On Anthropological Knowledge: Three Essays

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology #54

by Dan Sperber

What can be understood of other cultures? And what can we learn about people in general from the study of other cultures? In the three closely related essays that constitute this book and which have already created considerable controversy in their original French versions, and been rewritten and expanded for this edition, Dan Sperber discusses these fundamental issues of anthropology. In the first essay he analyses the way in which anthropology is written and read. In the second, he offers a novel rationalist alternative to cultural relativism, based on both anthropological and psychological arguments, and illustrated by his own fieldwork in Ethiopia. The third essay provides an assessment of the work of Lévi-Strauss, in which the arguments of the previous two essays are linked with an incisive critique of Lévi-Strauss' contribution to the study of cultural variation.

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Dan Sperber is a French social and cognitive scientist. His most influential work has been in the fields of cognitive anthropology and linguistic pragmatics: developing, with British psychologist Deirdre Wilson, relevance theory in the latter; and an approach to cultural evolution known as the 'epidemiology of representations' in the former. Sperber currently holds the positions of Directeur de Recherche émérite at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Director of the International Cognition and Culture Institute.

Reviews

[Giulia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really synthetic, easy to read and interesting. Suitable for all publics, even for those without an anthropological background.