A Genealogy of Method

Reviews / Votes

"This is a bold book, daring to revive but also to reconsider the culture concept within anthropology. Moving with great clarity across American, British, French and German intellectual debates, Hausner provides a powerful response to two questions of central importance to the discipline: do we need to reconceptualize our notion of culture; and if so, how? The result is a work that is historically informed yet utterly timely." - Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor, University of Toronto "This is a very welcome and insightful attempt to restart a conversation that was central to anthropology not so very long ago." - Michael Lambek, University of Toronto "A compelling read and deft exploration of anthropology's core contributions via a series of encounters with its ancestors. Sophisticated and subtle, the argument is thoroughly persuasive-we should reclaim anthropology's tools, and indeed, today need them more than ever. To read is to rekindle and recommit!" - Julie Hemment, Professor & Chair, Department of Anthropology, UMass Amherst "A Genealogy of Method gets readers to think deeply about the approaches to cross-cultural comparison that became influential in German and Anglophone anthropologies and the reasons why they formed into distinct traditions --or, at times, managed to mutually shape each other. This highly accessible book highlights in particular the dialogues between anthropology, comparative religion, philology, and history from the nineteenth century to the 1970s." - Dr. Katherine Swancutt, Reader in Social Anthropology, King's College London