This review describes the conditions that have established the subfields of cognitive anthropology and symbolic anthropology as major clusterings of anthropologists. It discusses the influences in anthropology as well as in related areas of cognitive science, linguistics, and literary criticism that can bring the two subfields closer together. It also looks at future directions of study and suggests some of the characteristics that might be included in a single, unifying theory. [cognitive anthropology, symbolic anthropology, history of anthropology, method, theory, review of field, social anthropology] 1981 American Anthropological Association