Time and the Critique of Anthropology

A review essay on a book by Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia U Press, 1983 [see listing in IRPS No. 46]). This collection of essays presents a critical account of the present state of anthropology. Topics include: the history of the discipline; cultural anthropology & structuralism; ethnographic writing & experience; the rhetoric of vision considered to underlie Western empiricism & rationalism; symbolic anthropology; & a proposed dialectical anthropology that would confront language usage & history. Fabian has no difficulty in situating ethnography in a Western, Ur, industrialized setting. He seeks to determine what lasting contribution anthropology will make to man's self-knowledge. However, the range of topics is too wide for any to be dealt with satisfactorily, & many interesting questions are glossed over. C. Waters