There is an inherently reflexive dilemma of an anthropological construction of the anthropological construction of reality, of the anthropology of knowledge about the anthropology of knowledge. We cannot be too sure where our own theoretical construction of anthropology ends and the presupposed anthropological construction of reality actually begins. We begin by noting that this very kind of dilemma, of the anthropological reflexivity of our knowledge about our selves and our world, is inherent and inescapable to both our condition and our knowledge. We are human because we understand ourselves thus, and our humanness is anthropological constructed in such understanding.

Should we need to escape the horns of this dilemma of our anthropological reflexivity? The fact of this dilemma seems to be a relatively recent discovery in the march of anthropological knowledge--though it was implicit in almost everything anthropologist did and thought from the very beginning. We must learn how to live in the world of our own making, in the contradictions inherent in it, without allowing those contradictions to take over. Many believe that we cannot hope to have a genuine science of anthropology within such contradictions, that a genuine, logical science of anthropology must be necessarily a non-contradictory science. But how can we have a non-contradictory understanding of something that seems inherently contradictory. If it means that we can never hope to have a non-subjective, totally objective"science of anthropology, what some would dub as etic, then so be it, but this does not thereby preclude the other possibility of building a subjective science, one that is emic, that is, by definition, a science of human subjectivity. It must be genuinely asked why "the emic enema" should be such a threat to the world order of so many anthropologists--except as a purgative for their intellectual hang-ups.

In this regard, a theory of the anthropological construction of reality is both consistent and coherent in making sense of the contradictions that plague general anthropology in search for a covering law or a genuine scientific identity. It is both comprehensive and systematic because it explains a wide diversity of anthropological phenomena within a unified theoretical framework, yet without the oversimplification and reductionism that such theoretical unification usually entails. It is productive both because it specifies directions in which to seek solutions to specific problems, and also points to specific methods and empirical procedures for doing so. But there is no need to promote the sale of a new formula or theory for intellectual consumption by professional anthropologists. It must succeed or fail by its own merits, or not at all.

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The anthropology of knowledge can be centrally characterized by several elements. First, the boundaries of the anthropology of knowledge are constituted anthropologically by the boundaries of human knowledge itself. We learn about these boundaries by the empirical exploration of what we do not know. Secondly, these boundaries are constituted internally in part by the representational constraints that the facticity of our own knowing places upon our knowledge of the world--we can indirectly infer these constraints, but we cannot step directly beyond them. In other words, our only anthropological windows upon the world constitute themselves our principle "anthropological veil" that we must penetrate. The fact and facticity of this veil is normally transparent and invisible to our consciousness. The reflexive role of an anthropology of knowledge is to bring this transparency and its distortions into recognition. Third, the status of anthropological knowledge is situated within a all encompassing hierarchy of determinations, which constrains all our scientific understanding of the natural world, and must always be located within this hierarchy. Fourth, anthropological knowledge is highly susceptible to certain informal fallacies of understanding, namely reification, abstraction, reductionism and anthropomorphization, which constitute the basis of central biases in relation to which it becomes a central project of anthropological knowledge to liberate itself of its own "centrisms." These fallacies stem from the mythological substrate that characterizes all human knowledge as symbolic construction, and it is the project of a science of the anthropology of knowledge to demythologize its own knowledge in the understanding of its principle object of inquiry, namely itself.

It is in regard to these anthropological horizons of our knowledge that we can speak of the "anthropological construction of reality" as a central theoretical framework for the anthropology of knowledge. Where before we think in terms of "structures," if we substitute the notion of "constructions" we have a better sense both of their theoretical facticity of the knowledge situated in our world, as well as of the basic anthropological processes which underlie all knowledge in and about the world. It is in this universal facticity of human knowledge that we find the common basis of our being in the world. The anthropological construction of reality holds that all human knowledge is perforce anthropologically "situated" knowledge and thus is relative to the contexts of its situatedness in the world. Another way of putting this is that all human experience is intrinsically, organically, cultural experience (if by culture we include language, Mind, society, etc.) and as such has been anthropologically constructed in those special processes in which humankind has made itself in the world.

The anthropological construction of reality involves several dialectically interrelated and dynamic processes upon several levels of human reality. We can refer to organic process, psychological process, cultural and social process, and "trans-culturative" processes. These processes combine in a holistic manner to constitute what can be considered a complex dialectic of mutual, dynamic constraint.

