An Anthropological Toolkit: 60 Concepts for Anthropological Theory and Ethnographic Analysis

David Zeitlyn 2022. An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts. Berghahn Books.

An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts is a short guide to sixty theoretical concepts for anthropological and ethnographic analysis. Rather than advocating a single school of anthropological theory, the book offers concepts that researchers, students and teachers can use in combination when making sense of ethnographic material. The toolkit includes affordance, boundary objects, emic and etic, controlled equivocation, incommensurability, paraethnography, positioning theory, representation, anthropological translation, wicked problems and many others. This represents an eclectic, non-doctrinaire approach to social theory (whether formally 'anthropological' or 'sociological'). This page collates reviews and discussions of the book.

Read the book or buy the book

An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts, Berghahn Books, 2022

Available as Paperback - Ebook - Hardback
Berghahn Books' publisher page, contents and excerpt
Amazon USA (Kindle/print)
or Amazon UK (Kindle/print)
Information is also in Oxford Research Archive (bibliographic record only)

Explore the 60 concepts online

Here is an interactive map of the concepts in An Anthropological Toolkit
This shows the connections between the sixty concepts for anthropological theory and ethnographic analysis.

Some less familiar concepts to explore

Topics explored in the toolkit include:

Controlled equivocation - Hesse nets (Hessenet) - Isolarion - Paraethnography - Stochastic Variation

A Full Alphabetical List of the 60 Concepts

  1. Affordance
  2. Agnosia
  3. Aporia
  4. Archaeology
  5. Argumentation theory
  6. Axonometric projection
  7. Autopoiesis
  8. Bifocal ethnography
  9. Blueprints
  10. Boundary objects
  11. Cabling
  12. Catachresis
  13. Chronotopes
  14. Collage montage
  15. Colligation
  16. Commitment
  17. Dialetheism
  18. Ekphrasis
  19. Emic etic
  20. Epistemography
  21. Epiphany
  22. Equifinality
  23. Equivocation
  24. Essentially contested concepts
  25. Exaptation
  26. Exemplar
  27. Faithfulness
  28. Figuration
  29. Finitism
  30. Forbearing
  31. Hapax
  32. Hesse nets
  33. Incommensurability
  34. Infirming
  35. Instauration
  36. Ironic detachment
  37. Irrealism
  38. Isolarion
  39. Life writing
  40. Mosaic
  41. Non-ergodic
  42. Ostension
  43. Palimpsest memory
  44. Paraethnography
  45. Partiality
  46. Pattern language
  47. Positioning theory
  48. Prosopography
  49. Repleteness
  50. Representation - nonrepresentation
  51. Representational force
  52. Sgraffito
  53. Stochastic variation
  54. Synaesthesia
  55. Teleoanalysis
  56. Things
  57. Translation
  58. Vagueness
  59. Vignettes
  60. Wicked problems

Publishers webpage for online ordering: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/ZeitlynAnthropological

Media discussions

My Youtube summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs3LLudEFT4l

An interview about "Anthropological Toolkit" on the "New Books Network" podcast 30 June 2024 Gene-George Earle https://newbooksnetwork.com/an-anthropological-toolkit

Anthropotamus - Anthropology Podcast 15 Oct 2022 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-anthropological-toolkit/id1574824932?i=1000582766974

Recording of the Book Launch at the RAI 5 Dec 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvmW0zo8p7Yl

Reviews

Delouis, Anne Friederike. 2025. In Ethnologie française 55 (3): 224-226. Also online at https://shs.cairn.info/revue-ethnologie-francaise-2025-3-page-224?lang=fr.
Key quote: "Avec ses 60 concepts, ce petit livre offre aux étudiants et doctorants une source d’inspiration pour réfléchir à leur positionnement sur le terrain, à la méthode d’analyse de leurs données et aux façons de restituer leurs résultats. Mais les chercheurs confirmés y trouveront aussi des ressources précieuses et des concepts sans doute neufs pour enrichir leur propre boîte à outils."

Henig, David 2025 In Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 33(1), 130-132
Key quote: "The book's pocket size and relatively short length are deceptive, given what it actually offers. At one level, it deals with the fundamental question of anthropological research, that of the relationship between ethnography and theory. Its central preoccupation lies with the question of how to write about ethnographically-grounded anthropological theory without arguing for and reducing it to a single specific approach (p. 7). But it is also a practical book (hence 'the toolkit' in the title). It offers sixty theoretical concepts and numerous hacks for how to deal with the messiness, inconsistency, vagueness, and indeterminacy that are part and parcel of any ethnographic situation or material, and how to connect ethnography with wider theoretical issues. At another level, to paraphrase J. L. Austin, this is a book about how to do (anthropological) things with concepts, and about having fun with ideas."

April 2025 Peter Metcalf in JRAI.
Key quote: "Instead of inventing neologisms, {Zeitlyn} scours an impressive range of literature in the humanities and social sciences to find technical terms that can be put to good use in anthropology." p628

May 2023 CHOICE connect: A publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries https://www.choice360.org/choice-pick/the-top-75-community-college-titles-may-2023-edition/l

June 2023 Kate Sieck on the AAA Anthropology Book Forum Link Key quotes: "David Zeitlyn’s An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts is the focused-yet-broad- ranging piece that is keenly needed by the discipline right now. In a tight 138 pages, Zeitlyn stays true to the title, providing a short overview of sixty concepts that define anthropological thinking and praxis." and "the book is a timely offering for elevating and enhancing the value of anthropological thinking, and enabling practitioners to re-engage with the depth of the discipline. Highly recommended."

2023 Glenn Bowman in Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 32(2): 140-141 Link This asks what help the book might be for applied anthropologists, a question that Sieck's review answers!

Teaching anthropological theory with the Toolkit Free classroom resources and suggestions for using An Anthropological Toolkit to teach anthropological theory and ethnographic analysis.