Tim Ingold

The proper subject of anthropology is humanity. That much is easily stated, but it is more difficult to envision how such a science of humanity should be constructed. ... To study humanity, you would say, is not just to probe the idiosyncrasies of a particular species, of one minute segment of the world of nature. It is rather to lay open for investigation that world interminably multiplied in the exuberantly creative minds and activities of people everywhere.

... The best way to demonstrate this difference is by looking at the ways in which ideas about humanity and human beings have shaped, and been shaped by, ideas about animals. For those of us reared in the tradition of Western thought, ‘human’ and ‘animal’ are terms rich in association, fraught with ambiguity, and heavily laden with both intellectual and emotional bias. From classical times to the present day, animals have figured centrally in the Western construction of ‘man’—and we might add, of Western man’s image of woman. Every generation has recreated its own view of animality as a deficiency in everything that we humans are uniquely supposed to have, including language, reason, intellect and moral conscience. And in every generation we have been reminded, as though it were some startling new discovery, that human beings are animals too, and that it is by comparison with other animals that we can best reach an understanding of ourselves.