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

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it

I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things

Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology

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