Minding experience: An exploration of the concept of “experience” in the early French anthropology of Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, and Lévi-Strauss
✍ Scribed by C. Jason Throop
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2003
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 95 KB
- Volume
- 39
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Abstract
In line with the growing concern with the unexamined reliance upon the concept of “experience” in
anthropology, this article explores in some detail the various usages and definitions of the concept in the work
of three of early French anthropology's most influential theorists: Émile Durkheim
(1858–1918), Lucien Lévy‐Bruhl (1857–1939), and Claude
Lévi‐Strauss (1908–). With its important influence on both British and American
anthropology, the early French anthropological tradition, as epitomized in the writings of these three thinkers,
has indeed played a pivotal role in shaping many current taken‐for‐granted understandings of the
concept of experience in the discipline of anthropology as a whole. In the process of exploring how experience
is viewed by these three scholars, this paper will thus take some initial steps toward the historical
contextualization of many of the unquestioned assumptions underpinning current understandings of experience in
the discipline of anthropology and the social sciences more generally. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.