![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() This idea has been repeatedly used to argue that no race is superior or inferior to any other, and that different cultural accomplishments are not the result of different genetic endowments. I used to think, in fact, that one of anthropology's great humanistic contributions to our civilization was the notion of a basic humanity common to all mankind-a humanity that was only differently emphasized or differently expressed in different cultures. ![]() To put it another way, anthropological understanding is a way of making the world feel safer, a way of extending the edge of order so that we can comfortably say that people are fundamentally the same everywhere and that “cultural differences” are merely something like different mental images of the same basic reality. For when we study “other cultures” this way, we assume in advance that “understanding” means “explanation” in terms with which we are already familiar from our own experience and knowledge of what the world is like. Yet despite the impetus of such curiosity, the bulk of the writing actually published in this field only tends to confirm what we think we already know about the nature of man, society, the human condition. Anthropology is, for many of its American practitioners and amateurs, a way of trying to get out of our particular culture, or at least a way of finding out whether “other ways of lite” are possible and, if so, perhaps better than our own. ![]()
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