This special issue on anthropology and literature invited proposals for original contributions focusing on relationships between anthropology and literature. We were especially interested in the following questions: what role does literature play in anthropology? Can literature be considered as ethnography? What are the relationships between anthropology and literature, past and present? Are anthropology and anthropological motives used in literature? We also looked for critical readings of writers as anthropologists and critical readings of anthropologists as writers. Moreover, we wanted to assess the influence of literature on the invention of traditions, rituals and cultural performances. All these different questions and topics are clearly connected with the study of literacy, illiteracy and popular culture. They also lead to questions regarding potential textual strategies for ethnography and the possibilities of bringing together the field of anthropology (more associated with the social sciences) and literary studies (traditionally part of the humanities). As a result of our call for articles we received more than twenty-five proposals, which shows the vitality of the field and its relevance for anthropologists today. Although it was difficult to select from these different proposals, we realised that some of them were more historical while others focused more on the contemporary. Some proposals were more preoccupied with the literary texts themselves while others emphasised the social and cultural contexts in which these texts were written. An important criterion in our selection is the geographic origin of the proposals, as the relationship between anthropology and literature varies according to the national and regional academic traditions. Throughout this volume, we have endeavoured to balance different perspectives and regions, offering a comparative insight on texts and contexts, past and present, in different countries.

中文翻译：

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文学人类学：亚学科背景

这个关于人类学和文学的特刊邀请了关注人类学和文学之间关系的原创贡献提案。我们对以下问题特别感兴趣：文学在人类学中扮演什么角色？文学可以被视为民族志吗？人类学与文学、过去与现在的关系是什么？文学中是否使用了人类学和人类学动机？我们还寻找作为人类学家的作家的批判性阅读和作为作家的人类学家的批判性阅读。此外，我们想评估文学对传统、仪式和文化表演的发明的影响。所有这些不同的问题和主题都与扫盲、文盲和流行文化的研究明显相关。它们还引发了关于民族志潜在文本策略的问题，以及将人类学领域（更多与社会科学相关）和文学研究（传统上属于人文学科的一部分）结合起来的可能性。由于我们征集文章，我们收到了超过 25 份提案，这显示了该领域的活力及其与当今人类学家的相关性。尽管很难从这些不同的提案中进行选择，但我们意识到其中一些更具历史意义，而另一些则更侧重于当代。一些建议更专注于文学文本本身，而另一些则强调这些文本写作的社会和文化背景。我们选择的一个重要标准是提案的地理来源，因为人类学和文学之间的关系因国家和地区的学术传统而异。在这本书中，我们努力平衡不同的观点和地区，提供对不同国家过去和现在的文本和背景的比较见解。