Symbolic Anthropology
by Symbolic Anthropology involves the study of culture as a relatively autonomus entity.
Symbolic Anthropology involves the study of culture as a relatively autonomus entity.It is a system of meaning which the anthropologist attempts to unravel through the decoding or interpretation of key symbols and rituals.It was a largely American movement and gave way to American line of thinking.
Clifford Geeatz,Victor Turner and David Schneider are some of the important anthropologists who write about symbolic anthropology.They differed in their intentions and approaches but they shared the vision of culture as a set of shared meanings.
Symbolic anthropology deviates from Levi Strauss’s structuralism in two ways.One is resistance to scientific methodology and the other is emphasis on cultural particularism.
However the place of symbolic anthropology as a distinctive school is not universally accepted.
Symbolic anthropology spread to other countries like Britain,France and Holland.
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