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The Man in the Study and the Man in the Field Ethnography theory and comparison in social anthropology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Adam Kuper
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Extract

Histories and critiques of anthropology usually deal mainly with what anthropologists say, including what they say they do. However, like their informants, anthropologists are accustomed to saying one thing and doing another. The emphasis in this paper is on the nature of anthropological data and methods, and thus on what anthropologists really do. The argument is that what anthropologists do is often productive and sensible, but that it has very little relationship to what many anthropologists say they should be doing. Indeed those anthropologists who take such theoretical directives seriously labour under a considerable, self-inflicted handicap.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , June 1980 , pp. 14 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1980

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