Towards a pragmatist anthropology: Objectivity, relativism, ethnocentrism, and intropathy

Abstract

In this article, I discuss central concerns that have run throughout the history of anthropology since the beginning of the twentieth century, culminating in the recent ontological turn. These are relativism, incommensurability, ethnocentrism, and what I call intropathy. I also explore how the epistemic principles of ‘objectivity’ and ‘relativism’ share the same representationalist foundations, and argue how the ontological turn, despite the claims of its proponents, still reproduces some representationalist ideals of inquiry. Based mainly on the ideas of Richard Rorty, I propose a fully antirepresentationalist, antiessentialist alternative for anthropology that effectively avoids the traps of traditional epistemology and thus disengages the very terms that engender the relativism/objectivism dichotomy.