TY - JOUR
AU - HANSON, F. ALLAN
AB -  The most vexing problem with understanding cultures is how to do it. Robert Ulin bravely meets this problem head on in a broadly informed, closely reasoned, and highly instructive discussion of contemporary social theory. He scrutinizes several approaches to social life, carefully measuring their potentials and shortcomings. The critique is constructed in a cumulative fashion which encourages the reader to anticipate that it will culminate in a powerful new synthesis. Unfortunately, that anticipation is ultimately disappointed. The other main problem is that the writing style is unnecessarily ponderous and obtuse, frequently making it necessary to read sentences two or three times before their meaning can be divined. Still, it is well worth the hard journey through these pages because much may be learned along the way. At least since Malinowski enthused, with emphasis more epistemological than sexist, about grasping: “the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world,” a seductive mode of understanding cultures has been internal. After all, what understanding of Trobriand culture can be more authentic than the Trobrianders’ own? Peter Winch, with his Wittgensteinian notions of learning to operate in the language games of the culture under investigation, 
TI - Understanding Cultures: Perspectives in Anthropology and Social Theory. ROBERT C. ULIN
JF - American Ethnologist
DO - 10.1525/ae.1985.12.2.02a00170
DA - 1985-05-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/understanding-cultures-perspectives-in-anthropology-and-social-theory-Am5thEJ55E
SP - 378
VL - 12
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -