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Articulating Experience

University of California, Los Angeles, USA jthroop{at}ucla.edu

This article engages in critical dialogue with what appears to be an emerging fin de siècle concern with the unexamined theoretical usage of the concept of `experience' in anthropology. The article begins with a brief review of the work of a number of scholars who share a growing dissatisfaction with the problem of experience in contemporary anthropological and social scientific writings. In order to evaluate and situate these recent critical perspectives, the article then shifts to explore in greater detail the writings of two anthropologists who have significantly contributed to contemporary anthropological theorizing of experience: Victor Turner and Clifford Geertz. Finally, in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a `return to experience' in anthropological theorizing and research, the article concludes by outlining a `complemental' model of experience. Drawing from insights into the temporal organization of experience found in the phenomenological writings of William James, Edmund Husserl, and Alfred Schutz this model attempts to bridge what some scholars believe to be a controversial gap between `granular' and `coherence' theories of experience that permeate many of the anthropological (and philosophical) discussions of the topic.

Key Words: anthropological theory • experience • phenomenology • temporality

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 3, No. 2, 219-241 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499603003002006


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