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

It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.

I don't have the notion that everybody has to write in some single academic style

If there's ever a place where you can't argue that you can put the facts over here and the text over there and see if they fit, it is surely in anthropology

Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.

I don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity

I'm an inveterate fox and not a hedgehog, so I always think you should try everything