Invention of Culture - Hardcover

Wagner, Roy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0135026091 ISBN 13: 9780135026090

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1975

Synopsis

The Invention of Culture, one of the most important works in symbolic anthropology in recent years, argues that culture is not a given that shapes the lives of the people who share it. Rather, it is people who shape their culture by constantly manipulating conventional symbols taken from a variety of everchanging codes to create new meanings. Wagner sees culture arising from the dialectic between the individual and the social world; his analysis is situated in the relation between invention and convention, innovation and control, meaning and context. Finally, the author points out that the symbolization processes that generate the construction of meaning in culture are the same as those that anthropologists use to "invent" the cultures they study.

About this title

About the Author:

Roy Wagner is professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia. Tim Ingold is chair of social anthropology at the University of Aberdeen.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1975
• ISBN 10: 0135026091
• ISBN 13: 9780135026090
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192