Practice question · Multiple choice
A trading floor and a Melanesian gift exchange are both legitimate anthropological subjects. What claim about the discipline does that reflect?
Hints
- Ask what would be excluded if anthropology were the study of 'other' societies.
- The discipline's scope is defined by a subject, not a location. What subject?
Show the answer
A. That anthropology studies humans everywhere without a hierarchy
Why
Restricting the field to distant peoples would make it the study of otherness rather than of humans, and would leave the analyst's own assumptions unexamined. Making the familiar strange is the same operation as making the strange familiar, which is why studies of laboratories and bond traders are core work, not an extension.
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