The anthropology of knowledge is therefore interested in the differential distribution of knowledge in the world which is the result of these anthropological processes, as well as in the intrinsic constraints and extrinsic reasons for this differential distribution. It also strategically relocates the subjective, phenomenologically and psychologically constituted experience of the individual human being, as the principle anthropological knower, or ego, in the center of its theoretical framework, as well as a place for biography, as the principle basis for the temporaneity ordered knowledge of the individual in the world, and, in a broader context, social history, in anthropological theory. We must deal, in the anthropological construction of reality, therefore, with the related problem of the psychological and cultural constructions of reality, and their interplay in anthropological processes.

The anthropological processes can be divided analytically in their moment of constructive realization into three phases which correspond to the human externalization into the world, the objectification and reification of these externalized constructions, and then the subsequent internalization and subjectivation of these constructions. Language figures centrally in this entire process, and lies at the center of the anthropological construction of reality. The organic foundation of language allows for the embodiment of knowledge via language, and also for the linguistic disembodiment of organic experience in the world. These phases of anthropological process are analytically important in describing the fundamental dynamics of its basic dialectical patterning between mind and body and nature and culture.

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The anthropology of knowledge must have a philosophical foundation--and the foundation constitutes the anthropological basis for philosophical knowledge. Philosophy takes form around the dialectics between rationalism and relativism, which doctrine it has most denied. Anthropological knowledge is situated in and by its intrinsic relativity. We can refer to anthropological relativity of knowledge as the foundation for the various forms of relativity that we recognize. The problematic paradox presented by a doctrine of relativism centers around its refutation of the received anthropological notion of "the psychic unity of humankind", and the positing of a priori, "universal" structures of Mind, language, culture, society, truth, etc. Relativism is not inherently inimical to notions of universality, but only to notions about their a priori, absolute and unchanging character.

The doctrine of relativism, tied to the relational basis of human knowledge in the world, and to a doctrine about the holistic character of human reality, has long constituted a central tenet of anthropological knowledge. It is on the basis of this refined relativism that we can find a philosophical premises for anthropological knowledge and an anthropological premises for philosophical knowledge. We can find the reason for anthropology to be rooted in both a critical skepticism toward received truths to reality, as well as in what can be referred to as the human imagination which makes it possible to realize alternative possibilities and human difference in the world. This anthropological imagination is shared by all human beings in the world, no matter how it may be denied, and is what makes of all people part time anthropologists. Anthropologists seek a special sort of identity in the world--the kind of Identity that underlies and constitutes the basis for human differences. This quest for knowledge is guided by the fact that some differences seem to make more of a Difference than others. Humans delight and celebrate the possibilities that such differences make in their world.

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There is a real and fundamental difference between the Two Cultures of Academia--two basic orientations which, in their mutual dialectics, more often talk past one another than with one another. It is vitally important that anthropological knowledge define itself in its own terms, not in negative terms of what it is not or analogically in terms of what it should be like. Anthropology suffers a double bind by being marginally defined between the two cultures, thus a full fledged member of neither and a potential traitor to both. It is of paramount importance that anthropology come to form its own "Third Culture" that stands on its own, instead of being merely a marginal science of the exotic and esoteric.

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Anthropology as History must be regarded as an important dimension of its general problematic. The problem of history always serves to compound our anthropological answers--whether this is Galton's problem or the archaeological problem of "reconstruction" or the cultural problem of seeing into the well of time that we call tradition. Our science of anthropology would try to define itself a-chronically, as if time did not interfere to complicate the basic patternings and sense of our human reality. Anthropology and History share a basic relationship with one another in that History deals with change and differences in time, where as Anthropology deals with the equivalencies of the same phenomena across space. But time invites change and change entails complexity. We superimpose evolutionary frameworks as a substitute for the solution to the problem of History, but these frameworks are spurious at best in regard to the past. Anthropological History is not only natural history, but human history as well, and this sets up its own problematic dialectic that no simplistic evolutionary schema can hope to resolve. Though history is basically empirical in its orientation, it nevertheless is not nor cannot be a science because of the intrinsic inability to recover its primary phenomena of interest.

History is important because it is an inseparable part of our anthropological construction of reality--to deny a person's history is tantamount to a denial of their humanity and humanness. We share then, in the depths of our past, a common history that unites humankind as of one family. We can speak of history as human history, and as human-made history, and we infer in this all the subjectivity that comes from the phenomenology of its biographical experience. We replace structures and the laws upon which they are presumed, with the processes and practices of construction, of which History itself is a part. From a perspective of the anthropological processes of the construction of reality, history can be seen to be a study of the patternings that these processes have assumed in the past. We can thus see human history from the vantage point of several different, interrelated levels--we have biographical history and phenomenological accounts of pathways of practice, we have social and cultural history of human networks and traditions, involving institutional histories of corporate social organizations.

