Limits to Cultural Anthropology?

Jack Kelso (kelso@SPOT.COLORADO.EDU)
Mon, 10 Apr 1995 15:56:50 -0700

I want to say thank you for those of you that responded to my query about
anthropology's main contribution and I'm still interested in more if the
spirit should move any who did not respond. Flushed by your generous
response I would like to ask one more (just one more, I promise). Would
you say the following statement is true, false, or somewhere in between?

Cultural anthropology appears to have no boundaries whatever because
cultural anthropologists lack any common agreement on what they do and or
even on what they mean by culture -- their principle subject matter domain
-- and so therefore the field has expanded with no end in sight and
anything and everything goes. Cultural anthropologists lack for all
practical purposes any criteria for deciding that some line of inquiry lies
outside the limits of their subject matter.

Jack