Invitation

Nobody understands what we do.

Fifteen years of my life, hundreds of books and articles, published papers, conference presentations, piles of index cards, stacks of photos, piles of artifacts, taped interviews, and a heap of killer stories - and I still have a hard time explaining to my parents what anthropology is for.

By my own reductive definition, anthropology is the study of the human experience in its entirety. 

Although this definition tidily communicates to friends and dinner guests what I study, I know that ethnographers, paleo-archeologists, and cultural resource management specialists around the world will raise their eyebrows.  But I've been wanting to do this for a long time: bring to life to the non-anth public, in as simple and appealing a way as possible, the oxymoronic marvel that is this discipline, while also inviting professionals anthropologists to do the same.

That's what this blog is for.

Lately I've been talking with some of my students quite a lot about anthropology, and its far-reaching implications.  My heart and mind have been longing for the chance to revisit the basics of cultural anthropology by reflecting on what I learned from my friends and mentors at USU, while also ruminating on what I see happening all around me every day.

It has been over nine years since I left Logan, but to me all the world is still an ethnography waiting to be written...