196 Quotes About Anthropology

The idea that foods and diets will “just mix” when they come into contact is clearly a vast oversimplification.

People want to think of a food tradition as something that would continue unchanging and timeless, unless some outside force knocked things askew.

How old does a recipe have to be in order to be traditional? What should we think when an old industrial food like salted (corned) beef or pickled herring becomes a part of “traditional” ethnic cuisine?

The world becomes a pageant of diversity with its differences neatly organised and selected.

There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist—musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn. … No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.

Globalisation creates a world where causes are remote form effects, and the connections between them are often hidden or obscure.

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?

If we are interested in cultural processes, the only way in which we can know the significance of the selected detail of behaviour is against the background of the motives and emotions and values that are institutionalized in that culture.

Try seeing, feeling, and tasting the water you swim in the way a land animal might perceive it. You may find the experience fascinating -- and mind-expanding.