A pioneering attempt to formulate an anthropological approach to consiousness, Questions of Consciousness explores the importance of the conscious self, and of the "conscious collectively" in the construction and interpretation of social relations and process. It thereby explicitly raises questions, the answers to which have previously been neglected in anthropology: how aware are people of their behavior? To what extent is the consciousness of individuals modelled by the cultures and social structures within which they live?

The chapters range over a wide variety of ethnographic cases, from studies of bureaucracies to poets and children; of healing, dreaming and sorcery, to examinations of metaphor, body imagery, religion and supranationality in the inculcation of consciousness and identity. Ethnographic cases include the European Commission, Islamic activists, Spanish and Nepalese villagers, novelists and psychiatric patients. Central to all of these is the critical examination of the claims which people make to know the content and workings of others' minds.

Beneath a wide variety of opinion and theoretical position, the contributors, who are well known anthropologists, agree that the anthropological investigation of consciousness should focus on action rather than on abstraction, on process rather than on generalization.