ABSTRACT
Advanced students who plan their first venture into the field, or who have just embarked on a largish, library-based project, are normally asked by their supervisors about their research question. Unless corrected, the student will as a result write a disorganized and ultimately aimless text, possibly resorting to the lame excuse that the complexity of the material defied simplification. It is sometimes said that what militates against a public anthropology is its inherent complexity. The public, the argument goes, wants simplicity—simple answers to complex questions, In the world of popularized science, which often contains a none too concealed political agenda, anthropology has been utterly marginalized for a generation or more. A few years before the turn of the millennium, a book listed under ‘anthropology’ appeared in bookshops worldwide, and through many paperback printings, it steadily became a great success for its author, turning him into a science writer of the first order.
