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

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

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

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

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

Culture is public, because meaning is

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