Anthropology Quotes

Anyhow, many people in the soft sciences are prone to be wrong because they're crazy*
* some are dumb, too, but that's another story. ~ Gregory Cochran

When, over lunch in Philadelphia, I ask the distinguished University of Pennsylvania historian, Alan Charles Kors about Cultural Studies, he shakes his head in dismay. "Cultural Studies," he laments, "is now dominant in all departments of literature and is increasingly big in history, sociology, and cultural anthropology, though less so in political science." His own capsule definition of Cultural Studies? "It sees culture as a means of assigning roles, power, obedience, and resources - and examines the way in which culture accomplishes that. ~ Bruce Bawer

They speak as if it was some how beneficial to an African to work for them instead for himself and to make sure that he will receive this benefit they do their best to take away his land and leave him with no alternative. Along with his land they rob him of his government, condemn his religious ideas, and ignore his fundamental conceptions of justice and morals, all in the name of civilisation and progress. ~ Jomo Kenyatta

Anthropology is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. ~ Alfred L. Kroeber

There are savages without God in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

What is even more astonishing is that the entire science of wayfinding is based on dead reckoning. You only know where you are by knowing precisely where you have been and how you got to where you are. ~ Wade Davis

The entire destiny of modern linguistics is in fact determined by Saussure's inaugural act through which he separates the 'external' elements of linguistics from the 'internal' elements, and, by reserving the title of linguistics for the latter, excludes from it all the investigations which establish a relationship between language and anthropology, the political history of those who speak it, or even the geography of the domain where it is spoken, because all of these things add nothing to a knowledge of language taken in itself. Given that it sprang from the autonomy attributed to language in relation to its social conditions of production, reproduction and use, structural linguistics could not become the dominant social science without exercising an ideological effect, by bestowing the appearance of scientificity on the naturalization of the products of history, that is, on symbolic objects. ~ Pierre Bourdieu

Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science. ~ Edward Sapir

I know of no department of natural science more likely to reward a man who goes into it thoroughly than anthropology. There is an immense deal to be done in the science pure and simple, and it is one of those branches of inquiry which brings one into contact with the great problems of humanity in every direction. ~ Thomas Huxley

A pie, like a building, requires construction after all. ~ Janet Clarkson

The transpersonal experiences revealing the Earth as an intelligent, conscious entity are corroborated by scientific evidence. Gregory Bateson, who created a brilliant synthesis of cybernetics, information and systems theory, the theory of evolution, anthropology, and psychology came to the conclusion that it was logically inevitable to assume that mental processes occurred at all levels in any system or natural phenomenon of sufficient complexity. He believed that mental processes are present in cells, organs, tissues, organisms, animal and human groups, eco-systems, and even the earth and universe as a whole. ~ Stanislav Grof

The notion that someone who does not hold your views holds the reciprocal of them, or simply hasn't got any, has, whatever its comforts for those afraid reality is going to go away unless we believe very hard in it, not conduced to much in the way of clarity in the anti-relativist discussion, but merely to far too many people spending far too much time describing at length what it is they do not maintain than seems in any way profitable. ~ Clifford Geertz

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa, in the late 1950s, I thought, what a wonderful marriage this was, biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit. ~ Donald Johanson

An encounter with other cultures can lead to openness only if you can suspend the assumption of superiority, not seeing new worlds to conquer, but new worlds to respect. ~ Mary Catherine Bateson

Both freethought and anthropology are symptoms of the same underlying condition - the relative condition, the condition of difference. ~ Jack David Eller

It is hardly surprising that to this day New England is considered to be the pie capital of America, whose inhabitants traditionally eat (sweet) pie for breakfast. Apple pies in particular became deeply embedded in the history of America - associated with the old country, the new country and the pioneering spirit, and indelibly identified with the sense of nationhood and patriotic sentiment. ~ Janet Clarkson

Economic relationships do not operate on value-neutral laws, but are rather carriers of specific convictions about the nature of the human person - the person's origins and
destiny. There is an implicit anthropology and an implicit theology in every economics. ~ William T. Cavanaugh

The task of the modern era was the realization and humanization of God – the transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach

John Duns Scotus, OFM, taught that the opposite of good was not bad but nonbeing itself. The opposite of truth was not falsity but nonbeing itself. And the opposite of unity was not multiplicity but nonbeing itself. All the opposites are all held and contained within pure being, even the finite and the infinite, matter and Spirit, male and female, etc., and this harmony between things is called beauty, which for some is a fourth transcendental itself. This worldview creates a very positive theology and anthropology based on original blessing instead of original sin. It also creates a philosophical basis for nondual thinking and the nature of evil. Evil is nonbeing and unconsciousness. Beauty is the fullness of being and full consciousness. ~ Richard Rohr

