The Social Construction of Boundaries between Social and Cultural Anthropology in Britain and North America

Abstract

Anthropologists' characterizations of social and cultural anthropology are treated, not as definitive descriptions of what the disiplines 'really' are, but as texts in which are embedded interpretive practices, such as reification and rhetoric, by means of which anthropologists constitute them as disciplines in the first place. Until these interpretive practices are made visible, controversy concerning the disciplinary status of our various fields of study will remain unfruitful.