The wide array of highly-specialized —and relatively “closed”— disciplines seems to be the prevalent organizational paradigm in contemporary academia. It certainly has numerous advantages, which include, but are not limited to, a developed methodological framework, specialized learning and training, profound understanding of specific problems pertinent to a particular field, and other elements, which are usually associated with “producing and disseminating knowledge.” However, such an organizational paradigm faces definite challenges, including the fragmentation of academic disciplines and the difficulty (or impossibility) of resolving a specific problem solely on the basis of one discipline’s scholarly paradigm and apparatus. That is why modern scholarship has been—for some time now—experiencing such a tremendous rise in popularity in interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches, which reach beyond any given discipline’s borders. There are also disciplines, such as anthropology, which are inherently not “specialist disciplines” and which make use of a variety of methods, reaching beyond many borders. These and other matters are fully explored in Christoph Wulf’s new book on anthropology, which represents an ambitious undertaking and may well be viewed as a vehicle of this discipline’s latest (or, perhaps, impending) paradigm shift.
Wulf’s Anthropology: A Continental Perspective is as much about the past of anthropology as it is about the current state and the future outlook of this discipline. The book itself provides an exhaustive overview and analysis of this discipline’s history, its objectives, topics, and theoretical treasury. The author’s self-declared purpose for this book is to “develop a few of the principles and perspectives of anthropology, comparing and contrasting them with those that emerge from research on evolution, philosophical anthropology in Germany, historical anthropology in France, and cultural anthropology in the United States and Europe,” while also drawing on his own research (ix-x).
Anthropology: A Continental Perspective defines this discipline as the “decentralized, polycentric science in which problems of representation, interpretation, the construction of deconstruction, and thus also methodological diversity are of central importance.” Thus, anthropology is not a single discipline, but the result of an “interplay between different sciences.” Depending on the issue to be examined, the range of disciplines involved can be different: while conducting research and writing this book, its author drew inspiration from epistemological traditions of history, ethnology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and literary studies. The object and subject of anthropology can encompass the entire field of human culture in different historical areas and cultures. Likewise, anthropology can be understood as an academic attitude toward examining issues relating to different times and cultures (ix, 3).
In the author’s opinion, “today it no longer seems meaningful to limit anthropology or ethnology to the study of so-called primitive peoples, pre-industrial and pre-state societies, tribal societies, simple societies” (ix). On the contrary, “in the view of the fragmentation of the academic disciplines, the task of anthropology…must be to contribute to understanding between persons and the process of improving understanding between individuals and peoples in different parts of the world” (ix, xi). Wulf makes several important observations, which sum up his views of anthropology’s meaning and tasks: 1) that the “complexity and puzzling nature of human life is fundamental to anthropology”; 2) that the examples of human life and ways of living represent “parts of a much greater whole”; 3) that anthropology presupposes a “plurality of cultures” and assumes “that cultures are not closed systems,” but rather dynamic, permeating each other’s organisms of “indeterminate future”; and 4) that the critique of this discipline from inside “is indispensable in the attempt to explore the complexity of human history and culture” (10).
According to Christoph Wulf, anthropology is not just evolutional, just historical, or just cultural. The author perceives it as trans-disciplinary, trans-cultural, and pluralistic (302). For example, he finds the development of the “specific conditions of humankind” (as a unique species) as important as the general laws of the development of life. Besides certain similarities with the development of other species, he observes in humankind such inimitable traits as eccentricity, “excess drive, action, facilitation, language, imagination, and openness to the world” (300). To Wulf, the history of life and the process of human evolution represent the subjects of anthropological research, which must be aware of its anthropomorphic character, historicity, and culturality: human body, social and cultural interaction, mimetic behavior, ritual, performance, and other elements all play an important role in this research (300, 301-303).
All in all, Anthropology: A Continental Perspective is about a significant paradigm shift in the field of anthropology. Indeed, Christoph Wulf makes a strong case for this “new” anthropology— an all-encompassing "meta discipline," which studies individuals and their groups from a number of different perspectives. Nonetheless, while the author has shown how biological, evolutionary, and cultural anthropologies, history, sociology, linguistics, psychology, and other disciplines can be applied in this new anthropological research, there still is an obvious need to address the “new” anthropology’s place next to (or within) philosophy and the entire field of the humanities.
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[Review length: 815 words • Review posted on September 3, 2014]