The 1980s were established as the decade of Cultural Criticism for anthropology and its impact was significant. The new element that this movement imposed and established is the awareness that in the study of a society, every approach is partial and therefore the knowledge that emerges about each "world" is inevitably partial as well.

Based on this belief, the limitation of the scope of the approach as well as the scale of perception emphasized the historical and political contexts of the partial, thus elevating "partial truths" to one of the fundamental principles of anthropology. Thus, anthropological perspective, while losing in breadth, gains in depth, like that of a gemstone appraiser who sees his object through a special lens that allows him to observe it from different angles.

Examples of the variety and complexity that the contemporary anthropological discourse has become are also the texts included in this volume. The geographic spread of the ethnographic examples extends from Melanesia, with intermediate stations in Poland and Iran, but with Greece and the Mediterranean as the central core.

Some of the most important contemporary anthropologists participate, each from their own perspective, in the further development of the above reflection.