Description

Book Synopsis

Beyond Description brings anthropologists and other social scientists together to examine the problem of explanation. What is an explanation? What can it add? What makes it authoritative, clarifying, or misleading? Whom does it serve and how is it produced? These questions lie at the heart of recent public crises of confidence in expertise, political representation, and classic liberal visions of whom we can rely on for true and trustworthy accounts. In a world beset by events and processes that seem to defy expert predictions of their impossibility, and in which post-hoc accounts can often feel more like rationalizations than explanations, competing voices vie for public presence and seek to silence one another. Anthropology and the social sciences face such questions too, making contemporary explanatory practice both an empirical and a reflexive challenge.

By combining ethnographic studies of practices of explanation in a range of contemporary political

Beyond Description

    Product form

    A Hardback by Paolo Heywood, Matei Candea

    £97.20

    Includes FREE delivery

    RRP £108.00 – you save £10.80 (10%)

    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Tue 20 Oct 2026.

    1 in stock

      Trusted by thousands of customers. See 2,385+ Customer Reviews

      View other formats and editions of Beyond Description by Paolo Heywood

      Book details

      Publisher Cornell University Press
      Published 15 December 2023
      ISBN-13 9781501771569
      978-1501771569
      ISBN-10 1501771566
      Also in:
      Philosophy: epistemology and theory of knowledge Social and cultural anthropology Social theory

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      Beyond Description brings anthropologists and other social scientists together to examine the problem of explanation. What is an explanation? What can it add? What makes it authoritative, clarifying, or misleading? Whom does it serve and how is it produced? These questions lie at the heart of recent public crises of confidence in expertise, political representation, and classic liberal visions of whom we can rely on for true and trustworthy accounts. In a world beset by events and processes that seem to defy expert predictions of their impossibility, and in which post-hoc accounts can often feel more like rationalizations than explanations, competing voices vie for public presence and seek to silence one another. Anthropology and the social sciences face such questions too, making contemporary explanatory practice both an empirical and a reflexive challenge.

      By combining ethnographic studies of practices of explanation in a range of contemporary political

      Recently viewed products

      © 2026 Book Curl

        • American Express
        • Apple Pay
        • Diners Club
        • Discover
        • Google Pay
        • Maestro
        • Mastercard
        • PayPal
        • Shop Pay
        • Union Pay
        • Visa

        Login

        Forgot your password?

        Don't have an account yet?
        Create account