Review of R. G. Fox and B. J. King (eds), Anthropology Beyond Culture

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9(3) 608-609 (2003)

Anthropology – particularly the American variety – has depended for its very existence on the concept of ‘culture’.Yet there is nowadays deep anxiety as to whether it means anything or remains usable at all. Biologists routinely include birds, bats, whales, and monkeys in ‘the culture club’. Social learning is certainly not unique to humans. Anthropologists, for their part, have notoriously failed to settle on a definition of ‘culture’. Is it ‘tradition’ or, on the contrary, ‘innovation’? Is it ‘that complex whole’ or, on the contrary, ‘a thing of shreds and patches’? Is it ‘ideas’ or, on the contrary, ‘social practice’?

In view of all this, the editors of this volume recommend abandoning the concept. Anthropology can prosper, they say, ‘without a global concept of culture’ or even ‘without any concept of culture’ (p. 4). Fredrik Barth (p. 35) advocates a slimmed-down, ideational definition which he proposes placing within a new and more inclusive category termed ‘human action’. Michel-Rolph Trouillot (pp. 57-8) thinks we should abandon the term ‘culture’ in view of its reactionary overtones, rather as politically sensitive scholars have had to abandon ‘civilization’ and ‘race’.

To avoid some of the loaded implications of the traditional term ‘culture’, Barbara King (pp. 83-104) suggests a variety of alternatives more self-evidently relevant to primates than to humans.‘Lifeways’,‘patterned interactions’, and ‘ways of becoming’ are among her suggestions. If humans possess culture, then so do monkeys and apes – who routinely interact with one another ‘on the basis of shared meanings’. King correspondingly supports Tim Ingold and others who see no reason to restrict social anthropology to members of the species Homo sapiens.

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Fox,Richard G. & Barbara J. King (eds). Anthropology beyond culture. xix, 314 pp., illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers, 2002. £42.99 (cloth) £14.99 (paper)