The term „holism“ is shorthand for a central predicament inanthropology: human situations are culturally structured, butindividuals, who participate in more than one cultural „whole,“ cansometimes change the rules. This volume explores thetheoretical space between those two aspects of the humancondition.
Richard Handler, University of Virginia
These authors persuasively, even passionately, refocus theanalysis of socio-cultural ontology. In showing how thesimplistic rejection of past holisms undermined anthropology'sfundamental commitments, they instead devise ingeniously criticalnew perspectives reflecting today's massively reconfigured andvariegated understandings of context.
Michael Herzfeld (Harvard University)
In this capacious and brilliantly-editedcollection, holism no longer suggests a totalizing project, but rather an indispensable toolkit of world-making strategies. The innovative essays gathered here map a new, multi-scaledlandscape of Anthropological research.
James Clifford, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Author of The Predicament of Culture.
'Holism' does its magic again. This is anextraordinarily interesting commentary on the present state ofanthropology that would never have come together without theeditors' pursuit of an apparently unfashionable idea.
Marilyn Strathern