A NOTE ON SOME CONTEMPORARY TRANSFORMATIONS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEORY AND PRACTICE

Abstract

This article is concerned with main theoretical and epistemological changes within anthropological theory and practice, and their relation to some social, economic, political and cultural transformations that can be traced back to the 1970s. Starting from the view that the closing decades of the twentieth century are characterised by critical examinations of some fundamental assumptions which have become the discipline's postulates, the article considers theoretical and intellectual diversity as a general characteristic of anthropology of this period. Although the history of anthropology shows that the discipline was rarely, if ever, governed by the principle of “paradigmatic orderliness”, in the closing decades of the twentieth century the discipline, faced with new historical conditions of its practice, was particularly engaged with confronting its epistemological and theoretical boundaries. As various anthropological approaches, concepts and explications come from different theoretical formations, the aim of the article is to poin out the basic theoretical, epistemological and social transformations which conditioned the development of new theoretical orientations and research approaches as well as the redefinition of the scope of anthropological knowledge.