Anthropology & Egalitarianism: Ethnographic Encounters from Monticello to Guinea-Bissau

"Among the most eloquent and deeply reflexive works I have read in some time....Accessible, conversational, and at times disarmingly colloquial, it is precisely the kind of work that should be taught at the undergraduate level."---Liam D. Murphy, co-author of A History of Anthropological Theory

Anthropology and Egalitarianism is a provocative and accessible introduction to key ideas in cultural anthropology, focusing on the experience of fieldwork and the concept of culture. Writing in a deeply personal style and using material from his fieldwork in three dramatically different locales---Indonesia, West Africa, and Monticello, the historic home of Thomas Jefferson---Eric Gable shows why the ethnographic encounter is the core of the discipline's method and the basis of its unique contribution to understanding the human condition. Gable weaves together vignettes from the field and discussion of major works as he explores the development of the idea of culture through the experience of cultural contrast, anthropology's fraught relationship to racism and colonialism, and other enduring themes.

Eric Gable teaches anthropology at the University of Mary Washington. He is author (with Richard Handler) of The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg.