Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle: Reflections on the Disciplining of Anthropology - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822334747 ISBN 13: 9780822334743

Publisher: Duke University Press Books, 2005

Synopsis

Lively, forceful, and impassioned, Unwrapping the Sacred Bundle is a major intervention in debates about the configuration of the discipline of anthropology. In the essays brought together in this provocative collection, prominent anthropologists consider the effects of and alternatives to the standard definition of the discipline as a “holistic” study of humanity based on the integration of the four fields of archaeology, biological anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology. Editors Daniel A. Segal and Sylvia J. Yanagisako provide a powerful introduction to the volume. Unabashed in their criticism of the four-field structure, they argue that North American anthropology is tainted by its roots in nineteenth-century social evolutionary thought.

The essayists consider the complex state of anthropology, its relation to other disciplines and the public sphere beyond academia, the significance of the convergence of linguistic and cultural anthropology, and whether or not anthropology is the best home for archaeology. While the contributors are not in full agreement with one another, they all critique “official” definitions of anthropology as having a fixed, four-field core. The editors are keenly aware that anthropology is too protean to be remade along the lines of any master plan, and this volume does not offer one. It does open discussions of anthropology’s institutional structure to all possible outcomes, including the refashioning of the discipline as it now exists.

Contributors. James Clifford, Ian Hodder, Rena Lederman, Daniel A. Segal, Michael Silverstein, Sylvia J. Yanagisako

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Anthropology is perhaps the last of the great nineteenth-century conglomerate disciplines still for the most part organizationally intact. Long after natural history, moral philosophy, philology, and political economy have dissolved into their specialized successors, it has remained a diffuse assemblage of ethnology, human biology, comparative linguistics, and prehistory, held together mainly by the vested interests, sunk costs, and administrative habits of academia, and by a romantic image of comprehensive scholarship. In this intense, precise, and sharply written book, six leading anthropologists from a variety of subfields question both the logic and the effectiveness of such sentimental 'holism' and produce a powerful critique of their profession's mythology."--Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study

About the Author:

Daniel A. Segal is Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Historical Studies at Pitzer College. He is a coauthor of Jane Austen and the Fiction of Culture: An Essay on the Narration of Social Realities and editor of Crossing Cultures: Essays in the Displacement of Western Civilization. He is a former editor of the journal Cultural Anthropology (1995–2001).

Sylvia J. Yanagisako is Professor and former Chair of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University. She is the author of Producing Culture and Capital: Family Firms in Italy and coeditor of Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis.

About this edition

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0822334747
• ISBN 13: 9780822334743
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184
• Editor: Segal Daniel A., Yanagisako Sylvia J.