Anthropology as spiritual discipline

This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise but also as a spiritual discipline. This is because ethnography enables us to imagine other ways of living in the world. The fieldwork, the writing, and even the reading of ethnographies provide people with some external perspective on themselves. Ethnography thus allows people to develop a more a nuanced sense of what, for them, should constitute the good.

Automated summary

This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a scientific comparative enterprise but also as a spiritual discipline, allowing us to imagine alternative ways of living and gaining an external perspective on ourselves, leading to a nuanced understanding of what constitutes the good.