Anthropology and the will to meaning : a postcolonial critique /

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Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:	Argyrou, Vassos, author.
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:	Anthropology -- Philosophy. Ethnology -- Philosophy. Meaning (Philosophy) Anthropology -- Philosophy. Ethnology -- Philosophy. Meaning (Philosophy) Electronic book.
Format:	E-Resource Book
URL for this record:	http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11226617

Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:	9781849641418 1849641412 0745318606 9780745318608 0745318606 9780745318608 0745318592 9780745318592 0745318592 9780745318592
Digital file characteristics:	data file
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 123-126) and index. Restrictions unspecified Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. 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. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 English. digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve Print version record.
Summary:	Annotation 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-centered logic of anthropological humanism, offering the controversial conclusion that the anthropological project is forever doomed to failure. 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 Other societies and cultures allows them to construct an image of a symbolically unified, ethically ordered and hence meaningful world. 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.
Other form:	Print version: Argyrou, Vassos. Anthropology and the will to meaning. London ; Sterling, Va. : Pluto Press, ©2002 0745318606
Standard no.:	9780745318608 9780745318592

Table of Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction: Of Scholars, Gamblers and Thieves 1
2. Has There Ever Been a Crisis in Ethnological Representation? 10
The Ethnographer as 'Man' 11
The Ethnological Representation Par Excellence 19
3. The Salvation Intent 28
The Three Strategies of Redemption 28
Christian Ethnology and Victorian Anthropology 34
Twentieth-Century Paradigms 43
The Ethnological Complicity 56
4. What the Natives Don't Know 60
The Sociocultural Unconscious 60
Heterodox Consciousness 74
The 'Heroisation' of the Thinking Subject 82
5. The Ethnological Will to Meaning 92
The Impossible 92
Sameness and the Beyond 105
The Will to Meaning 112
At the End of the Game 117.

Anthropology and the will to meaning : a postcolonial critique /

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