Anthropology is both outside of history and within it. Histories of
anthropology tend to summarise particular authors' intellectual
differences; but, as Marc Augé argues in this book, first published in
English in 1982, these differences may in fact be intrinsically derived
from intellectual divisions within anthropology as obvious as they are
irreconcilable. Augé identifies, in contemporary debates in French
anthropology, the paths that perhaps allow us to transcend these
oppositions. On doing so, he explores and clarifies the relationship
that anthropology enjoys with history, on the intellectual plane, and
with politics, on the historical plane. His argument is stimulating and
challenging, and will interest all social anthropologists and
sociologists concerned with the theoretical foundations of their
disciplines, as well as demonstrating to historians and political
scientists what anthropology has to offer them.