"And if only we would admit that there are more things on earth than are dreamt of in our ideology..." (Louis Dumont,
German Ideology 1994: 202, after Shakespeare)
The central anthropological question is really as follows: how do humans live in the world? Moreover, given that all humans are fundamentally the same, how to grasp, understand, describe, and account for their manifest differences? And given differences between and within human societies and in life circumstances, how can we talk of our common humanity and do so in such a way as to evade what anthropologist Marshall Sahlins once called “the ethnographic hubris” (1976: 74)?
Anthropology grapples with the complex questions of how to see the general in and through the particular and, conversely, how to grasp the particular in and through the universal or general. Anthropology, in Theory offers anthropologists and students a thoughtful and engaging introduction to anthropological theory. Unlike many books on theory, this one is neither a history of the discipline nor a dictionary nor an encyclopedia of distinct theories. It is not a list of historical succession, a survey of theories, a Leachian butterfly collection, or a Cook’s tour but an attempt to get at the core ground of this fascinating field.
Stanley Cavell once asked whether a teacher of philosophy is also a philosopher. Similarly, is a book “on” theory also a book “of” theory? Should (or can) such a book merely describe--or also develop new arguments? Anthropologist Michael Lambek’s main goal has been to describe central problems and paradoxes anthropologists face and what they have thought and done, particularly what certain strong anthropologists have thought and done. But his own predilections are obviously present-- especially insofar as he has selected what he considers to be interesting problems and solutions --and this is precisely what enlivens his text and sets it apart from other books on theory.
