Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Anthropology

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Norwegian social anthropologist and professor. Explore interesting quotes on anthropology.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen: 36   quotes 0   likes

“Although it is necessary to be conscious of variation, the problem of boundaries, political misuse, change, flows and conceptual inaccuracy, it would be tantamount to intellectual suicide for anthropology if it were to discard a concept that tells us that people with different backgrounds, who have been raised in very different environments, live – to a greater or lesser extent – in different life-worlds and see the world in different ways. Thus, it seems necessary to keep the culture concept, but in an ideal world, it would be locked securely in a cupboard and taken out only when it was needed. In most cases where the culture concept is used cursorily today – inside and outside of anthropology – it would prove unnecessary to unlock the cupboard.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Suicide , People , Problem , Way

“The great enigma of anthropology can be phrased like this: All over the world, humans are born with the same cognitive and physical apparatus, and yet they grow into distinctly different persons and groups, with different societal types, beliefs, technologies, languages and notions about the good life. Differences in innate endowments vary within each group and not between them, so that musicality, intelligence, intuition and other qualities that vary from person to person are quite evenly distributed globally.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Personality , Intelligence , Music , World

“It is the goal of anthropology to establish as detailed a knowledge as possible about human life in its mind-boggling diversity, and to develop a conceptual apparatus that makes it possible to compare life-worlds and societies. This in turn enables us to understand both differences and similarities between the many different ways of being human.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Understanding , Knowledge , Way , World

“To simplify somewhat, one may say that anthropology primarily offers two kinds of insight. First, its practitioners produce knowledge about the actual cultural variation in the world; studies may deal with, say, the role of caste and wealth in Indian village life, technology among highland people in New Guinea, religion in southern Africa, life on the Wall Street stock exchange, the political importance of kinship in the Middle East, or concepts about life and the cosmos in the Amazon basin. Although most anthropologists are specialists in one or two regions, it is necessary to be knowledgeable about global cultural variation, and about humanity as such, in order to be able to say anything interesting about one’s region, topic or people.
Second, anthropology offers methods and theoretical perspectives enabling the practitioner to explore, compare and understand these varied expressions of the human condition. In other words, the subject offers both things to think about and things to think with.
But anthropology is not just a toolbox; it is also a craft which teaches the novice how to obtain a certain kind of knowledge and what this knowledge might say something about.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Study , Religion , Understanding , Wealth

“Anthropology is an intellectually challenging, theoretically ambitious subject which tries to achieve an understanding of culture, society and humanity through detailed studies of local life, made sense of through comparison and contextualisation. But it is also a form of storytelling about the lives that you and I could have led, but didn’t because we were busy living our own lives.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 1 : Why Anthropology?

Study , Understanding , Business , Sense

“The relationships between mother, father and children, family trees and genealogies, preferential treatment of relatives and alliances through marriage furnish us with some of the few really good and useful comparative concepts we have in anthropology. They exist everywhere in one form or another, and they differ in interesting ways. If the ultimate goal is to discover the unity of humanity through its manifold appearances, the profession cannot afford to let go of the still rich gold mine of kinship.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 6 : Kinship

Family , Tree , Marriage , Children

“One reason for the increased interest in studies of identity in anthropology may be the fact that issues to do with the nature of groups have become hugely important in politics worldwide in the last decades.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 9 : Social Identity

Study , Nature

“Studies of thought and modes of reasoning have been central in the history of anthropology from the nineteenth century to the present day.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 8 : Thought

Study , History

“What characterises anthropological research today more than anything is the recognition of complexity; the world is complex, cultures are complex, communities are complex, and analytical strategies must acknowledge complexity.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 4 : Theories

World , Communication