I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field.

I have a social philosophy; you have political opinions; he has an ideology.

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

I've written a lot of books which are written from the moon - the view from nowhere.

Learning to exist in a world quite different from that which formed you is the condition, these days, of pursuing research you can on balance believe in and write sentences you can more or less live with.

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

Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn't have a real method, there's a great deal of anxiety over what it is