Introduction

This is an Anthology of Anthropology Today, more precisely of RAINews — which preceded it from 1974 to 1984 — and Anthropology Today from 1985 to 2000. I was invited by the publishers to hold a mirror up to an intellectually turbulent quarter-century in anthropology's history. I have written before that editors should see themselves as like earthworms aerating the soil, rather than as divine gardeners. This is a view from the humus.