Meaning in Anthropology
Edited by Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby
“Cultural anthropology’s main contribution to science has always been the investigation of the range of human cultures and the demonstration of the variety, including variety in symbols and meanings, in these cultures. In recent years, anthropological interest in meaning and symbolism has increased and moved into new types of analysis. Meaning in Anthropology is a useful array of papers representing some of these. Linguistics has had an especially strong influence on this movement, and a number of contributions show that influence.”—Science
“Its strength lies in the wide variety and scope of creative thought applied to the concept of culture, and its relation to language in the widest sense.… In all, the volume is wider in scope than any other comparable current volume.”—Perspective
1976. 274 pp., Figures, tables, notes, references, index., 6 x 9
Contributors: Keith Basso, Roy G. D’Andrade, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Clifford Geertz, Fadwa El Guindi, Harold W. Scheffler, David M. Schneider, Henry A. Selby, Michael Silverstein
Meaning in Anthropology inquiry:
Preface by Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby
- Introduction
Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby - Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description
Michael Silverstein - The “Meaning” of Kinship in American Culture: Another View
Harold W. Scheffler - ‘Wise Words’ of the Western Apache: Metaphor and Semantic Theory
Keith H. Basso - Speech Acts and Social Learning
Susan Ervin-Tripp - A Propositional Analysis of the U.S. American Beliefs about Illness
Roy G. D’Andrade - Dialectics in Zapotec Thinking
Fadwa El Guindi and Henry A. Selby - Notes toward a Theory of Culture
David M. Schneider - “From the Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding
Clifford Geertz