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Why sociocultural anthropology needs John Dewey's evolutionary model of experience

Adrian College, Adrian, MI, USA, dbrereton{at}comcast.net

This article identifies shortcomings in contemporary sociocultural anthropological theory, and proposes that John Dewey's evolutionary model of experience can begin to rectify them. Dewey's work foreshadowed many aspects of current critical realism, an alternative to both positivism and relativism/culturism, as laid out by philosopher Roy Bhaskar and utilized by social scientists such as Margaret Archer and Berth Danermark. Recent attention to experience in anthropology has largely overlooked Dewey's great contribution, the keystone of which is his grounding of experience in the nature of humanness as evolved in nature. I augment Dewey's model by explicating 12 trans-cultural features of experience.

Key Words: critical realism • culture • culturism • John Dewey • evolution • experience • realism • relativism

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 9, No. 1, 5-32 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499609103545


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