A Genealogy of Method

Explores the concept of culture as understood through the practice of ethnography, based on the 2019 Jensen Memorial Lectures.

What does it mean to study culture — and what does culture finally mean? Whether we compare cultures or delve deeply into the dynamics of a single social order, anthropology’s task is to confront the interplay of the human condition and the cultural form. Tracing the genealogy of our touchstone method, ethnography and investigating its relation to alternative disciplines that try to get at the heart of the human experience — philology, history and social relations — this volume considers whether contemporary anthropology might, at last, be able to define culture, after more than a century of investigation.