ABSTRACT
Anthropology is a discipline: a distinctively structured way of looking at the world. It has proven to be a useful and effective lens for looking into the cultural worlds of others, and understanding these worlds, their construction and rationale, in and on their own terms. Anthropology's subject matter is extremely broad: the study of human beings across space and through time. It helps us understand human variation, while also uncovering the commonalities and universals which bind us. In anthropology, information about what people say and observations about what they actually do, both collected from real situations, constitutes an important part of the ground truth upon which the work of the discipline relies. Good anthropology takes time, and usually requires an extended conversation with "the field" in which meanings are uncovered, and patterns emerge slowly, over time. The anthropological approach to understanding takes time, and involves - particularly at the outset - a fair amount of uncertainty and ambiguity.
