Epistemology poses particular problems for anthropologists whose task it is to understand manifold ways of being human. Through their work, anthropologists often encounter people whose ideas concerning the nature and foundations of knowledge are at odds with their own. Going right to the heart of anthropological theory and method, this volume discusses issues that have vexed practicing anthropologists for a long time. The authors are by no means in agreement with one another as to where the answers might lie. Some are primarily concerned with the clarity and theoretical utility of analytical categories across disciplines; others are more inclined to push ethnographic analysis to its limits in an effort to demonstrate what kind of sense it can make. All are aware of the much-wanted differences that good ethnography can make in explaining the human sciences and philosophy. The contributors show a continued commitment to ethnography as a profoundly radical intellectual endeavor that goes to the very roots of inquiry into what it is to be human, and, to anthropology as a comparative project that should be central to any attempt to understand who we are.

Epistemology poses particular problems for anthropologists whose task it is to understand manifold ways of being human. Through their work, anthropologists often encounter people whose ideas concerning the nature and foundations of knowledge are at odds with their own. Going right to the heart of anthropological theory and method, this volume discusses issues that have vexed practicing anthropologists for a long time. The authors are by no means in agreement with one another as to where the answers might lie. Some are primarily concerned with the clarity and theoretical utility of analytical categories across disciplines; others are more inclined to push ethnographic analysis to its limits in an effort to demonstrate what kind of sense it can make. All are aware of the much-wanted differences that good ethnography can make in explaining the human sciences and philosophy. The contributors show a continued commitment to ethnography as a profoundly radical intellectual endeavor that goes to the very roots of inquiry into what it is to be human, and, to anthropology as a comparative project that should be central to any attempt to understand who we are.

Introduction: What Is Happening to Epistemology?
Christina Toren and João de Pina-Cabral

Chapter 1. Answering Daimã’s Question: The Ontogeny of an Anthropological Epistemology in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Peter Gow

Chapter 2. Phenomenological Psychoanalysis: The Epistemology of Ethnographic Field Research
Jadran Mimica

Chapter 3. Plural Modernity: Changing Modern Institutional Forms—Disciplines and Nation-States
Filipe Carreira da Silva and Mónica Brito Vieira

Chapter 4. Ontography and Alterity: Defining Anthropological Truth
Martin Holbraad

Chapter 5. Exchanging Skin: Making a Science of the Relation between Bolivip and Barth
Tony Crook

Chapter 6. An Afro-Brazilian Theory of the Creative Process: An Essay in Anthropological Symmetrization
Marcio Goldman

Chapter 7. Intersubjectivity as Epistemology
Christina Toren

Chapter 8. Can Anthropology Make Valid Generalizations? Feelings of Belonging in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest
Susana de Matos Viegas

Chapter 9. The All-or-Nothing Syndrome and the Human Condition
João de Pina-Cabral

Chapter 10. Evidence in Socio-cultural Anthropology: Limits and Options for Epistemological Orientations
Andre Gingrich

Chapter 11. Strange Tales from the Road: A Lesson Learned in an Epistemology for Anthropology
Yoshinobu Ota

Chapter 12. Epistemology and Ethics: Perspectives from Africa
Henrietta L. Moore

Index