CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE QUESTION OF KNOWLEDGE By Johannes Fabian: A Summary

 

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE QUESTION OF KNOWLEDGE 

By Johannes Fabian, University of Amsterdam          

           This article is about the comparative discussion about the thoughts of two school of anthropological thought in social aspect. This article comprises two main question of what knowledge and whose  knowledge. The socio cultural division of anthropology is about the study of social and cultural aspect of human beings. But there are two school who focuses social cultural anthropology  separately . The American School of thought mainly focuses on the cultural practices of the various mankind and the other is British School of thought which is interested in study of the social aspect of mankind. Here Fabian is presenting the view by raising the question that what is the anthropological knowledge?  According to him as Anthropology can’t be divided into it’s divisions neatly so we anthropologists should be neutral and we should focus on the holistic aspect of a population we are studying. He believe in this state that, “how we know what we know about how they know what they know”.

Here Fabian has presented the research pattern by present that Boas and Malinowski were responsible for introducing lasting divergence in theoretical orientations and research interests: language, pattern and meaning in American cultural anthropology versus relations, structure and social cohesion in British social anthropology.

The article is subdivided in various paragraphs. The first paragraph asks the about the knowledge question of cultural anthropology. Where Fabian has given thoughts provided by various researchers regarding the cultural anthropological knowledge like Thomas Kuhn’s notion of science as puzzle solving and Paul Feyerabend’s  everything goes made it possible to think of the pursuit of scientific knowledge as involving more than devising theories and sticking to methods. There is noticeable change from the past and the present thinkers that we thought and still think that to understand the nature and distinctive way of producing and presenting anthropological knowledge is more urgent than arguing about right or wrong or deciding what counts as use and what as misuse of our discipline.

The second paragraph is talking about the object and subject of anthropological knowledge as knowledge about what and whose knowledge which plays important role in the field of anthropology.  Anthropology seems to have navigated between two options, epitomized by Kant’s critique of reason and Diderot’s Encyclopedia: that is, between seeking knowledge of the principles or rules guiding human thought, feeling, and conduct and projects of documenting and describing, in time and through time, the actual variety of ways humans communicate with each other., construct their social and political relations, formulate and enact their cosmological and religious conceptions, extracts and manage the resources of environments they live in. The question of whose knowledge is focusing on that knowing and believing should and could be distinguished has been a preoccupation among philosophers for ages,  one that is not likely to disappear, if only because it part of common sense and daily experience for everyone who aims to conduct his or her life consciously and rationally.

The last two paragraphs is about how the question of knowledge in now in present situation and it’s survival and Late Ethnography and the question of evidence respectively. Where Fabian has presented works done by many researchers and  how they gain to the understanding of the knowledge of anthropological question in cultural aspect.