The summ of all know variables is a summ of variables. How they are interpreted is an individual experience. The world’s greatest subject matter expert can give a truly unique perspective of his subject but must also include a sufficient perspective of himself and his character and personality and prejudices and times to be truly revealing so as to allow the reader to delve between the lines. Life’s a beach. There a lot to it.

Lexicology strikes me as exactly the kind of field which cannot imagine a concept as a non-discursive object in the world…

I think it’s less that lexicologists can’t imagine a concept as a non-discursive object in the world than it is that an awareness of clearly articulated concepts that are yet to exist (such as mass transit via jetpacks) and once generally accepted concepts that never did (heliocentrism, for example) engenders a healthy scepticism.

@Matt. Or maybe reversal: Freedom from Anthropology 🙂

Why not an “anthropology as…” or an “anthropology for…” ?

There should be a distinction between words, terms and concepts. Words are arbitrary (pace Saussure), and so one must be careful in basing claims on google searches for X; terms are less so, and tend to have philological affinity across domains, cultures and languages; but concepts are not discursive. And to the extent that they are not, they have a life of their own not only in texts, but in actions and institutions.

Lexicological theory can contribute a great deal to your project but presenting the statement above to a room full of lexicologists would perhaps be akin to going to war with a steel helmet and an Enfield against an opponent kitted out with HKs and Kevlar. Anna Wierzbicka (who isn’t necessarily in step with the mainline of lexicological theory but is by no means a fringe figure) has done some relevant work and Leonhard Lipka’s English lexicology is a very good introduction to the contemporary field more broadly.

@kelty: I understand that you think that freedom is “a core human problematic”. Respectfully, I’d like to ask you to understand it is not — it is just your culture making which makes you think it is. Really. Asking “why aren’t our problems their problems, since obviously they are the important ones?” rlly starts to look like ethnocentrism in an uncomplicated Anth 101 sense. Or perhaps you’ve done some sort of extensive cross-cultural readings in ethnography that you haven’t blogged about that indicates that the concept is a core human problematic? And if it is, why haven’t anthropologists — who are presumably human — dealt with it?

In sum, it seems to me that your intuition is at odds with the evidence and that somehow lesson you take from this is that there is something wrong with the evidence. Do you see why I think this is not the sort of move you want to be making (if you are making it)?

Secondly, in my post I mentioned that you seemed to be engaged in ‘logical positivism manqué’ and I think your discussion of the word/term/concept distinction. You seem to believe that there are concepts ‘out there’ which exist in all cultures but are realized differently in each of them… or something like that? Could you explain more as I didn’t really follow that part.

A further specification might be that I guess I have a rather specific and perhaps metaphysical meaning of “concept” in mind. There should be a distinction between words, terms and concepts. Words are arbitrary (pace Saussure), and so one must be careful in basing claims on google searches for X; terms are less so, and tend to have philological affinity across domains, cultures and languages; but concepts are not discursive. And to the extent that they are not, they have a life of their own not only in texts, but in actions and institutions. But this doesn’t make it transportable, as your “ethnographic theory” section seems to imply… it is there, in the world also. I may be in some kind of realist mode, but it is in this sense that I’m struggling with the idea.

It is only as anthropology is reversed and the normal disrupted through the reassembly of the particular that the hermeneutic circle of studying human-kind is closed, and this applies particularly to ruling ideas such as freedom.

If we treat Anthropology as a trade and not as a vocation, we are prone to become tools.