There is no simple solution to the problems presented by our human history. But there is recognition that the general principles underlying the study of history have their own theoretical system that is fundamentally different from the scientific study of natural phenomena.

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Despite the problematic of human history, anthropology must still address the issues presented by "Human nature". Many anthropologists bent upon turning their field of study into a positivistic science see the common sense of basing such a science upon human nature, and thus using universal laws of human nature as determinative of culture. The result has been the propagation of so many specious "just so" stories in anthropological literature that seek to explain everything from human evolution to human social organization. The social dangers in terms of its legitimization of unjust policies far outweigh their theoretical or intellectual value.

This has been the case despite the fact that from the standpoint of the anthropological construction of reality, human nature seems by definition to have been naturally underdetermined and that this indeterminancy of human nature made possible and even necessary the construction of culture in the first place. We can even go on to claim that far from nature underlying and explain culture, it is more plausible to regard culture to a great extent underlying and explaining human nature. The point is that we cannot clearly separate where nature leaves off and culture takes over, and the two have, evolutionarily speaking, growing dialectically interdependent. If we wish to propagate our own "just so" origin myths, then we must take this dialectical interdependence between our culture and our nature centrally into account. In this regard, we must see the evolutionary importance of human acquisition processes that are organically embodied and developmentally controlled.

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We can bounce to the other extreme and speak of the anthropology of Mind. The quest for the universal structure of mind that would serve as the basic template for our cultural designs is about as hopeless as the search for the sentient, conscientious and self-determining gene. There is an anthropomorphic fallacy of strong artificial intelligence that believes that, via the programming of mind we can recreate intelligent life and living sentience in machines. But unlike our biological counterparts, an anthropology of mind in the manner of Gregory Bateson remains relatively unexplored in terms of its possible theoretical implications. The conception of a universal Logos as an ordering principle of the both the cosmos and of humankind, is rooted in our rational Greek tradition. There is a sense in which science is based upon natural information theory and we can properly speak of a hierarchy of determinations controlling the design structure of natural systems. Human with their culture and their nature share inextricably in this hierarchy of determinations, but we must see a fundamental difference between the semiotic design of natural information and the symbolic design of human knowledge. We must deal with a "World View" problem that attempts to triangulate human meaning between cognition, cultural construction and our language.

From the standpoint of natural systems theory, we must consider the basic design features of human knowledge and informational systems. An anthropological theory of Mind is necessary a theory of meaning and its anthropological construction in the world. An alternative theory of relational logic with its own functional calculus is proffered as inherent to the design of human meaning systems. A relational system is one in which there are no absolute anchor points, everything within the universe of the system is defined in terms of everything else, and each thing has a dual value, of being itself, and the net sum of its relationships with the universe. We must further regard living systems, and systems of culture "as symbolic transmission" and of human mind as "symbolic processing" as formally complex and dynamic dialectical systems which are stochastically adaptive to changes in its life-world.

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Language is central in the process of the human construction of reality. it is central in the worldview problem and in the human world itself. An anthropological theory of language must take into account several fundamental questions about human language--it's dynamics of change, its structural and systemic stability, its basic social functionality, its central relationship in the "World View Problem", and the problem of acquisition. A functional-constructionist theory of language is proffered based upon a "holistic-relational" grammar.

Language change involves a maintenance of a boundary between intrinsic, endogenous changes in language, what can be referred to as linguistic drift, that occurs upon all levels of language process, and extrinsic, exogenous changes due to inter-linguistic contact. Endogenous change tends towards disambiguation of meaning as it is linguistically encoded, but leads to the formation of functional linguistic boundaries, schismogenesis and divergence of language--what can be referred to as linguistic fission. Exogenous changes tend tends to increase linguistic ambiguity, but leads to processes of language convergence and fusion. The history of language is complicated by this dialectic between internal and external sources of language change, thus any simple evolutionary framework for the origin or basis of language is bound to be superficial and probably in error except in local, limited cases. A language boundary is set up, based upon a robust profile of its net processes of change. The basic mechanism of change in either case is held to be the stylistic variation that is rooted in the inherent flexibility and tolerance for ambiguity in human language. Such flexibility is also the basis for the functional power of language in its external social contexts.

