ABSTRACT

Anthropology has been a small, élite discipline, located in a minority of British universities, with few ‘outreach’ courses for students in other disciplines. My intention has been to provide a way into the discipline for student outsiders who, I hope will share my enthusiasms for the lake of fire. I hope, also that I have shown the relevance of social anthropological studies to the contemporary world and to urban living. A villager told Harriet Rosenberg that the changed ecology of the Alpine valley was symbolised by the vanished eagle: ‘Today we see no eagles soaring over the mountains of Abriès…we have no more eagles (Rosenberg, 1988:211). Anthropology can illuminate life after the eagle has vanished.