4e de couv: What is the place of reason, and conversely, of the unreasonable, the contradictory, the emotional, and the chaotic in social life ? What is the nature of a general human rationality ? Are there such things as incommensurable world views ? How efficacious are typologies of "modes of thought" or "cognivite styles" ? Is modern Western thought cognitively "superior" ? How possible are value-free investigative methods ? How valid is the assumption of the absolute authority fo hierarchical oppositions forthcoming from the paradigm of rationality ? tThese are some of the controversies addressed by the contributors to this volumes, which draws together papers from the 1984 Malinowsky Centennial Conference of the ASA. The recent debates on rationality, revolving around reflections on the spistempological presuppositions fo anthropological fieldwork, and including the issue on comprehending in general "other minds", began in the 1970s. Since then, the debate has been carried throuh more by philosophers than anthropologists, and has therefore increasingly narrowed to focus upon internal issues raised in the analytic philosophy of science rather those emerging from ethnographic fieldwork. The contributors to this volume are in part reacting to the way to which the debate on rationality has been formulated over the past decade, but they are also responding to que question of "What is the state of art" in anthropology in the mid-1980s, a period of change when issues must be reconsidered, re-evaluated and rediscovered. It is argued in general in this volume that it is a mistake to separate the issue of morality from the pursuit and grounds of truth. All practice and thought have their normative and ethical aspects. The implication of this assertion is that "post-modern" Western knowledge can no longer be naive about the authority of specific logics, and other control by particular elites.