The Anthropological Circle: Symbol, Function, History

Anthropology is both outside of history and within it. Histories of anthropology tend to summarise particular authors' intellectual differences; but, as Marc Augè argues in this book, first published in English in 1982, these differences may in fact be intrinsically derived from intellectual divisions within anthropology as obvious as they are irreconcilable. Augè identifies, in contemporary debates in French anthropology, the paths that perhaps allow us to transcend these oppositions. On doing so, he explores and clarifies the relationship that anthropology enjoys with history, on the intellectual plane, and with politics, on the historical plane. His argument is stimulating and challenging, and will interest all social anthropologists and sociologists concerned with the theoretical foundations of their disciplines, as well as demonstrating to historians and political scientists what anthropology has to offer them.