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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Anthropology: The Study of Social and Cultural Originality
Author:Guyer, Jane I.ISNI
Year:1999
Periodical:African Sociological Review
Volume:3
Issue:2
Pages:30-53
Language:English
Geographic terms:Nigeria
Africa
Subjects:research methods
social sciences
Tiv
anthropology
Anthropology and Archaeology
Bibliography/Research
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487402
Abstract:Using Paul Bohannan's ethnography of justice and judgment among the Tiv of Nigeria, carried out between 1949 and 1953, and published in 1957, the present author extrapolates some characteristic intellectual strategies within anthropology as they were applied in the 1950s: the grounding of all description in analysis of local concepts and case studies of their use in practice; the pursuit of 'redundant' information; the extension of description along lines that emanate directly from these concepts and cases; and the creation of a configurational model of key premises and institutions, so that the final understanding can address the logics of collective action and render original behaviour comprehensible. She looks at current and possible future applications of these methods, and the adaptive changes that need to be made. She concludes that anthropology's biggest problem is not relevance, but getting beyond what other social scientists would see as mere 'insights'. For the shift which has taken place at the level of epistemology, from the study of originality as structure to originality as emergent novelty, is still clumsy in its articulation as a larger theoretical or practical project. Bibliogr., notes.
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