Las formas del holismo. La construcción teórica de la totalidad en etnografía

The search for the whole, holism, is one the basic intentions in the ethnographic research. This paper examines the holism and its problems by reviewing the various forms that the whole has taken through the development of Anthropology. The pretexts for this examination are in a series of writings by Tylor, Malinowski, Mauss, Dumont, Fernandez and Marcus. These various images of the whole show the extent to what the methodological aspiration of the holism is determined by theoretical and moral models of the culture.