The Possibility of Anthropological Fideism: An Essay on Symbol, Interpretation and Enigmas in Cross-Cultural Inquiries

In this book, D. Z. Zhong establishes a methodological principle for cross-cultural research, called anthropological fideism. While anthropologists take for granted that natives don’t really believe the unintelligible or inexplicable things they say, and what they say should express a deeper social meaning, Zhong contends that if we have a translation manual that can interpret a foreign language, and if natives are asserting honestly, then what natives say still express natives’ belief, no matter how absurd it seems. His anthropological fideism entails that in fact we can, and indeed we should, happily live with others’ differences while taking them literal.