By Pierre Bonte (Writer), Michael Izard (Writer), María del Mar LLinares García (Translator)
Seeking the unity of man in the diversity of his works is an old attempt that for little more than a century has defined the program of a particular science. Under the various names that ethnography, ethnology, anthropology receives, we can define it as an original mode of knowledge (Lévi-Strauss). This allows us to understand why the anthropological approach today is not limited to the long-called primitive societies, but also applies to the domain of the historical, as well as to the social and cultural problems of the contemporary world. But in addition, to present anthropology to a very wide and general audience, it was necessary to include both the how and the what of its knowledge. In this dictionary we present the main concepts of anthropology, the objects, domains and methods of analysis and research that it has given itself, the theories that mark its development, the main figures that illustrate it and, finally, the elements of an ethnographic synthesis that corresponds to large cultural areas of the world.