PREFACE TO "ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE EDGE"

ABSTRACT

From the Publisher: "In thirteen essays Prattis creates an orchestral piece with five movements, which sweep the reader through the current tempests of science, civilization and the conduct of anthropology, preparing a different foundation for scholarship in the 21st century. The first movement - Beyond Structuralism - has two essays about the structure of the human mind, the limitations of structuralism, and endorses the transformative power of the experience of symbols. The second movement - The Poetic Turn and Postmodern Reflexivity - consists of four essays in which the author pioneers the place of anthropological poetics in the postmodern deconstruction of redundant axioms in theory and methodology. This vital spark rethinks anthropology’s foundations. In four chapters, the third movement - Process and Form - examines the mythic enactment of cultural festivals, sacred dance and shamanism before identifying a process that underlies all ritual enactment. The model puts transformation and order in a dialectical relationship of symbolic process, and inserts the phenomenology of the investigator into the equation of doing science. This ushers in the fourth movement - Paradigms - a chapter on bias and distortion in science and the necessity of a paradigm shift to expand scientific self-awareness. The finale - Gaia and the Environment - has two essays that take the implications of deconstruction, process, form, and paradigm shift into the arena of environmental issues. It comes full circle to the theme of human adaptation in the first movement - Beyond Structuralism - but examines it from the perspective of consciousness transformation. This orchestral piece plays out on multiple levels, finishing with a crescendo of human consciousness that takes anthropology through the twenty-first century with a new sense of responsibility and practice."