http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11226617 |
Summary: | Anthropology, the study of societies and cultures different to our own, is based on the humanist assumption that difference does not mean otherness and inferiority. In this book, Vassos Argyrou puts forward a powerful critique of both modern and postmodern anthropology that reveals the self centred logic of anthropological humanism, offering the controversial conclusion that the anthropological project is forever doomed to failure.<br> <br> <br> <br> At the heart of the book is the idea that anthropologists are driven to produce knowledge not by a desire for power, as it is often assumed, but a by desire for meaning. Interpretation of Othered societies and cultures allows them to construct an image of a symbolically unified, ethically ordered and hence meaningful world.<br> <br> <br> <br> Vassos Argyrou shows this assumption to be untenable because differentiation and distinction are in the nature of human being. He further argues that, paradoxically, by trying to uphold Sameness, anthropologists reproduce, inadvertently but inevitably, its contrary. |
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Physical Description: | 1 online resource (v, 129 pages) |
Format: | Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. |
Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 123-126) and index. |
ISBN: | 9781849641418 1849641412 0745318606 9780745318608 0745318592 9780745318592 |