"Ethnology is in the sadly ludicrous, not to say tragic position, that at the very moment when it begins to put its workshop in order, to forge its proper tools, to start ready for work on its appointed task, the material of its study melts away with hopeless rapidity."-Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

"If social analysts realize that they cannot be perfectly 'clean,' they no more should become as 'dirty' as possible than airline pilots, invoking the limitations of human fallibility, should blind their eyes." -Renato Resaldo, Culture and Truth, 1998