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What does it mean to study culture – and what does culture finally mean? Whether we compare cultures or delve deeply into the dynamics of a single social order, anthropology’s task is to confront the interplay of the human condition and the cultural form. Tracing the genealogy of our touchstone method, ethnography, and investigating its relation to alternative disciplines that try to get at the heart of the human experience – philology, history, and social relations – this volume considers whether contemporary anthropology might, at last, be able to define culture, after more than a century of investigation.
“This is a bold book, daring to revive but also to reconsider the culture concept within anthropology. Moving with great clarity across American, British, French and German intellectual debates, Hausner provides a powerful response to two questions of central importance to the discipline: do we need to reconceptualize our notion of culture; and if so, how? The result is a work that is historically informed yet utterly timely.” — Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor, University of Toronto
“This is a very welcome and insightful attempt to restart a conversation that was central to anthropology not so very long ago.” — Michael Lambek, University of Toronto
“A compelling read and deft exploration of anthropology’s core contributions via a series of encounters with its ancestors. Sophisticated and subtle, the argument is thoroughly persuasive—we should reclaim anthropology’s tools, and indeed, today need them more than ever. To read is to rekindle and recommit!” — Julie Hemment, Professor & Chair, Department of Anthropology, UMass Amherst
“A Genealogy of Method gets readers to think deeply about the approaches to cross-cultural comparison that became influential in German and Anglophone anthropologies and the reasons why they formed into distinct traditions ––or, at times, managed to mutually shape each other. This highly accessible book highlights in particular the dialogues between anthropology, comparative religion, philology, and history from the nineteenth century to the 1970s.” — Dr. Katherine Swancutt, Reader in Social Anthropology, King’s College London
Sondra L. Hausner is Professor of Anthropology of Religion at the University of Oxford.
Acknowledgments; Introduction The Culture of Anthropology; Lecture One The Question of Religion; Lecture Two The Serendipity of Method; Lecture Three The Relevance of History; Lecture Four The Meaning of Culture; Bibliography; Index