ABSTRACT
What makes anthropology distinctive, however, is that its historical roots and empirical focus have forced it to be less irredeemably Eurocentric than its sister disciplines. Anthropology matters because it is the most consistently 'democratic' of the social science disciplines, the one that has shown the greatest commitment to trying to understand the daily existence of ordinary people in their total context rather than focus more narrowly on their political, economic or religious lives. Anthropology, then, is part of a collective endeavour with other social science disciplines. There is no great divide between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ societies, large-scale and small-scale ones, or those with history and those without. Anthropology matters because it is the most consistently ‘democratic’ of the social science disciplines, the one that has shown the greatest commitment to trying to understand the daily existence of ordinary people in their total context.
