In 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 classic practice theory in order to understand
the contemporary world.
Some of the essays reflect explicitly on theoretical concerns: the relationship between agency and power, the problematic
quality of ethnographic studies of resistance, and the possibility of producing an anthropology of subjectivity.
Others are ethnographic studies that apply Ortner�s theoretical framework. In these, she investigates aspects of
social class, looking at the relationship between race and middle-class identity in the United States, the often
invisible nature of class as a cultural identity and as an analytical category in social inquiry, and the role
that public culture and media play in the creation of the class anxieties of Generation X. Written with Ortner�s
characteristic lucidity, these essays constitute a major statement about the future of social theory from one of
the leading anthropologists of our time.
Table of Contents
Introduction Updating Practice Theory
Chapter One. Reading America: Preliminary Notes on Class and Culture
Chapter Two. Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal
Chapter Three. Identities: The Hidden Life of Class
Chapter Four. Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World
Chapter Five. Subjectivity and Cultural Critique
Chapter Six. Power and Projects: Reflections on Agency
Notes
References Cited
Index