In the past two decades, many anthropologists have been drawn to "interpre tive" perspectives which hold that the study of human culture would profit by using approaches developed in the humanities, rather than using approaches used in the natural sciences. The author discusses the source of the appeal of such perspectives but argues that interpretive approaches to social science tend to be fundamentally flawed, even by common everyday epistemological standards.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anderson, J., and G. Bower.1973. Human associative memory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
2.
Bellah, R.N.1979. The new religious consciousness and the crisis in modernity . In Interpretive social science: A reader, edited by Paul Rabinow and W. Sullivan, 341-64. Berkeley: University of California Press.
3.
Benedict, R.1934. Patterns of culture. New York : New American Library.
4.
Bohman, J.1991. New philosophy of social science. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Brady, I.1991. Harmony and argument: Bringing forth an artful science . In Anthropological poetics, edited by I. Brady, 3-37. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
7.
Chomsky, N.1957. Review of Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner. Language35:26-58.
8.
Clifford, J.1986. Introduction: Partial truths. In Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography: A school of American research advanced seminar, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 1-26. Berkeley : University of California Press.
9.
Colby, B.1975. Cultural grammars. Science187:913-16.
10.
Colby, B., David Fernandez, and David Kronenfeld .1981. Toward a convergence of cognitive and symbolic anthropology. American Ethnologist8 (3): 422-50.
11.
Crapanzano, V.1986. Hermes's Dilemma: The masking of subversion in ethnographic description. In Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography: A school of American research advanced seminar, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 51-76. Berkeley: University of California Press.
12.
D'Andrade, R.G.1965. Trait psychology and componential analysis. American Anthropologist67:215-28.
13.
_. 1989. Cultural cognition. In Foundations of cognitive science, edited by Michael I. Posner, 795-830. Cambridge : MIT Press.
14.
D'Andrade, R.G., and C. Strauss.1992. Human motives and cultural models. New York: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Damata, H.1984. On carnival, informality, and music, a point of view from Brazil. In Text, play, and story, edited by E. Bruner, 230-46. Washington, DC : American Ethnological Society of Washington.
16.
Dasenbrook, R.1993. Literary theory after Davidson. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press .
17.
Davidson, D.1984. Inquiries into truth and interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
18.
Derrida, J.1982. The margins of philosophy. Brighton : Harvester.
19.
Dougherty, J., and C. Keller.1985. Taskonony: A practical approach to knowledge structures. In Directions in cognitive anthropology , edited by J. Dougherty, 161-76. Urbana : University of Illinois Press.
20.
Dougherty, J.W.1985. Directions in cognitive anthropology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
21.
Eagleton, T.1983. Literary theory. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press.
22.
Ellis, J.1993. The theory of literary criticism: Dialogical analysis . Berkeley: University of California Press.
23.
Erwin, E.1993. Philosophers on Freudianism. In Philosophical problems of the internal and external words: Essays on the philosophy of Adolf Grunbaum, edited by J. Earman et al., 409-59. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press .
24.
Feldman, A.1994. On cultural anesthesia: From Desert Storm to Rodney King . American Ethnologist21 (2): 404-18.
25.
Frake, C.O.1964. Notes on queries in ethnography. American Anthropologist66:132-45.
26.
_. 1977. Plying frames can be dangerous: Some reflections on methodology in cognitive anthropology. Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute for Comparative Human Development1:1-7.
27.
Friedman, J.1993. Further notes of the adventures of phallus in blunderland . In Texts of identity, edited by K. Gergen and J. Shotter, 95-114. London : Sage.
28.
Geertz, C.1973. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.
29.
_. 1979. Negara; The theater state in nineteenth century Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
30.
_. 1983. Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.
31.
Grunbaum, A.1984. The foundations of psychoanalysis; A philosophical critique . Berkeley: University of California Press.
32.
Harris, M.1979. Cultural materialism. New York : Random House.
33.
Haviland, J.1977. Gossip, reputation, and knowledge in Zinacaton . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
34.
Hjort, M.1992. Rules and conventions. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press.
35.
