Author: João Pina-Cabral

At the same time as, in Paris, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl experimented with the concept of “participation,” at Harvard, William James undertook a parallel trajectory by taking recourse to the notion of “the vague.” For him, vagueness described the fact that rea…

In the present conjuncture, Brazilian social anthropologists are facing a major challenge to their work. I suggest that this happens because of anthropology’s central dependence on the ethnographic method. The ethnographer’s direct contact with the peo…