Language structure must be understood holistically as embedded in the context of its speech production. The notion of a universal, abstract deep structure of language is one that is a reified residuum of our own literacy. To the extent that language is a coherence system that depends upon a boundary with the outside world, it is seen as integrated, and to the extent that it is relatively integrated, it is holistically and relatively as separate system. We must see language structure as a dialectic between several levels--what correspond to the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic levels of its patterning and structure-- on a basic mimetic level of its signs. It is their intrinsic-extrinsic functionality which is organically encoded in the brain. At this level we can speak of a continuum between implicitly and basic, prototypical constructs of meaning, a range involving embedding and elaboration of meaning, to explicit rules of "marking" and definition which govern the differential deployment of terms and the exceptions. The second level of syntax focuses upon a sentential and internal level of sentence construction which constructively mediates between the internal and external world, and which structure tends towards the disambiguation of meaning based upon a basic relational paradigm and basic transition rules which are implicitly encoded and which guide the possible transformations available to any particular language. This sentential construction of language is situated within ongoing external social contexts that are discursively mediated. The construction of language above the level of sentences is guided by functional considerations in the adaptation and coordination of the individual in relation to the individual's life world. This is the pragmatic level in which an adaptive equilibrium and linguistic coordination is sought between linguistic and meta-linguistic levels. A large part of linguistic, discursive process involves the elicitation of internalized relational frames of meaning, their "testing" in the world, and there reevaluation in relation to the world. We can speak of language creating an "inner voice" of consciousness that is self-monitoring in relation to external speech.

The social functionality of language has to do with the mediation and legitimization of change in the world. Language is a social phenomena, and cannot be properly understood outside of its context of speech production. The power of language has to do with its relationship to social change in the world--language, at the center of our construction of reality, functions to integrate reality and to legitimate its integration. Language is the glue of our construction of reality.

In terms of the worldview problem we cannot clearly separate the centrality from language from culture and cognition. It is an interdependent system tied together upon several levels. We cannot imagine a world without language, nor can we think of a language without a world. The function of language is to serve as a glue in the symbolic construction of reality. It is the principle mechanism underlying human symbolization. Thus it encodes meaning in the mind, and precipitates meaning in the cultural world. It also refers back to itself. Language and its construction thus triangulates meaning in reality within the worldview problem, serving to situate it within its field of relative significance and salience.

Linguistic acquisition is the basic design of anthropological acquisition. We must understand the evolutionary and cultural importance in the formation of language in terms of primary acquisition of a child. In this case, we might refer to a valid principle of "ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny"--in all cases basic linguistic acquisition remains the same, except that in original acquisition, the developed linguistic structures were not yet in place. As adult language acquisition is to a child's acquisition, so also are the child acquisition and creolization process in the formation of new languages similarly related to the original acquisition of language in humankind. The study of linguistic acquisition is fundamental in understanding the biological foundation for language and its development. We have been genetically preprogrammed for linguistic acquisition.

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An anthropology of psychology is implied within such a theory of language, and provides a ground for the understanding of some of the questions about language. From the standpoint of the anthropology of knowledge, we cannot have a psychology that is not necessarily a cultural and a social psychology. And question of cultural context is the most problematic, uncontrollable and complex for an empirical science of psychology. Such an anthropological theory of psychology is rooted in a theory of meaning, and, therefore of Mind. Internal human psychology is governed by the relationship between the Mind and the brain, and the mind and the body. We have not a clear sense of what these relationships really are, of the psychological organization of the mind, or of the nature of Mind. I propose a theory of meaning that is encoded organically in the brain in terms of basic prelinguistic constructs of meaning that I refer to as mememes. I refer to a mimetic system of the brain that is implicated in human memory organization. This is enmeshed in a systemic hierarchy of the Mind, and includes several systems arranged in an ordinate manner. The linguistic and mimetic systems are interdependent, such that a great deal of meaning depends upon its linguistic encoding in order to be precipitated in consciousness. Psychological experience is inherently phenomenological process and therefore temporaneity. It is thus subjective and biographical in character. The basic symbolic linguisticality of experience entails that there is a fundamental ambiguity and paradox about it, since this linguisticality is itself phenomenological, and yet constitutes its own contradiction in its non-phenomenological constitution.

In this regard we can speak of the psychological construction of reality, as basic to the process of the internalization, subjective instantiation and embodiment, and the identification with culturally constructed forms. The systems function in an integrated fashion to produce a characteristically human sense of anthropological ego-identity--an identity that is critically situated in a world that is primarily socially and cultural constructed. Psychology is itself a theory about subjective human identity and identification, and individual and cultural psychology involve the process of subjective and strategic identification and location in the world. Such theory of identity entails theories of attribution, ascription and attitude that are fundamental in our psychological construction of reality. Psychological identity is inherent in human meaning, in that we identify some elements as significant in relation to our experiences. Some basic theories about identity are fundamental symbolic systems--mythology, religion, ideology, worldview and common sense. These theories are essential in reinforcing the psycho-social integration of human experience. This form of identity is holistic, and wholly human. Such identity and its symbolic processes of identification are complex and have many consequences for the construction of reality.