Holland, D.1985. From situation to impression: How Americans get to know themselves and one another. In Directions in cognitive anthropology , edited by Janet Dougherty, 389-412. Urbana : University of Illinois Press.
36.
Holland, D., and N. Quinn.1987. Cultural models of language and thought . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
37.
Jones, T. Forthcoming. Ethnography and epistemological barriers.
38.
Juhl, P.D.1980. Interpretation. An essay in the philosophy of literary criticismPrinceton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
39.
Kampferer, B.1989. The anthropologist as hero. Three exponents of post-modem anthropology. Critique of Anthropology8:77-104.
40.
Kay, P.1964. Cultural grammar. Bucknell Review35.
41.
Keesing, R.1985. Conventional metaphors and anthropological metaphysics: The problematic of cultural translation. Journal of Anthropological Research41 (2): 201-17.
42.
_. 1989. Exotic readings of cultural texts. Current Anthropology30 (4): 459-79.
43.
Kirkham, R.1992. Theories of truth. Cambridge : MIT Press.
44.
Kuhn, T.S.1962. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
45.
Lakoff, G.1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
46.
Lakoff, G., and M. Johnson.1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
47.
Langacker, R.1987Foundations ofcognitive grammar. Stanford : Stanford University Press.
48.
Livingstone, P.1988. Literary knowledge; humanistic inquiry and the philosophy of science. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
49.
MacIntyre, A.1981. After virtue. A study in moral theory. London: Gerald Duckwork.
50.
McClelland, J.L., and D. Rumelhart.1986. Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructures of cognition. Cambridge: MIT Press.
51.
Medin, D., and E. Smith.1985. Categories and concepts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
52.
Merton, Robert1968. Social theory and social structure. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
53.
Narayan, N.1993. On nose cutters, gurus, and storytellers. In Creativity/anthropology, edited by S. Lavie , K. Narayan, and R. Rosaldo, 30-53. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
54.
Ohnuki-Tierney, E.1984. Monkey performances: A multiple structure of meaning and reflexivity in Japanese culture. In Text, play, and story , edited by Edward Bruner.Washington, DC: American Ethnological Society.
55.
Pecora, V.1989. The limits of local knowledge. In The new historicism, edited by Aram Veeser , 243-77. New York: Routledge.
56.
Quinn, N.1985. "Commitment" in American marriage: A cultural analysis. Taskonony. In Directions in cognitive anthropology, edited by J. Dougherty, 291-320. Urbana : University of Illinois Press.
57.
Randall, R.1976. How tall is a taxonoic tree? Some evidence for dwarfism . American Ethnologist3:543-53.
58.
Richardson, M.1991. Point of view in anthropological discourse: The ethnographer as Gilgamesh. In Anthropological poetics, edited by I. Brady, 207-18. Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
59.
Sapir, David.1981. Leper, hyena, and blacksmith in Kujamaat Diola thought . American Ethnologist8 (3): 526-43.
60.
Schank, R., and R. Abelson.1977. Scripts, plans, goals and understanding . Hillsdale, NJ: LawrenceErlbaum.
61.
Shankman, P.1984. The thick and thin: On the interpretive theoretical program of Clifford Geertz. Current Anthropology25 (3): 261-79.
Strauss, C., and N. Quinn.1994. Acognitive/cultural anthropology. In Assessing cultural anthropology, edited by Robert Borofsky.New York: McGraw-Hill .
64.
Taussig, M.1987. Shamanism, colonialism, and the wild man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
65.
Tyler, S.1986. Post-modem ethnography: From document of the occult to occult document. In Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography: A school of American research advanced seminar, edited by James Clifford and George E. Marcus, 122-40. Berkeley: University of California Press.
66.
Turner, V.1967. The forest of symbols. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
67.
Veesing, A.1988. The new historicism. New York : Routlege.
68.
von Wright, G.H.1971. Explanation and understanding. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
69.
Walters, Ronald.1980. Sign of the times: Clifford Geertz and the historians . Social Research47:537-56.
70.
White, H.1981. Where do markets come from? American Journal of Sociology87:517-47.
