The Invention of Culture, one of the most important works in symbolic anthropology in recent years, argues that culture is not a given that shapes the lives of the people who share it. Rather, it is people who shape their culture by constantly manipulating conventional symbols taken from a variety of everchanging codes to create new meanings. Wagner sees culture arising from the dialectic between the individual and the social world; his analysis is situated in the relation between invention and convention, innovation and control, meaning and context. Finally, the author points out that the symbolization processes that generate the construction of meaning in culture are the same as those that anthropologists use to "invent" the cultures they study.
- ISBN10 022642331X
- ISBN13 9780226423319
- Publish Date 21 November 2016 (first published 1 January 1975)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint University of Chicago Press
- Format eBook
- Pages 204
- Language English