Anthropologist

In actual fact, it is hard to see how anyone could defend the prescriptive approach. In any other field of enquiry, it would be seen as patently absurd. What would we say of the social anthropologist who, instead of describing the way a given society is, sets about prescribing the way he thinks it ought to be? (We'd probably suggest he ought to give up Anthropology and take up Politics!) [...]

In traditional anthropology, somebody goes to another country, says: “How fascinating these people are! How interesting their tools and their culture are,” and then they write a paper, and maybe a few other anthropologists read it, and we think these cultures are very exotic.

But again, this conflates global geographic variation with race, says Alan Goodman, a biological anthropologist at Hampshire College.