Editing Cultural anthropology (section)

===The post-modern turn===
In the late 1980s and 1990s authors such as [[James Clifford (historian)|James Clifford]] pondered ethnographic authority, in particular how and why anthropological knowledge was possible and authoritative. They were reflecting trends in research and discourse initiated by feminists in the academy, although they excused themselves from commenting specifically on those pioneering critics.<ref>Clifford, James and George E. Marcus (1986) ''Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography''. Berkeley: University of California Press.</ref> Nevertheless, key aspects of feminist theory and methods became ''de rigueur'' as part of the 'post-modern moment' in anthropology: Ethnographies became more interpretative and reflexive,<ref name="Janiewski2005p200">Dolores Janiewski, Lois W. Banner (2005) ''Reading Benedict / Reading Mead: Feminism, Race, and Imperial Visions'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=-rUHcVdEuIkC&pg=PA200 p.200] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221215161535/https://books.google.com/books?id=-rUHcVdEuIkC&pg=PA200 |date=2022-12-15 }} quotation: {{quotation|Within anthropology's "two cultures"—the positivist/objectivist style of comparative anthropology versus a reflexive/interpretative anthropology—Mead has been characterized as a "humanist" heir to Franz Boas's historical particularism—hence, associated with the practices of interpretation and reflexivity [...]}}</ref> explicitly addressing the author's methodology; cultural, gendered, and racial positioning; and their influence on the ethnographic analysis. This was part of a more general trend of [[postmodernism]] that was popular contemporaneously.<ref>Gellner, Ernest (1992) Postmodernism, Reason, and Religion. London/New York: Routledge. pp. 26–50</ref> Currently anthropologists pay attention to a wide variety of issues pertaining to the contemporary world, including [[globalization]], [[medicine]] and [[biotechnology]], [[indigenous rights]], [[virtual communities]], and the anthropology of [[industrial society|industrialized societies]].