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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:16:10
-0500<br>
From: "Cultural Anthropology" <culanth@rpi.edu><br>
<br>
<b>ANTHROPOLOGIST ARGUES FOR EXPERIMENTAL UNDERSTANDING OF
"CULTURE"</b><br>
<a href="http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/can.2007.22.1.1">
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/can.2007.22.1.1</a><br><br>
MIT Professor of Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies Michael
Fischer has published an essay in the current issue of Cultural
Anthropology that provides new perspective on the history of the concept
of "culture," emphasizing how cultural analysis has been linked
to social reform in different periods.<br><br>
Titled "Culture and Cultural Analysis as Experimental Systems,"
the essay traces the growth of cultural analysis from the nineteenth
century through the present, showing how the concept of culture has
evolved and enabled cultural analysis to operate as an "experimental
system" that both codifies knowledge, and creates fundamentally new
insight. In casting cultural analysis as an "experimental
system," Fischer suggests similarities between cultural analysis and
the natural sciences, highlighting how both create new knowledge though
structured engagements between established theory and empirical data that
cannot be sufficiently explained in terms of such theory.<br><br>
Fischer also highlights the importance of recognizing "culture"
as an analytic tool rather than as a variable that can be blamed for
social problems, or used to explain "the clash of
civilizations." "Culture," Fischer argues, is "where
meaning is woven and renewed," by professional cultural analysts as
well as by the people they study. The continuing challenge of cultural
analysis, Fischer argues, "is to develop translation and mediation
tools for helping make visible differences of interests, access, power,
needs, desires, and philosophical perspective. In particular, as we begin
to face new kinds of ethical dilemmas stemming from developments in
biotechnologies, expansive information and image databases, and
ecological interactions, we are challenged to develop differentiated
cultural analyses that can help articulate new social institutions for an
evolving civil society." <br><br>
Over the last twenty years, Cultural Anthropology has published a number
of essays that historicize and critically engage the culture concept.
See, for example, Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson's "Beyond
"Culture": Space, Identity, and the Politics of
Difference" (1992), Anna Tsing's "From the Margins"
(1994), Robert Brightman's "Forget Culture: Replacement,
Transcendence, Relexification" (1995), and Richard Handler's
"Raymond Williams, George Stocking, and Fin-de-Siècle U.S.
Anthropology" (1998). For a list of essays in Cultural Anthropology
on the theory and practice of cultural analysis, see
<a href="http://culanth.org/?q=node/24">http://culanth.org/?q=node/24</a>
.<br><br>
Cultural Anthropology essays can be accessed electronically through
AnthroSource,
<a href="http://www.anthrosource.net/">http://www.anthrosource.net/</a>,
which is available through most research libraries and to all members of
the American Anthropological Association. Journalists may request PDFs
from Cultural Anthropology's editorial office:
<a href="mailto:culanth@rpi.edu">culanth@rpi.edu</a>.<br><br>
--<br>
Mike Fortun and Kim Fortun<br>
Editors<br><br>
Casey O'Donnell<br>
Editorial Assistant<br><br>
Jacki Swearingen<br>
Managing Editor </blockquote></body>
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