Critique of Anthropology

While cognitive studies have historically been regarded as falling well within the anthropological brief, there is little evidence that contemporary versions of cognitive anthropology have much bearing in other fields of cognitive study. In this article I discuss the domination within anthropology of analyses which treate cognition as a residual category, and I discuss some of the ways in which cognitive studies which have bearing on anthropological inquiry are being carried out in other disciplines. The failure of anthropology to acknowledge the reemerging cognitive sciences, it is argued, is a result of the dominance of cultural relativism, the ignoring of developments in linquistics, and the resistance to theoretical departures which challenge the integrity of conventional anthropological objects of analysis.