We also have to bear in mind that our own sense of what is plausible and implausible is severely limited by the fact that the modern world is dominated by an extremely narrow range of family arrangements. Looking in anthropology books on kinship and marriage is like opening a book on a huge variety of dead and dying languages, all victims of the inexorable homogenisation of the world that has been in progress since the dawn of civilisation. ~ Patricia Crone

I'm accustomed to thinking of literature as a search for knowledge; in order to move onto existential terrain I need to consider it in relation to anthropology, ethnology, and mythology. ~ Italo Calvino

If you want to be an anthropologist, you need to study physical anthropology specialized in bones. If you want to be a forensic chemist, get a degree in chemistry. Do you want to do DNA work? Get a degree in microbiology. And do well. Study hard and go to graduate school. ~ Kathy Reichs

Dessert pies have moved well beyond fruit and custard, and the line is blurred between pies and cakes with some pies resembling cakes with a crust (pecan pie springs to mind). Some sweet pies are even made with vegetables. ~ Janet Clarkson

These people know the reality and laugh at it. Such laughter has little concern with what is funny. It is often bitter and sometimes a little mad, for it is the laugh under the mask of tragedy, and also the laughter that masks tears. They are the same. It is the laughter of people who value love and friendship and plenty, who have lived with terror and death and hate. - , Return to Laughter (1954) ~ Elenore Smith Bowen

Mind control survivors have identified doctors used by the CIA under Project MKULTRA as having used different aliases. I have personally spoken and corresponded with many of these child Cold War survivors. It seems colors were one of the most commonly used themes. Many survivors have identified Josef Mengele as using the aliases Dr. Green, Dr. Black, Dr. Swartz (black in German), Father Joseph, or Vaterchen (daddy) when he did their programming. The experiments and programming he used on us were of such a heinous nature, that they were not unlike some of those performed at Auschwitz.

In 1937, Mengele was appointed research assistant at the Third Reich Institute for Heredity, Biology, and Racial Purity. Mengele provided "experimental materials" to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology from twins including eyes, blood, and other body parts from Auschwitz. Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945 before the Russians liberated the camp. French government documents state that the Americans captured Mengele in 1946. According to the French, Mengele "was released without explanation by the Americans on November 19, 1946." The French claimed that American authorities confirmed the Mengele arrest and release on Feb. 29, 1947. ~ Carol Rutz

Indeed ethnography and theory resemble nothing so much as the two arcs
of a hyperbola, which cast their beams in opposite directions, lighting up the
surfaces, respectively, of mind and world. They are back to back, and darkness
reigns between them. But what if each arc were to reverse its orientation, so as to
embrace the other in an encompassing, brightly illuminated ellipse? We would
then have neither ethnography nor theory, nor even a compound of both. What
we would have is an undivided, interstitial field of anthropology. If ethnographic
theory is the hyperbola, anthropology is the ellipse. For ethnography, when it
turns, is no longer ethnography but the educational correspondences of real life.
And theory, when it turns, is no longer theory, but an imagination nourished by
its observational engagements with the world. The rupture between reality and
imagination - the one annexed to fact, the other to theory - has been the source
of much havoc in the history of consciousness. It needs to be repaired. It is surely
the task of anthropology, before all else, to repair it. In calling a halt to the proliferation
of ethnography, I am not asking for more theory. My plea is for a return
to anthropology. ~ Tim Ingold

Archaeology is the only branch of Anthropology where we kill our informants in the process of studying them. ~ Kent V. Flannery

It is often thought that the life of the hunter-gatherer was one of feast and famine. But most available data suggest that they were surprisingly healthy and had a fairly stable diet and lifestyle. Not so the primitive farmers. In years when the crops failed, in settlements where the population density was high and where disease weakened the ability to cope even further, life would have been very hard indeed. The settled population could not migrate to follow the food supply as could hunter-gatherers. They were trapped. ~ Peter Gluckman

The childhood poverty of both my parents and their minimal education did much to influence me and my two younger brothers in our education and career choices. One brother became a dentist and the other, a professor of anthropology with a Ph.D. degree. ~ Ferid Murad

These hapless livers were probably not always mere myths, and these legends which traced their spilt blood in the purple bloom of the violet, the scarlet stain of the anemone, or the crimson flush or the rose were no idle poetic emblem of youth and beauty fleeting as the Summer flowers. ~ James George Frazer

