Mr Opinion-

Symbolic Anthropology looks interesting as you've alluded...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_anthropology

Seems to dovetail well with your well known search for meaning perhaps...

Thanks for bringing Geertz up Mr Opinion...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Geertz

According to Clifford Geertz, "[b]elieving, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning".[1] In theory, symbolic anthropology assumes that culture lies within the basis of the individuals’ interpretation of their surrounding environment, and that it does not in fact exist beyond the individuals themselves. Furthermore, the meaning assigned to people’s behavior is molded by their culturally established symbols.

I'm into linoleum tiles myself. Is that the same Clifford who used to appear on the telly with Mr Snooty the glove puppet? He was so cute and cuddly with his squeaky little voice, Mr Snooty that is, not Clifford.

ttbn, the Pope said "Stop it, or you'll go blind!"

Misopinionated,

Anthropologists: I got a lot out of Geertz's 'Agricultural Involution' forty-odd years ago. But I really do admire the works of Oscar Lewis, John U. Ogbu, W.E.H. Stanner and the Berndts; the late Napoleon Chagnon too, he really stuck his neck out. Lewis Morgan and Sir J. G. Frazer amongst the earlier pioneers. Fascinating material.

I think Oscar Lewis mis-titled his major theories, about the 'Culture of Poverty' - I would have called it the 'Culture of Marginalisation'. He was Abraham Maslow's brother-in-law, they probably learnt a lot from each other. Lewis fell foul of Castro in Cuba (and so did his theory) - no, it didn't disappear with socialism: it's far harder to replace than Lewis thought - in other words, it can morph into different sorts of cultural marginalisation in different sorts of societies, depending on the malleability of social and economic factors.

But that's another story.

Joe

Never run across John U. Ogbu.

Oscar Lewis of course from reading urban sociology.

Chagnon I studied his film on the Yanomamo when reading visual anthropology.

Stanner I remember because I used one of his books to answer an exam question on liminal phases in Aboriginal religious rites.

All memories today. I've drifted into environmental sociology which I see as being more relevant than traditional studies like kinship are today.

My focus is researching what scientists and scholars have to say on related topics. I particularly like the idea of using a Big History approach (which is really just another name for anthropology.)

Misop,

Educational anthropology, esp. urban minority education.

Try this Ogbu (and Simons) article:

http://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1525/aeq.1998.29.2.155

Disciples of Ogbu (he died in 2003) include Margaret Gibson, Elisabeth Matute-Bianchi, Suarez-Orozco ...... brilliant: if I had my time over, i would be applying his theories to Indigenous education here, but that's someone else's job now.

Joe

There is hope but it requires out-breeding on a major scale !