The Invention of Culture

In anthropology, a field that is known for its critical edge and intellectual agility, few books manage to maintain both historical value and contemporary relevance. Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture, originally published in 1975, is one.

Wagner breaks new ground by arguing that culture arises from the dialectic between the individual and the social world. Rooting his analy...

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In anthropology, a field that is known for its critical edge and intellectual agility, few books manage to maintain both historical value and contemporary relevance. Roy Wagner's The Invention of Culture, originally published in 1975, is one.

Wagner breaks new ground by arguing that culture arises from the dialectic between the individual and the social world. Rooting his analysis in the relationships between invention and convention, innovation and control, and meaning and context, he builds a theory that insists on the importance of creativity, placing people-as-inventors at the heart of the process that creates culture. In an elegant twist, he shows that this very process ultimately produces the discipline of anthropology itself.

Tim Ingold’s foreword to the new edition captures the exhilaration of Wagner’s book while showing how the reader can journey through it and arrive safely—though transformed—on the other side.

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Assumption of Culture 12
The idea of culture, 12
Making culture visible, 14
The invention of culture, 17
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Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Assumption of Culture 12
The idea of culture, 12
Making culture visible, 14
The invention of culture, 17
Chapter 2 Culture as Creativity 22
Fieldwork is work in the field, 22
The ambiguity of "culture," 24
The wax museum, 28
"Road belong culture," 30
Chapter 3 The Power of Invention 34
Invention is culture, 34 Control, 37
The necessity of invention, 43
The magic of advertising, 49
Chapter 4 The Invention of Self 56
An important message for you
about the makers of time, 56
Learning personality, 60 On "doing your own thing":
The world of immanent humanity, 65
Learning humanity, 70
Chapter 5 The Invention of Society 76
Cultural "change":
Social convention as inventive flow, 76
The invention of language, 77
The invention of society, 83
The rise of civilizations, 90
Chapter 6 The Invention of Anthropology 95
The allegory of man, 95
Controlling culture, 99
Controlling nature, 102
The end of synthetic anthropology, 106
Index 112
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