The medieval church imposed fast days on which sexual intercourse and the eating of flesh were forbidden, but eating "cold" foods was permitted. because fish came from water, it was deemed cold, as were waterfowl and whale, but meat was considered hot food. ~ Mark Kurlansky

gastronomically, a wild salmon and a farmed salmon have as much in common as a side of wild boar has with pork chops. ~ Mark Kurlansky

Men and women are not free to love decently until they have analyzed themselves completely and swept away every mystery from sex; and this means the acquisition of a profound philosophical theory based on wide reading of anthropology and enlightened practice. ~ Aleister Crowley

I began to realize something fundamental about field-work: that it is useless to concentrate exclusively on one's 'research project.' One has to be endlessly curious about everything, sharpen one's eyes and ears, and take notes about everything. The experience of strangeness makes all your senses more sensitive than normal, and your attachment to comparison grows deeper. This is why fieldwork is also so useful when you return home. You will have developed habits of observation and comparison that encourage or force you to start noticing that your own culture is just as strange. ~ Benedict Anderson

Because he did not have time to read every new book in his field, the great Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski used a simple and efficient method of deciding which ones were worth his attention: Upon receiving a new book, he immediately checked the index to see if his name was cited, and how often. The more Malinowski the more compelling the book. No Malinowski, and he doubted the subject of the book was anthropology at all. ~ Neil Postman

The city of Gloucester, by ancient custom, presented a lamprey pie to the sovereign at Christmas time, as a token of loyalty. Lampreys are scaleless freshwater sucker-fish resembling eels, desirable in the past for their oily, gamey flesh. The tradition of gifting lamprey pies to the royal family continued until the end of Queen Victoria's reign, but was revived for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 when a 42-pound pie was cooked by the RAF catering crops. ~ Janet Clarkson

The bigger question now becomes, "so what? Who cares?" You will never have an infinite number of balls and you will never have a large enough urn to hold all of them. You will never build a lamp that can turn on and off arbitrarily fast. We cannot investigate time or space past a certain smallness, except when pretending, so what are supertasks, but recreational fictions, entertaining riddles? We can ask more questions than we can answer, so what?

Well, here's what. Neanderthals. Neanderthals and humans, us, Homo sapiens, lived together in Europe for at least five thousand years. Neanderthals were strong and clever, they may have even intentionally buried their dead, but for hundreds of thousands of years, Neanderthals barely went anywhere. They pretty much just explored and spread until they reached water or some other obstacle and then stopped. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, didn't do that. They did things that make no sense crossing terrain and water without knowing what lay ahead. Svante Pääbo has worked on the Neanderthal genome at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and he points out that technology alone didn't allow humans to go to Madagascar, to Australia. Neanderthals built boats too. Instead, he says, there's "some madness there. How many people must have sailed out and vanished on the Pacific before you found Easter Island? I mean, it's ridiculous. And why do you do that? Is it for the glory? For immortality? For curiosity? And now ~ Michael Stevens From VSauce

Somehow, all the talk about tenure and anthropology had given her visions of a thick-walled, libraried adobe, the kind of place that was covered with kilim rugs and fertility sculptures. The white stucco in front of her looked only slightly more substantial than a roadside weigh station. ~ Mira Jacob

The whole concept of European culture as a cornucopia from which things are freely given is misleading. It does not take a specialist in anthropology to see that the European "give" is always highly selective. We never give any native people under our control – and we never shall, for it would be sheer folly as long as we stand on the basis of our present Realpolitik – the following elements of culture:

1. The instruments of physical power: fire-arms, bombing planes, poison gas, and all that makes an effective defence or aggression possible
2. We do not give out instruments of political mastery [i.e. sovereignty or voting rights]
3. We do not share with them the substance of economic wealth and advantages…. Even when under indirect economic exploitation… we allow the native a share of the profits, the full control of the economic organization remains in the hands of Western enterprise.
4. We do not admit them as equals to Church, Assembly, school, or drawing room… Full political, social and even religious equality is nowhere granted. ~ Bronisław Malinowski

The 'science' in 'science fiction' isn't just physics and engineering. It can also be linguistics, anthropology, and psychology. ~ Ann Leckie

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology. ~ W. H. Auden

We can reproduce within our own minds the way that the world is put together for other people. This is the extraordinary privilege and adventure of anthropology. ~ Marshall Sahlins

