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Anthropological Systems Theory | Anthropological Relativity | Symbolic Transformation | The Anthropology of Knowledge | The Cultural Construction of Reality | Ethnocultural Studies
The Anthropology of Knowledge
Alternative Anthropology is rooted in the anthropology of knowledge, which can be summarized as the study of the patterning and distribution of human knowledge across different groupings of people in time and place. The anthropology of knowledge takes into account centrally the "worldview problem" which concerns the problem of the symbolic integration of human reality, the internalized mapping of external experience, the interrelationships between cognition, language and cultural variables, and the processes of symbolization and symbolic construction of reality. The central problem of the anthropology of knowledge is referred to as the cultural construction of reality, or how human reality is artificially patterned as the consequence of cultural sharing and the interaction of social and natural variables.
The doctrine of anthropological relativity is based on the understanding that all human knowledge is filtered through the mechanisms of human psychology, cognition and behavior. Knowledge systems that are socially articulated in the world vary considerably between cultures, subcultures. We may speak of a global topography of human knowledge that has its own delineations and stratification between different knowledge systems.
Human knowledge is articulated symbolically at all levels of its integration. This understanding is the key to unlocking how the brain functions in people to produce symbolic consciousness, and how human behavior is organized systematically in culturally and psychologically coherent ways.
The links to the primary portals of this framework are found below:
