Anthropology and Social Theory – Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject Ortner

Anthropology and Social TheoryCulture, Power, and the Acting Subject\nAuthor(s): Sherry B. Ortner\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Duke University Press, United States\nImprint: Duke University Press\nISBN-13: 9780822338116, 978-0822338116\nSynopsis\nIn Anthropology and Social Theory the award-winning anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner draws on her longstanding interest in theories of cultural practice to rethink key concepts of culture, agency, and subjectivity for the social sciences of the twenty-first century. The seven theoretical and interpretive essays in this volume each advocate reconfiguring, rather than abandoning, the concept of culture. Similarly, they all suggest that a theory which depends on the interested action of social beings-specifically practice theory, associated especially with the work of Pierre Bourdieu-requires a more developed notion of human agency and a richer conception of human subjectivity. Ortner shows how social theory must both build upon and move beyond.