Abstract

SAHLINS, Marshall. O "pessimismo sentimental" e a experiência etnográfica: por que a cultura não é um "objeto" em via de extinção (parte I). Mana [online]. 1997, vol.3, n.1, pp. 41-73. ISSN 0104-9313.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-93131997000100002.

This article (published in two parts) examines and refutes critiques of the concept of culture. The post-modernist identification of "culture" with colonialism and imperialism is a false diagnosis: marked by its reaction to Enlightenment universalism, the historico-idelogical context within which the idea of culture took shape indicates the opposite. In turn, anxieties over the imminent end of human cultural variety are revealed to be foundless: globalisation and others capitalist phenomena, far from imposing a monotonous hegemony on the planet, have generated a historically unprecedent diversity of cultural forms and contents.