This book focuses on anthropology's ambition for comprehensiveness and its interdisciplinary nature. It consists of concise essays, each around 2,500 words, in which contributors examine how concepts traditionally linked to philosophy or other disciplines are interpreted and applied within anthropology. Each contributor selects a personally inspiring concept and illustrates its relevance to anthropology, showcasing how it takes on new meaning within an anthropological framework. These essays vary in style and content, allowing contributors to discuss the history of the concept’s usage, provide an ethnographic illustration of the concept, or offer an analytical, comparative or theoretical exposition of the concept as deployed anthropologically. A common theme across all entries is the exploration of anthropological disciplinarity — or 'anti-disciplinarity' — highlighting its intellectual flexibility and genre-blurring practices, in an effort to approach that expansiveness necessary to do justice to the complexity of human existence.

Nigel Rapport is Emeritus Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at the University of St Andrews, UK.