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Anthropology in Disneyworld: Rapport, Gardner, and the ‘Discipline‘ of Social Anthropology
Author(s) -
Quigley Declan
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.2001.tb00304.x
Subject(s) - sociology , manifesto , epistemology , vision , relation (database) , anthropology , subject (documents) , determinism , aesthetics , philosophy , law , political science , database , library science , computer science
This article examines the response by Rapport to the critique made by Gardner of his book Transcendent Individual. Rapport eschews the idea of discipline in relation to anthropology. This is connected to his distaste for any hint of social determinism, and his eulogising of the essay format as the most suitable means of conveying human contrariety. His approach necessarily leads him to embellish his accounts of what the world is like with visions of what it should be like if only everyone adopted his literary and liberal stance. A contrary ‘manifesto’ is here presented: the job of social anthropology is to explain actual historical societies, and one cannot simply appropriate the subject so that it now becomes about a kind of never‐never land. Rapport's approach, far from leading to a glorification of individuality, leads only to a monochrome vision which paints all human beings as reductively ‘aesthetic’, ignoring, and rendering impossible the explanation of all institutionalised forms of belief and practice, not least those brutal forms which, says Rapport, inspire his work.