Stupid Foreigners

"Economics and anthropology were created with almost entirely opposite purposes in mind. Economics is all about prediction. It came into existence and continues to be maintained with all sorts of lavish founding, because people with money want to know what other people with money are likely to do. As a result, it is also a discipline that, more than any other, tends to participate in the world it describes. […] Nor do the economists have a problem with this; they seem to feel it is quite as it should be. Anthropology was from the beginning entirely different. […] When Malinowski was trying to figure out what Trobriand gardeners were trying to accomplish in acting as they did, it almost certainly never even occured to him that whatever that was, reading his book might make them better able to accomplish it. In fact, when an anthropologist discovers that anyone is using anthropological texts in this way - say, as a guide for how to perform their own rituals - they are usually quite disturbed."

Graeber, David: Towards an anthropological theoriy of value. New York, 2001. S. 7. (via edwardnortonamstrand)

(via cosmopolitan-fascist)