Introduction

In the joint anthropology and sociology department where I teach, students have frequently asked me somewhat hesitantly, assuming they ought to already know the answer, ‘What, after all, is the difference between sociology and anthropology?’ I usually tend to talk vaguely about general orientations versus absolute disciplinary boundaries but, if a flurry of recent publications are correct, in answering the same question most anthropologists would be likely to invoke ethnographic field-work as the quintessential hallmark of social and cultural anthropology. According to Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (1997:1):

the single most significant factor determining whether a piece of research will be accepted as (that magical word) ‘anthropological’ is the extent to which it depends on experience ‘in the field.’