ABSTRACT
Many anthropologists agreed it was time to return to fieldwork in order to gather their thoughts after the philosophical arguments by numerous scholars about how to live, especially the well-observed thoughts about how to live within the state. In fieldwork anthropologists cultivate anthropological knowledge, in a unique disciplined approach to the study of humanity. Early researchers likened contemplation and enquiry into the order of things to a kind of detective work, where they confirmed with ethnographic evidence simple modest proposals about human action, rather than grand theories about humanity. Collecting evidence is detective work; but collecting is an approach to knowledge that assumes that ‘things add up’ to make an alternative explanation from the conventional understanding of events. From the facts, using the evidence, an anthropologist builds up a case about how people act and even how they think. An account takes shape through an accumulation of evidence. They use the evidence to show how people do act and what they say about how they live to elaborate a fuller picture of a time and place. At the critical point when the collected evidence takes shape or presents some regularity to the sense of the anthropologist, an interpretation of details or a rule of behaviour can be stated. By accumulating a wealth of detail an anthropologist prepares to make an argument, especially an argument against the common wisdom of the day.
