ABSTRACT
Under ‘human capacities’ are to be placed both ‘capabilities’ and ‘liabilities’. It might be said, for instance, to be the capability of any and all human beings to construct world-views for themselves, to make their own sense of the world around them, and to imagine a life-project of meaning and value within this world; it is the liability of any and all human beings that all their facilities, including imagination, diminish with age and cease at death. Anthropology, in short, works from the individual outwards to the human whole. Arthur was one of the first and one of the few to make him feel at all welcome when the author arrived in the dale of Wanet, unannounced and unwanted, to begin his fieldwork, a stranger from the city and surprisingly persistent, hanging round the pubs and the shops and the church hall, ostensibly undertaking a project in local history at the local records office.
