The mysteries of incarnation

This chapter explores the space between words and practice. It deals with the relation between the analytic language used by the anthropologists and the social practice and experience of the people they study. Ethnography is both a process and a product. The chapter focuses on the contrast between these two diverging logics, which are inherent in the anthropological task. The interpretative tradition of anthropology is distinguishable for its special sensibility with regard to the meaning which human groups give to their practices. If the different conceptual languages of anthropology have any common trait, it is that of discursive coherence: an order of meaning which it is supposed contains, at the very least, the capacity to re-present and evoke a given sociocultural world. Any attempt to situate the concept of social practice should begin by considering the Weberian project of elaborating a comprehensive sociology, that is to say, of penetrating the internal conditions of social action.

Incarnation · Theology · Historical and Architectural Studies · Philosophy