Placing Culture in Nature
Focusing on early twentieth-century American anthropological discourse, this paper examines diverse epistemological approaches to integrating culture within a naturalistic framework. Leslie Alvin White’s materialistic and energy-based “culturology” will be contrasted with Louis Kroeber’s emergentist...
Enregistré dans:
| Dans: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap, |
|---|---|
| Auteur principal: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Publié: |
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
2024
|
| Sujets: | |
| Accès en ligne: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Résumé: | Focusing on early twentieth-century American anthropological discourse, this paper examines diverse epistemological approaches to integrating culture within a naturalistic framework. Leslie Alvin White’s materialistic and energy-based “culturology” will be contrasted with Louis Kroeber’s emergentist perspective. Through a detailed examination of some key epistemic stances, I will illustrate how American cultural anthropology grappled with the dual pressures of scientific naturalism and the epistemic autonomy of the cultural world. The conclusion argues for distinguishing between “naturalized culture” and “naturalization of culture,” suggesting that within this distinction, naturalism reveals not merely as a philosophical stance, but as a historically contingent phenomenon. |
|---|