Cultural anthropology describes and interprets the culturally patterned thought and behavior of contemporary and near-contemporary societies. It is inherently pluralistic, seeking a framework in which the distinctive perspectives of each cultural world can be appreciated. This work is an effort to describe the major concepts that have shaped the discipline, treated historically and theoretically.
As an academic enterprise, anthropology dates only to the late nineteenth century. As an intellectual tradition, however, it is far older. The discipline of anthropology is the product of the European confrontation with the cultural other, an encounter spanning several centuries of exploration, trade, conquest, and colonization. The goal of this work is to set modern, theoretically explicit anthropology in its proper context, within its broader intellectual tradition. Aristotle and Rousseau, Hobbes and Marx, Turgot and Herder were all contributors to this enterprise, as much as were the acknowledged anthropologists of the past century.