anthropology of experience

is an anthropological approach grounded not in structuralism (i.e. Societal structures) but in hermeneutics (i.e. Experience as it is 'lived through').

The formulation of an anthropology of experience belonged to Victor Turner. He wrote independently on the topic in 1982 and most of us view it as a continuation of his lifelong 'rebellion against structural-functional orthodoxy, with its closed static model of social systems' (Babcock 1984:462). We also note his recognition in the late 1970s that anthropology was 'withering on the structuralist vine,' although he acknowledged then that the 'neo-Kantian storm [had] almost abated.' For Turner, however, the immediate inspiration for an anthropology of experience derived from the German thinker Wilhelm Dilthey ( 1833191 1 ) and hIs concept of an experience, Erlebnis, or what has been 'lived through.' Indeed, the revitalizing message that Dilthey offered presents us with a new anthropological ancestor, in the tradition of the human sciences and hermeneutics, as opposed to the more familiar ancestral line of Emile Durkheim, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, and the many later varieties of French and British structuralism. (Turner 'anth of experience' 3-4) (1986)

anthropology of experience, n.Definitions

anthropology of experience