"Dell Hymes's edited collection of essays, originally published in 1972, brought together a host of leading voices in anthropology passionate about the need to "reinvent" the discipline in which they were all involved. Having determined that the scientific approach fostered by anthropologists earlier in the century disavowed the subjectivity inherent in observation, Hymes and his colleagues called for a more reflexive approach to ethnography. They also sought a solution to the fragmentation that they felt was splintering their field and proposed a progressive political awareness that embraced a liberatory rather than a materialistic end. Knowing that there was no single institutional structure or formulated doctrine the could foster this, they looked within their discipline for answers. Their call to arms: to keep attention focused on the fundamental questions."--Jacket.