Notes on the debate

Weiner 1996

• Ingold/Group introduction

• Identifies why this debate is so difficult to resolve

‘Weak’ Definition

• Morphy/Coote

•  Something is cross-cultural if it is useful to the anthropologist when studying other cultures 

• It does not require that the people being studied have a word for "aesthetics"

‘Strong’ definition

• Overing/Gow

•  Understand it to mean that the category is explicitly recognised as such in other cultures

Conclusion

• The two sides are not directly contradicting each other

• The the debate is partly a definitional dispute rather than one of theory

• The debate is most productively read not as one side winning, but as revealing two legitimate but distinct questions about what anthropological concepts are for.