196 Quotes About Anthropology

It is worthwhile studying other peoples, because every understanding of another culture is an experiment with our own.

The peculiar situation of the anthropological fieldworker, participating simultaneously in two distinct worlds of meaning and action, requires that he relate to his research subjects as an "outsider," trying to "learn" and penetrate their way of life, while relating to his own culture as a kind of metaphorical "native."To both groups he is a professional stranger, a person who holds himself aloof from their lives in order to gain perspective.

The inevitable result of any search for authenticity is that you always end up with something completely modern in intent, since the purpose of the performance lies in the present, not the past.

The more we claim to discriminate between cultures and customs as good and bad, the more completely do we identify ourselves with those we would condemn. By refusing to consider as human those who seem to us to be the most “savage” or “barbarous” of their representatives, we merely adopt one of their own characteristic attitudes. The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism.

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.

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.

انا غجري. بلدي هي الدنيا بدون حدود، وشعبي هو البشرية بدون عروق، وديني هو حبي لكل العبود، ولغتي هي لسان كل من نطق العطف والحنان على كل الأمور....وصلواتي مع كل من نشد الحب بالقلوب..انا غجري ضائع بين الوحوش...أعطني يدك وانضم معي إلى حرية بلاوعود.......

From an anthropological perspective, identities are neither fixed nor inherent, but are created and reproduced continuously through social practice and in interaction with others.

Relatedness - whether imagined or lived out face-to-face - is a social fact, and it is not limited to "kinship" as mapped in the traditional genealogical chart. It is precisely the term's flexibility that makes it so analytically useful.