Anthropology as Interpretive Quest [and Comments and Reply]

The symbolic anthropology that is increasingly ascendant in our discipline takes the study of cultures to be preeminently an interpretive quest. Although finding much of deep value in it, I argue that our task goes well beyond interpreting cultural meaning and that interpretation itself is fraught with difficulties, some pe: haps ultimately intractable. I suggest hat views of culture as col lective phenomena need to be qualified by a view of knowledge a distributed and controlled-that we need to ask who creates and defines cultural meanings, and to what ends. I further suggest ha cultures as texts allow alternative readings and that, with our pre dilection for the exotic, we may read cultural metaphors too deeply. If symbolic anthropology is to make a lasting contribution, it will have to be situated within a wider theory of society, and cultural meanings will have to be more clearly connected to the real humans who live out their lives through them.