Alfred Gell in Art and Agency answers the 'what is anthropological work' question that plagues us students. He is talking about how to do an anthropology of art and he argues that he will approach it by developing a "new variant of existing anthropological theory and apply it to art".
He says you will know that your theory is anthropological because it "resembles these other theories that one can confidently describe as anthropological". Since the essence of anthropology is "relationships between participants in social systems of various kinds", anthropological theories must be about "social relationships and not anything else".
Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, 1998, pp4-5
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=RqYRt4e0ryAC&lpg=PR20&ots=mnvwAF0Vdx&dq=gell%20art%20agency&lr=&pg=PR20#v=onepage&q=&f=false
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