There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down

I agree with Chomsky in almost nothing. When it comes to innate structures and so on, I'm very skeptical

If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code

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

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.

Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.

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