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The Dynamics of Anthropological Theory

University of Copenhagen

This article is a general discussion of the nature and implications of anthropological theorizing in the contact zone, that is the space where cultures meet and horizons fuse. In so far as we can no longer see anthropology as simply the study of other cultures, the theoretical language of anthropology must be a language of contrast, which may challenge the self-understanding on both sides of the contact zone at the same time.

A distinction between designative and expressive theories is made, amounting to a difference between clarification and radical interpretation. The latter is seen as the more congenial to the general theoretical ambition of anthropology, and indeed of any social theory, whose object is never a natural one. Through the infiltration of self-understandings anthropology changes its object in the very process of studying it. Therein lies part of its dynamic potential, and its likeness to human action in general.

Key Words: action • agency • experience • theoretical practice

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