People keep asking how anthropology is different from sociology, and everybody gets nervous. ~ Clifford Geertz

Now there is a modern-day anthropology* for the criminal type: a great number of so-called 'born criminals' have pale faces, large cheekbones, a coarse lower jaw, and deeply shining eyes. How can one not recall this when one thinks of Lenin and thousands like him? How many pale faces, high cheekbones and strikingly asymmetric features mark the soldiers of the Red Army and, generally speaking, also of the common Russian people - how many of them, these savage types, have Mongolian atavism directly in their blood! They are all from Murom, the white-eyed Chud. And it is precisely these individuals, these very Russichi, who gave us so many 'daring pirates', so many vagabonds, escapees, scoundrels and tramps - it is precisely these people whom we have recruited for the glory, pride and hope of the Russian social revolution. So why should we feign surprise at the results? ~ Ivan Bunin

A physicist that I know commented that many other scientific disciplines, such as geology, anthropology, astronomy, are also challenged by biblical fundamentalism, but their people seem to be able to get on with their work without worrying unduly. Only Darwinians seem thrown into a frenzy that sends them running to litigation and demanding censorship. His explanation was that it's a rival religion. ~ James P. Hogan

Typical of Iberia, both the Basques and the Catalans claim the word comes from their own languages, and the rest of Spain disagrees. Catalans have a myth that cod was the proud king of fish and was always speaking boastfully, which was an offence to God. "Va callar!" (Will you be quiet!), God told the cod in Catalan. Whatever the word's origin, in Spain lo que corta el bacalao, the person who cuts the salt cod, is a colloquialism for the person in charge. ~ Mark Kurlansky

There is no shorter path for joining a neutral existential anthropology, according to philosophy, with the existential decision before God, according to the Bible. ~ Paul Ricoeur

But if all maximizing models are really arguing is that "people will always seek to maximize something," then they obviously can't predict anything, which means employing them can hardly be said to make anthropology more scientific. All they really add to analysis is a set of assumptions about human nature. The assumption, most of all, that no one ever does anything primarily out of concern for others; that whatever one does, one is only trying to get something out of it for oneself. In common English, there is a word for this attitude. It's called "cynicism." Most of us try to avoid people who take it too much to heart. In economics, apparently, they call it "science. ~ David Graeber

The full measure of a culture embraces both the actions of a people and the quality of their aspirations, the nature of the metaphors that propel their lives. And no description of a people can be complete without reference to the character of their homeland, the ecological and geographical matrix in which they have determined to live out their destiny. Just as a landscape defines character, culture springs from a spirit of place. ~ Wade Davis

Every English village seems to have a particular day when some local tradition is celebrated - and the celebratory food is often pie. ~ Janet Clarkson

Aristotelian hylomorphic anthropology of soul and body as form and matter of a single substance, as distinct from a Platonic or Cartesian two-substance dualism, or simple materialism or simple immaterialism or spiritualism. All three alternatives to Aristotelian-Thomistic hylomorphism are logically problematic as well as not in accord with our experience. ~ Peter Kreeft

It is the character of lived experience I want to explore, not the nature of man. ~ Michael James Jackson

It is ... highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences. ~ Ian Tattersall

The pie-cook and the pie-consumer are both lucky if the smell of the pie 'sells' not only its desirability as biological fuel but also remembrance of pies past. ~ Janet Clarkson

What is empathy, after all, if not an act of concentrated emotional engagement? And is that emotional engagement, however briefly expressed, not a potential step toward a lasting bond? ~ Naomi Leite

Early anthropology was not at all seen as art for art's sake; it was intended to facilitate the colonizer's work. ~ David Van Reybrouck

It may be in the cultural particularities of people - in their oddities - that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found. ~ Clifford Geertz

Sometime I'm going to do an essay called 'The Virtues of Amateurism' for all of those people who wish they earned their living in the arts. The market kills more artistic people than anything else. It's a world of safety out there, for most people. They want safety, the magazines and manufacturers give them safety, give them homogeneity, give them the familiar and comfortable, don't challenge them. ~ Robert James Waller

Cod meat has virtually no fat (.3 percent) and is more than 18 percent protein, which is unusually high even for fish. And when cod is dried, the more than 80 percent of its flesh that is water having evaporated, it becomes concentrated protein - almost 80 percent protein. ~ Mark Kurlansky

In America, the unqualified word 'pie' unequivocally means a sweet dessert item, whereas in Australia it just as certainly means a meat pie. ~ Janet Clarkson

