 I don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity. |
| Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn't have a real method, there's a great deal of anxiety over what it is. |
| 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. |
| The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable. |
| Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed. |
| I do think the attempt to raise consciousness has succeeded. People are very aware of gender concerns now. |
| 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. |
| We need to think more about the nature of rhetoric in anthropology. There isn't a body of knowledge and thought to fall back on in this regard. |
| 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. |
| I've written a lot of books which are written from the moon - the view from nowhere. |
| People keep asking how anthropology is different from sociology, and everybody gets nervous. |
| I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it. |
| I think the American university system still seems to be the best system in the world. |
| I don't have the notion that everybody has to write in some single academic style. |
| I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done. |
| I agree with Chomsky in almost nothing. When it comes to innate structures and so on, I'm very skeptical. |
