The Interpretive Aspect of Cultural Anthropology: A Step towards New Creative Reflections on Humanity

Abstract

The central aim of this text is to reflect upon the contemporary state of affairs in social sciences, with a focus on cultural anthropology and the dominant shift towards interpretive rethinking of human society, which took place by the end of last century. To this end, the text gives an overview of the premises of interpretive anthropology, which marks its zenith in the 60ties of the twentieth century. Interpretive anthropology and the interpretive modes of reflecting humanity in general, have powerfully entered the realm of social sciences at the end of the twentieth century. As such, they brought about the potency to resist and break the positivists, formal ways of knowing the world. This text is, hence, an attempt at criticizing the dominant view according to which human society can best be understood through positivist and often sterile scientific methods, and that everything else which does not belong to that realm, comes down to subjective, relativist speculations. Instead, through a dialogical analysis of several interpretive anthropological works (Geertz, Weiner, Rabinow, Taussig), this text brings forth both the complexities of the interpretive turn, but at the same time the motivation to regain faith in both cultural anthropology and the interpretive, hermeneutic approaches to studying human society.