ABSTRACT
Why has theory formation about the nature of human action largely ignored anthropological studies of non-Western cultures? This chapter considers one possible answer to this question: the problems taken up for scrutiny are invariant across cultures; therefore, anthropology has little to contribute. But there is a second, more interesting answer: the themes addressed by action theorists are the basic intuitions of one specific culture. To members of Western culture, it is obvious that human action exhibits some typical, species-specific properties such as being intentional, goal-directed or rational. This answer has a disturbing implication: theorists have confused a culture-specific mode of acting with human action in general. The chapter examines the plausibility of this claim by looking into the issue of action-knowledge. Within Western intellectual traditions, ‘action-knowledge’ has predominantly come to mean knowledge about actions. Turning to Indian culture, the chapter argues that action-knowledge is in fact distinct from theoretical knowledge; the process of acquiring this knowledge involves mimetic learning through exemplars; in this process, stories serve as the units of learning.
