Challenges for An Anthropology of Knowledge

The chapter discusses the prospects for a genuine anthropology of knowledge—that is, a study of particular human knowledge practices, with special focus on their epistemic features. Detailed studies of knowledge practices as such remain surprisingly scarce, in spite of the many programmatic declarations and apparent great interest in the subject from both philosophers and anthropologist. This is due not merely to sociological factors. The reluctance to actually study knowledge practices empirically reflects problems more intrinsic to knowledge and epistemology. One such problem is that in real-world cases epistemological and other normative questions appear almost inextricably intermingled. But the main challenge to the anthropology of knowledge, I argue, is the problem of finding an appropriate level of description. It is difficult to identify and illuminatingly describe practices that are both sufficiently local and specific (as opposed to generic) and epistemologically significant. A closer examination of examples from the anthropological literature (primarily studies by Geertz and Barth) confirms this worry, but also provides a clue to a possible solution: An anthropology of knowledge should should focus on higher-order knowledge practices of selecting, weighting and balancing epistemic sources and inputs. Such practices can be expected to be both genuinely epistemic and to exhibit sufficient cultural diversity to merit anthropological study.