Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge

This provocative new study one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists proposes that an understanding of cognitive science enriches, rather than threatens, the work of social scientists. Maurice Bloch argues for a naturalist approach to social and cultural anthropology, introducing developments in cognitive sciences such as psychology and neurology and exploring the relevance of these developments for central anthropological concerns: the person or the self, cosmology, kinship, memory and globalisation. Opening with an exploration of the history of anthropology, Bloch shows why and how naturalist approaches were abandoned and argues that these once valid reasons are no longer relevant. Bloch then shows how such subjects as the self, memory and the conceptualisation of time benefit from being simultaneously approached with the tools of social and cognitive science. Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge will stimulate fresh debate among scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines.

1. Why social scientists should not avoid cognitive issues; 2. Innateness and social scientists' fears; 3. How anthropology abandoned a naturalist epistemology; 4. The nature/culture wars; 5. Time and the anthropologists; 6. Reconciling social science and cognitive science notions of the 'self'; 7. What goes without saying; 8. Memory.

In this provocative new study the distinguished anthropologist Maurice Bloch argues for a return to a naturalist approach to social and cultural anthropology, proposing that subjects such as the self, kinship, memory and globalisation benefit from being simultaneously approached with the tools of social and cognitive science.

Maurice Bloch, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, is one of the world's leading anthropologists. He has held a number of academic positions at universities around the world and is currently an associate member of the Institut Jean Nicod of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris engaged in an interdisciplinary research project on comparative epistemics funded by the European Science Foundation. He has published widely on his research interests and his work has been translated into twelve languages. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1990.