Political Anthropology as Method - Paperback

by Arpad Szakolczai (Author)

This book explores considerations of method in the field of political anthropology, contending that this constitutes a distinct approach within the broader area of the human, social and political sciences. Faithful to the basic guiding ideas of anthropology, it nonetheless challenges and rejects the pretended stance of scientific neutrality and advances a position that engages with the notion of participation, recognising its value and arguing that participation is essential to the development of a proper social and political understanding. An outline of what political anthropology can offer by way of methods, this invitation to consider the development of methodological ideas beyond the presumed 'scientific' and 'universalistic' approaches that dominate in the social sciences will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology and politics with interests in questions of method and methodology.

Author Biography

Arpad Szakolczai is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of Sociology, Religion and Grace: A Quest for the Renaissance, Comedy and the Public Sphere, Novels and the Sociology of the Contemporary, Permanent Liminality and Modernity and Post-Truth Society: A Political Anthropology of Trickster Logic. He is the co-author of Walking into the Void: A Historical Sociology and Political Anthropology of Walking and The Political Sociology and Anthropology of Evil: Tricksterology.