ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an overview of important currents of thought in social and cultural anthropology from the 19th century to the present. It focuses on developments in British, and to a lesser extent, American and French anthropological traditions. The book demonstrates the progressive interweaving of these traditions over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries. It traces two theoretical paradigms that, at different moments and with different conceptual tools and implications, sought to recapture the importance of individual agency: transactionalism and practice theory. The book explores a relatively recent turn to the study of cognition in anthropology, which self-consciously tries to reverse Durkheim's original decision to split sociological from psychological and biological questions. It seeks to challenge the enduring distaste of sociocultural anthropologists for psychological and experimental explanations of human behaviour.
