ABSTRACT
IN the Introduction we have dealt with some of the principles that guided us in the selection of the materials that go to make up this volume. The resulting collection thus reflects, at least implicitly and in part, our common point of view about the nature and meaning of theory in anthropology. We would like now to enlarge these views and to make them more explicit, not only because they have been responsible for determining the kind of book this is, but because we have not found anywhere in our reading a set of statements which lay out in fairly concise fashion what we take to be the character and role of theory in anthropology. On the contrary, the search has tended to confirm our view that anthropologists use the term theory in a great variety of ways-almost whimsically-sometimes as a synonym for a concept, or a synonym for an inductive generalization or for a model (often itself a term used in a number of different ways), sometimes merely to lend tone or dignity to the obvious.
