Bibeau, Gilles
A Step toward Thick Thinking: From Webs of Significance to Connections across Dimensions
The key notion that is radically challenged in the five articles in this thematic issue on critical medical anthropology is that of culture. North American anthropologists have, to a greater degree than their European counterparts, demonstrated an enduring affection for the notion of culture, a notion that constitutes a cornerstone in their discipline and whose definition has been continually debated. Irrespective of the school to which the anthropologist belongs-be it the interpretive school, which sees culture as a system of meaning; the ecological school, which sees culture as the outcome of a continuing adaptive process; or the structural-functionalist movement, which stresses the holistic and configurational assemblage of elements in the formation of culture-one finds in the dominant American conception of culture a persisting bias toward "logico-meaningful patterning," with a concomitant deemphasis of the "causal-functional" series of interrelationships among societal elements and cultural codes. Geared to exploring the internal logico-meaningful character of culture, North American anthropologists have predominantly investigated the inherent coherence of webs of significance, the organizational patterns in emic classifications, the matching of individual personality features with basic cultural values, an so on.
| Language | eng |
| Names |
[author] Bibeau, Gilles |
| Subjects |
Filosofia della Praxis
Egemonia Culture subalterne
Philosophy of Praxis
Hegemony Subaltern culture |
