ABSTRACT
What is the goal of ethnography, and of cultural anthropology more generally? What are its justification and purpose? As anthropologists, we are all too cognizant that we cannot predict the future accurately or exert much impact on its general course of development. Our potential as activists aside, we serve primarily to detail and analyze variation among cultures in the present and the past. This role demands rather than precludes careful documentation, on the one hand, and theorization, on the other. But this also implies a wide notion of understanding—more akin to the broad German notion of systematic knowledge, of Wissenschaft. The type and end of knowledge, its human and pragmatic justification, are important. What is the larger purpose of the knowledge we seek?