Human identification as an anthropological process in the construction of reality goes on simultaneously and dynamically upon many levels of experience.

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In regard to the psychological construction of human reality, the anthropology of abnormality becomes an important consideration. Abnormality can be thought of as a critical discrepancy in the processes of identification, such that there results a symbolic disintegration of reality. We lack a non-relative and non-arbitrary theory of normality and abnormality. We cannot properly speak of normality outside of a normative context. Yet we can speak relative abnormality from an implicitly functionalist perspective which deals with the relative integration of reality at all levels of anthropological process.

It is by comprehending abnormality that we can define the boundaries of what is anthropologically speaking to be regarded as normal. We can properly only understand abnormality then in a relative context of alternative states of what is normal. The presence of alternative states of normality relativizes what is normal, such that it is the differential and transition between such states which becomes anthropologically significant as abnormal. Transition and transformation is the main adaptive function of integration by which we understand normal as healthy. The crossing of cultural boundaries that precipitates a condition of "culture shock" is a form of anthropological abnormality.

We lack a systematic theory of group pathology and of cultural and social abnormality. We construe almost the entire phenomena of abnormal experience as psychologically based, and therefore we burden the individual almost entirely as the source of abnormal adaptation. We can infer that social pathology and cultural archosis involves states of transition and symbolic disintegration--what was referred to in relation to Vietnam as desymbolization. Such disease can become institutionalized and can serve as a support mechanism for individuals disturbed by some form of pathology or personality disorder. We can speculate that social authoritarianism and authoritarian power structures are such instances of institutionalized pathology.

There is a sense in the anthropological construction of reality that symbolic abnormality is a necessary "anti-structure" in the reinforcement of normal experience. Destruction of reality is to be seen as an antithetical and dialectical counterpart to the construction of reality.

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From this standpoint, we can redefine our conceptual construction of culture from the standpoint of symbolic boundary that is phenomenologically defined at all levels of our experience. Because it is phenomenologically experienced, we can bring the subjective self as central actor in culture, and biography as historical experience, back into focus in our conception of Culture. Boundaries are never fixed for very long--they define a complex cultural calculus that comes to rest at some central point of balance. Boundaries are flexible, permeable, and changeable. They are, in short constructed. Such cultural constructions are made in the context of a larger cultural continuum. We know ourselves in relation to differences and possibilities of others.

We must understand how basic cultural patternings and boundaries can become organically embedded and embodied in our experience in such a way as to be reflexive and construed unconsciously as an vital, inviolable part of our basic being in the world.

It is the basic boundary underlying our conception of culture that entails our anthropological science of culture shall be a basically comparative approach that seeks the identity of difference in the world.

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Given a rehabilitation of the concept of culture as not a bounded, timeless circle, but as a boundary of phenomenological process, we are led to a revision of our sense of society as not a structure but as a process of construction, a performance, a practice. Society becomes a field of human interrelationships which are symbolically mediated, and which are functionally structured in relation to the distribution between human beings and culturally defined resources. We are led to a basic form of social relativity in which our identity and our view of the world is largely defined by our social position within it. We attempt to manipulate and change our positions, but always within a larger field of unintended consequences. We are always constrained and situated within a larger context of a social field that is itself enmeshed in a dialectic between social construction and destruction. We construe our social identity and mediate our social relations in symbolic terms. We are also enmeshed in the dialectics of social identity, defined as status-role identity, and difference. Social relations are defined by the dialectics of reciprocity and relative asymmetry of relation.

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Finally, we can conclude with a reconsideration of anthropology as humanity. It offers us a view of humanity that is neither inherently good or evil, but is capable of both. Our humanity is defined by our construction of reality, and the sense of identity that we bring to this construction. We are nevertheless constrained by a human dilemma of our basic moral being, intrinsic to the very nature of our human sentience that allows us to imagine the possibility of our own evil and of the suffering of others. Whatever we do in the world, we are implicitly acting under this moral umbrella constituted by our basic humanity. We cannot escape its imperative in our any of our actions, and it is in terms of these that we shall ultimately be judged. All construction of human reality incorporates basic contradictions in the integration of reality. Anthropology as humanity has the purpose of discovering these basic contradictions and their moral calculus in any given context or event. By it, we define the reason for being of our own identity, both personally and collectively.