An Anthropologist on Sacks : Seven Paradoxical Lessons from Neurology to Anthropology

This book traces the implicit methodological and epistemic alliances of Oliver Sacks’ work with the disciplinary foundations of a seemingly unrelated area: that of sociocultural anthropology. This is especially important at a time when interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work has been gradually becoming the canon; it is even more so in an era increasingly dominated by automated and artificial intellectual stimulation, because the virtues celebrated throughout his work defend a profoundly humanist stance in science, medicine, education and, not least, as this book argues, anthropology. Written after a three-year period of systematic research, the book uncovers the unnoticed similarities between neurological and ethnographic pursuits and offers the reader fresh anthropological readings through the fascinating tales of a great thinker. It puts emphasis on the unique prose developed by Sacks to communicate his research findings and on the participatory techniques he employed long before these became widespread in the humanities and social sciences.