Editing Anthropology (section)

==== Art ====
{{main|Anthropology of art}}

One of the central problems in the anthropology of art concerns the universality of 'art' as a cultural phenomenon. Several anthropologists have noted that the Western categories of 'painting', 'sculpture', or 'literature', conceived as independent artistic activities, do not exist, or exist in a significantly different form, in most non-Western contexts.<ref>Layton, Robert. (1981) ''The Anthropology of Art''.</ref> To surmount this difficulty, anthropologists of art have focused on formal features in objects which, without exclusively being 'artistic', have certain evident 'aesthetic' qualities. Boas' ''Primitive Art'', [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]]' ''The Way of the Masks'' (1982) or Geertz's 'Art as Cultural System' (1983) are examples in this trend of transforming the anthropology of 'art' into an anthropology of culturally specific 'aesthetics'.