Engaging Anthropology Sparknotes

The purpose of this paper is to briefly examine the final chapters of, “Engaging Anthropology: A social and Political History” by Mark Moberg. Within this paper, I will demonstrate my understanding of four different anthropological theories, along with a summary of my overall thoughts of how useful this book was to my learning throughout the course. Moberg has created a text that is both simple and interesting. The reader, no matter how much they may distaste theory is enticed into wanting to delve deeper into theory and the history of Anthropology. His simple writing style has much to do with my understanding of the theoretical approaches I will be discussing, which are as follows; Michel Foucault's theory, along with his impact on Anthropology, postmodernism and how it has emerged as a

Foucault is a social historian, who helped develop the conceptualization of power by arguing power to be a “dimension of individual or institutional claims to knowledge.” (Moberg, 317). As in, the domination of others is not only practiced through economic coercion or through physicality, but also that power can be demonstrated through the use of knowledge and discourse. As a result, Foucault argues that much of our conceptualization of knowledge, power and what is deemed to be ‘true’ is actually controlled by western societies institutions. Moberg writes, “In short, it is power, wealth, and privileged status rather than evidence that determines what is true” (Moberg, 317). This explains how previous Anthropologists, ‘scientific’ accounts in their ethnographies are lacking adequate representation of the culture they are studying, which plays an important role in postmodernism. This examination regarding the validity of the work of previous Anthropologists prior to postmodernism, can be seen in the joining of hermeneutics, deconstruction and Foucault’s notion of