John M. Ingham

Simplicity and complexity in anthropology

Purpose – This paper aims to o review understandings of complexity in anthropology.Design/methodology/approach – A number of works in the field of anthropology are discussed.Findings – Anthropologists generally agree that human behavior is complex, although they differ about the meaning of complexity. For many in this era of postmodernism, it involves emphasizing cultural differences and social contexts. Earlier interests in underlying cultural meanings and structures, meanwhile, have become somewhat passe. Nonetheless, some social anthropologists, encouraged by chaos science, continue to explore hidden meanings and structures. While there is much to like in their attention to ethnographic detail, one concern is their metaphorical use of the science of chaos. Another is failure to deal with intention and agency.Originality/value – Levi‐Strauss doubts that psychoanalysis has anything substantial to contribute to anthropology. This conclusion helped to set the stage for postmodernist anthropology, and its c...

Anthropologists are speaking up (finally), but are they saying enough? A review of Besteman, C. and Gusterson, H. (Eds), Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the book, Why Americas Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back.Design/methodology/approach – The author, himself an anthropologist, evaluates how a group of anthropologists responds to popular right‐of‐center pundits.Findings – Why Americas Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back is just as instructive for what it reveals about the current condition of anthropology – and, for that matter, left academia – as for what it says about the lack of anthropological sophistication in popular books that purport to tell us what is right or wrong with the world and where it is heading. Freighted with postmodernism, the influence of Michel Foucault in particular, present‐day anthropology makes assumptions not unlike those of the Straussians of the far right. Thus, our left‐of‐center anthropologists have trouble locating what is so objectionable about reactionary conservatism and, at the same time, difficulties in assessing social conditions, both at ...