Cultures of scholarship

The essays collected in this volume offer a comparative perspective on scholarship across a wide range of cultures and periods, from oral instruction by Yoruba diviners in West Africa to Renaissance humanism and nineteenth-century anthropology. The contributors address three prominent issues: the relation between oral and written transmission of knowledge; the nature of contacts between European scholars and the learned persons of other societies; and Western constructions of the culture and knowledge of non-Western peoples and of the "folk" in Europe. Cultures of Scholarship will be invaluable to scholars in historical anthropology and cultural studies and to teachers and students interested in expanding the traditional content of "Great Books" courses.