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

It's always amusing to look at how something early in the 20th century was written in anthropology and how it's written now. There's been an enormous shift in how it's done, but yet you can't put your finger on someone who actually did it

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

Has feminism made us all more conscious? I think it has. Feminist critiques of anthropological masculine bias have been quite important, and they have increased my sensitivity to that kind of issue

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.

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