On anthropological knowledge

Abstract

With the expansion of anthropology to new objects, the definition of its boundaries has become so fuzzy as to warrant questions about its unity. Method rather than content offers possible common ground to various breeds of anthropologist, provided that it is taken to mean what they really do rather than what they say they do. In discussing three operations that enter into their common practice (description, comprehension and explanation), it is argued that anthropology amounts less to a specific method answering to strict epistemological requirements than to a certain style of knowledge building on the universal workings of intersubjectivity.