Learn about the world, the way it works, any kind of science and anthropology, it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea, even more than the idea of God I think. ~ Randy Newman

No human utterance could be seen as innocent. Any set of words could be analysed to reveal not just an individual but a historical consciousness at work. ~ Ania Loomba

Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains, as well as the highest centers that allow us to integrate information in our unique way; and some of our newer brain components talk to each other via some very ancient structures indeed. Our brains are makeshift structures, opportunistically assembled by Nature over hundreds of millions of years, and in multiple different ecological contexts. ~ Ian Tattersall

The classical anthropological question, What is man? - "how like an angel, this quintessence of dust!" - is not now asked by anthropologists. Instead, they commence with a chapter on Physical Anthropology and then forget the whole topic and go on to Culture. ~ Paul Goodman

Cultural anthropology is not valuable because it uncovers the archaic in the psychological sense. It is valuable because it is constantly rediscovering the normal. ~ Edward Sapir

A discussion of the pie in movies would hardly be complete without mention of the classic comic device of custard-pie throwing, now legitimized and made semi-serious as the subversive political act of 'entarting'. 'Entarting' is delivering (by 'lovingly pushing', not throwing) a cream pie into the face of a deserving celebrity, preferably in full view of the world's media, in order to make a point. ~ Janet Clarkson

All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer. ~ Robert Owen

The universe is made of stories, not atoms. ~ Muriel Rukeyser

Maybe if I'd studied writing instead of anthropology, I'd be more sensible. You know - pick a genre, follow the rules, stay in the box - but let's face it. Sensible people don't major in anthropology. ~ Mary Doria Russell

Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance. ~ Clifford Geertz

So the aim for the press was a mixture of things: to publish under-represented writing, which is an intersection of original language, style, content, and often its author's gender. To publish it properly, in a way that makes it clear that this is art, not anthropology. To spotlight the importance of translation in making cultures less dully homogenous. ~ Deborah Smith

The study of religion is chiefly the study of a certain kind of human behavior, be it under the rubric of anthropology, sociology, or psychology. The study of theology, on the other hand, is the study of God. Religion is anthropocentric, theology is theocentric, the difference between religion and theology is ultimately the difference between God and man-hardly a small difference. ~ R.C. Sproul

The town of Lunenburg was built on a hill running down to a sheltered harbour. On one of the upper streets stands a Presbyterian church with a huge gilded cod on its weather vane. Along the waterfront, the wooden-shingled houses are brick red, a color that originally came from mixing clay with cod-liver oil to protect the wood against the salt of the waterfront. It is the look of Nova Scotia - brick red wood, dark green pine, charcoal sea. ~ Mark Kurlansky

I was an anthropology major in college, and I've had a lifelong fascination with Egyptology, mummies, and all sorts of bizarre cultural practices. ~ Tess Gerritsen

The drive behind life has lost none of its power; proof that, impelled by that drive, man can build as well as destroy; that in his nature is more of Vishnu the Creator than of Siva the Destroyer. ~ George Amos Dorsey

I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

I had just received my degree in Calcium Anthropology ... the study of milkmen. ~ Steven Wright

What early Christianity meant by 'faith' (pistis) was initially nothing other than running ahead and clinging to a model or idea whose attainability was still uncertain. Faith is purely anticipatory, in the sense that it already has an effect when it mobilizes the existence of the anticipatory towards the goal through anticipation. In analogy for the placebo effect, one would have to call this the movebo effect. ~ Peter Sloterdijk

Architecture is art. I don't think you should say that too much, but it is art. I mean, architecture is many, many things. Architecture is science, is technology, is geography, is typography, is anthropology, is sociology, is art, is history. You know all this comes together. Architecture is a kind of bouillabaisse, an incredible bouillabaisse. And, by the way, architecture is also a very polluted art in the sense that it's polluted by life, and by the complexity of things. ~ Renzo Piano

Studies [on the origin of fairy-stories] are, however, scientific (at least in intent); they are the pursuit of folklorists or anthropologists: that is of people using the stories not as they were meant to be used, but as a quarry from which to dig evidence, or information, about matters in which they are interested.

...with regard to fairy stories, I feel that it is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are, what they have become for us, and what values the long alchemic processes of time have produced in them. In Dasent's words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.'

Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalysable) effect, an effect quite independent of the findings of Comparative Folk-lore, and one which it cannot spoil or explain; they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

At night the cries of cats making love or fighting, their caterwauling in the dark, told us that the world was pure emotion, flung back and forth among its creatures, the agony of the one-eyed Siamese no different from that of the Lisbon girls, and even the trees plunged in feeling. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Considering the comparative lifespans of simpler tribal societies and that of the more advanced agri-urban empires of antiquity, even here in the New World, it would be possible, indeed, to make out quite a case for illiteracy as a factor of the safety in keeping population and essential supplies in a working balance, with little or no damage to the basic sources of renewal. ~ Russell Lord

When Soyer said of pies that they are 'one of our best companions du voyage through life', he was referring consumers, but he might just as well been referring to his professional colleagues, for pies have always been enormously useful to caterers and cooks, particularly at events where a large number must be fed efficiently. In modern times this is usually at sporting events such as football games, but the original experts in mass catering were the military. ~ Janet Clarkson

General editors' preface The growth of translation studies as a separate discipline is a success story of the 1980s. The subject has developed in many parts of the world and is clearly destined to continue developing well into the twenty-first century. Translation studies brings together work in a wide variety of fields, including linguistics, literary study, history, anthropology, psychology, and economics. This series of books will reflect the breadth of work in translation studies and will enable readers to share in the exciting new developments that are taking place at the present time. ~ Lawrence Venuti

In Middle English, cod meant "a bag or a sack", or by inference, "a scrotum", which is why the outrageous purse that sixteenth-century men wore at their crotch to give the appearance of enormous and decorative genitals was called a codpiece. ~ Mark Kurlansky

I've been going to the library, looking up our history. There's a ton of it in anthropology books, a ton of it, Ruth. We haven't always been hated. Why didn't we grow up knowing that? ~ Leslie Feinberg

I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.

They may be teaching that still.

Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, 'You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.'

I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

As has often been said, if you want to understand what anthropology is, look at what anthropologists do. Above all else, what anthropologists do is ethnography. ~ John Monaghan

By turning names into things we create false models of reality. By endowing nations, societies or cultures, with the qualities of internally homogeneous and externally distinctive bounded objects, we create a model of the world as a global pool hall in which the entities spin off each other line so many hard and round billiard balls ~ Eric R. Wolf

The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think ~ Gregory Bateson

When asked why he wrote the book, Freed said:
In the 1980s, I joined the small group of anthropologists who were writing about the history of their subject. I believed that I could add some balance to American anthropological history, and that the best place to start was with museums -
where the story began. The more I delved into the archives, the more I was fascinated. I was hooked. ~ Stanley A. Freed

Practical, versatile, universally esteemed and provided with its own edible, easily decorated gift-box of pastry - small wonder that pie still plays a feature role at many of our favourite celebrations, so much so that it is often symbolic of the very event itself. ~ Janet Clarkson

People don't like to think of themselves as sinful. They don't want to believe that they are selfish, evil people who would act much worse if unrestrained by society ... Because they believe they act from pure motives, many people live by their own moral code and can always justify their behavior. When that strategy fails they can always think of someone worse than themselves. ~ Douglas Beaumont

The pure products of America
go crazy ...
... [] No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car ~ William Carlos Williams

It was a big mistake for me to take a degree in anthropology anyway, because I can't stand primitive people - they're so stupid. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The word cod is of unknown origin. For something that began as food for good Catholics on the days they were to abstain from sex, it is not clear why, in several languages, the words for salt cod have come to have sexual connotations. In the English-speaking West Indies, saltfish is the common name for salt cod. In slang, saltfish means "a woman's genitals", and while Caribbeans do love their salt cod, it is this other meaning that is responsible for the frequent appearance of the word saltfish in Caribbean songs such as the Mighty Sparrow's "Saltfish". ~ Mark Kurlansky

Recent sociological findings indicate that while "whites have largely abandoned principled racism... they have not necessarily given up negative racial stereotypes" or "negative sentiments and beliefs about African Americans. ~ John Hoberman

It's because there are too many people who want to stop us having fun. That's the reason. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

In the fishing village of Mousehole in Cornwall it is traditional to eat 'stargazy pie' on the evening of 23 December. It is an intriguing pie, made with pilchards placed so that their heads poke through the crust at the centre of the pie, gazing at the stars, as it were. It is made in honour of a local mythical hero, Tom Bawcock ('bawcock' is an old word meaning 'a fine fellow'), whom legend says sent out on a bad night during a bad season, returning with sufficient fish to save the locals from starvation. ~ Janet Clarkson

It's always amusing to look at how something early in the 20th century was written in anthropology and how it's written now. There's been an enormous shift in how it's done, but yet you can't put your finger on someone who actually did it. ~ Clifford Geertz