So You Want To Be An Anthropologist

Linda Soules, in So You Want To Be An Anthropologist, asks why people live as they do, then stays long enough for the answer. A custom that looks odd from the outside usually makes sense from the inside, and the rules you grew up with can seem just as strange once you notice them. You are part of what the field studies.

From there, the work happens in daily life, whether the place is a dig or a neighborhood ten minutes from home. Living with a community and paying attention is how the learning happens. The harder record belongs in that account. Remains and sacred objects were taken without permission, and giving them back is shown as slow work that is still going on. A straight-faced report on ordinary grown-up habits, written as if the writer had just arrived in the house, lets a reader practice that kind of noticing before any degree is required.

Soules keeps that whole stretch readable. She tells a joke about licking a crumb to see if it is bone, then describes culture shock in the same plain words. Each chapter is brief enough to finish in one sitting, so the harder parts can be read on their own at an easy pace. A glossary at the back explains the new words, and the prose trusts a young reader to continue.

That reader is often ten to fourteen and already watching people. An adult reading along will want to talk it over. This book lets the hard record and the everyday noticing share the same pages. Give it to the one who has too many questions.