Heonik Kwon, "Perspectivism in Social Anthropology", contributed by Grant Jun Otsuki, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 20 August 2019, accessed 4 December 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/perspectivism-social-anthropology-0
Critical Commentary
Kwon critiques received forms of anthropological "perspectivism" (i.e. cultural relativism) by using reflections on the Perspectivist Movement in Western Art at the turn of the 20th century, Marilyn Strathern's notion of the "dividual" within a Melanesian system of exchange, and relates it to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's influential discussions of Amerindian perspectivism. Kwon argues perspectivism in anthropology to advocate "the relativity of space in experience, not necessarily relativism of spatial experience." (61)