ABSTRACT
Cultures differ. The positivist denial of this fact of human life is unpersuasive. But the raw instinct at work in such denials should not be ignored. The murderous history of our species demonstrates that we are poorly equipped either for crossing cultural frontiers or for accepting the consequences of cultural difference. It may be no accident, therefore, that it took a bi-cultural thinker such as Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) to set the project of modern anthropology in motion. In the informed and brilliant society that was Enlightenment Scotland, Ferguson was ‘an alien’:
He was a Highlander whose origins were in Perthshire, on the marches of two cultures, one animated by honour, marital virtue and tribal bonds, the other by commerce, speculation and orthodox learning. Marginality is no disadvantage to the sociologist. Being an alien, familiar with, yet estranged from, two cultures is an undoubted gain.1
