What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things

One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to a live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one

I think the American university system still seems to be the best system in the world

Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.

I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.

What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.