First of all there is no reason why an anthropology can’t draw on both cultural and non-cultural (i.e. biological) bases for human behaviour. Second, there can be no such thing as living outside of culture, if we understand the term culture in the modern sense that includes all aspects of language, religion, art, ethics, social organization, etc. I’m assuming you are thinking that most acadamic anthropology departments are concerned with the “cultures” of pre-modern peoples who are tightly bound in a complex of ritual and myth. This may be true. But my link is to a form of anthropology that is only practiced by a select few intellectuals, most of whom don’t work in anthropolgy departments. They have a lot to say about the modern world. A world of individual freedom is still a world where people exchange signs and tokens of what they take to be sacred. The secular is just another form of the sacred; it is not something entirely different. Individuals cannot but continue to live on sacralized scenes that they share with others, however few or select their compatriots on any of the various scenes that interest them. An anthropology has much do describe in all this. The minimal core of our humanity never disappears however radical the changes in its expression from one era to another.
