The 1980s established themselves as the decade of Cultural Critique for anthropology, and its impact has been significant and continues to be felt today. The new element this movement imposed and confirmed is the awareness that in the study of a society, every approach is partial, and therefore the knowledge that emerges about each specific 'world' is inevitably partial as well.

Based on this belief, the limitation of the scope of the approach as well as the scale of the perspective emphasized the historical and political contexts of the partial, thus elevating 'partial truths' to one of the fundamental principles of anthropology. In this way, the anthropological viewpoint, while losing in breadth, gains in depth, much like that of a gem evaluator who observes their object through a special lens that allows for observation from different angles.

Samples of the diversity and the complex mosaic that led to the contemporary anthropological discourse are also the texts included in this volume. Texts that, although written over a decade ago, still retain their dynamism and analytical scope today.

The geographical spread of the ethnographic examples extends from Iceland to Madagascar and Melanesia, with intermediate stops in Poland and Iran, but with a central focus on Greece and the Mediterranean. Some of the most significant contemporary anthropologists participate, each from their perspective, in the further development of the above reflection.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]