Anthropology Questions to Ask
These are anthropology questions to ask about any group of people, your own family included, whether you are getting ready for a class discussion, narrowing an essay topic or interviewing someone for a first fieldwork assignment. They start with what the field asks about humans as a species and as learners of culture, then move through kinship, ritual and belief, exchange and objects, and language and the body. The last group is aimed at the person asking: how you are seen, whose account you have and how much your evidence can carry.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Being Human
What do humans do that no other animal does, and how sure are we of the list?
Why ask it
Tool use and local traditions passed from one generation to the next were each put forward as ours alone and then reported in other animals, chimpanzees among them. Grammar, cooking and knowledge that piles up over generations are the candidates still argued over, so have the seminar pick one and say what observation would knock it off the list.
What do all human groups seem to do, and where does this group do it differently?
Why ask it
The usual candidates are language, a way of reckoning relatives, rules about who may marry and something done for the dead. Test each candidate against a case that seems to break it, because anthropology tends to learn more from the exception than from the rule.
How does a child here learn the right way to eat, sit and speak to an elder?
Why ask it
Look for whether the teaching is done by instruction, by teasing, by imitation or by a sharp correction in front of others. Adults rarely remember being taught, so ask them about the last time they corrected a child and what the child had done.
Which practice here would you find hardest to defend, and how do the people who keep it explain it?
Why ask it
Write their explanation first, in terms they would accept as fair, and only then your own view. Understanding a practice and approving of it are separate steps, and a seminar goes wrong when the two get merged in either direction.
How do people here get their living, and what does that set for the rest of the year?
Why ask it
A way of making a living tends to bring a calendar with it, along with a pattern of who is away from home and an idea of what a good worker is. Start from the hardest month: who does what in it, who goes away, and how many festivals and weddings are timed to fall outside it.
Is race a fact of biology or a way societies sort people, and how would you tell the difference?
Why ask it
The field's usual answer is that human bodies do vary, but gradually and one trait at a time, in ways that do not match the handful of boxes on an official form. Check it by finding out how two countries would classify the same person, or how one country's categories changed from one census to the next. A classification can be invented and still shape a life, so keep both halves of the question open.
What can bones and teeth tell us about a people that their own records leave out?
Why ask it
This is the biological side of the field: a skeleton can carry traces of diet, illness, heavy work and injury, including for people nobody wrote about. Push the question both ways by asking what remains can never show, such as what anyone believed, and who should have a say over what is done with them.
If only the durable objects from this place lasted a thousand years, what would an archaeologist get wrong?
Why ask it
Stone, fired clay and metal tend to last, while cloth, wood, song and talk mostly do not. Try it on your own kitchen: list what would survive in the trash and what a stranger would conclude about your meals, then note everything that mattered and left no trace.
Where does this group draw the line between us and everyone else, and who can cross it?
Why ask it
Listen for the marker people reach for first: a language, a food, a religion, descent or a place. A line that can be crossed by marrying in or learning the language is a different kind of boundary from one fixed at birth, so ask about someone who did cross.
What has changed here within living memory, and who says it was better before?
Why ask it
Put it to the oldest and the youngest person you can reach and compare the lists. A custom described as ancient sometimes turns out to have begun with somebody's grandmother, which is worth knowing before you call anything traditional.
Kinship
Who counts as kin here, and how does an outsider become one?
Why ask it
Birth is only one way in. Marriage, adoption, godparenthood, fostering and years of eating at the same table are each recognized somewhere, and the hard cases, a stepchild or a long-time boarder, show whether family is thought of here as blood, as care or as both.
What do you call your mother's brother, and is it the same word as for your father's brother?
Why ask it
Relatives who share a word are often expected to be treated alike, and a split in the vocabulary usually marks a split in duties. English uses uncle for both, so an English speaker may need the chart drawn before the question makes sense. Collect the terms first and ask about behavior second.
Do a family's name, house and land pass down the father's side, the mother's side or both?
Why ask it
The stated custom and the actual division can differ, so work from one real case: who got what after a grandparent died, and who felt passed over. Inheritance law varies from place to place, so ask how it works there and whether families follow it or settle things among themselves.
Who is a person expected to marry here, and who is out of bounds?
Why ask it
Most groups have a too close and a too far, and both are worth mapping. The quickest way in is a marriage that caused talk: ask what the objection was and who raised it.
What passes between the two families when a couple marries, and in which direction?
Why ask it
Follow money, gifts, livestock, labor and the cost of the wedding itself, and note who pays for each. Describe the flow before judging it: the direction shows what a marriage is understood to create or move, and the people involved rarely describe it as a purchase.
Who sleeps under one roof here, and who eats from the same pot?
Why ask it
The two lists often differ, and the cooking pot or the shared budget is frequently the better definition of a household. Follow up by asking where a newly married couple goes to live, since that one rule shapes who a child grows up beside.
Who raises a child here besides the parents?
Why ask it
Two tests mark the real circle of care: who the child runs to when hurt, and who is allowed to scold. Expect a grandparent, an older sister, a neighbor or a paid sitter to pass one test and not the other, and note which.
At what point does a child become an adult here, and what marks it?
Why ask it
The markers on offer rarely agree: someone can be an adult by law, by ceremony or by first wage and still be treated as a youth until they marry or have a child. See whether a daughter and a son get the same answer, and what word there is for a grown person who has not married.
Which of the dead are still treated as part of the family, and what is done for them?
Why ask it
Look for graves that are visited, names given again to a newborn, a photograph that is greeted, food set out on certain days. Go gently and not with someone recently bereaved; a good opening is to ask whose name a child carries.
Ritual and Belief
What happens at a wedding or a funeral here, step by step?
Why ask it
Ask for the sequence before the meaning. Participants usually agree on the order of events and disagree about what each part stands for, and that disagreement is a finding, so record three explanations of one step if you get them.
Midway through a rite of passage, no longer one thing and not yet the next, what is a person allowed and forbidden to do?
Why ask it
The in-between stage often has its own rules: seclusion, plain or special clothes, silence, a temporary name. An engagement, the first weeks of military training and the days between a death and a burial are good cases to test it on.
Which parts of a ritual must be done exactly right, and which can be improvised?
Why ask it
The fixed parts show what people think does the work: the words, the person officiating, the place or the timing. The best evidence is an occasion when something went wrong. Did it have to be done again before it counted?
What counts as unclean or out of place here, and how is it put right?
Why ask it
Dirt in this sense is about a thing in the wrong category more than about germs: shoes on a table, a hand kept for one task and used for another. The remedy measures how serious it is, so find out whether a wash is enough or whether it takes waiting, an apology or a specialist.
When something goes badly wrong, how do people explain why it happened to this person and not another?
Why ask it
How it happened and why it happened to me are two questions, and people who accept a medical or mechanical account of the first often still ask the second. Fate, luck, a god's will, envy and a wrong left unrepaired are all answers you may hear, and none of them needs ranking in your notes.
Who is trusted to heal, bless or advise here, and where does that trust come from?
Why ask it
One family may consult several kinds of specialist for the same trouble, so trace a single case: who was approached first, who second and who paid. Then find out what makes each one worth listening to, whether training, descent, a calling, an office or plain reputation, and keep your own view of the choice out of the notes.
What are people here expected to believe, and what do they do in practice?
Why ask it
Practice can be watched and belief cannot, so start with attendance, fasting, giving and what is kept in the house. Someone who takes part without believing is not a hypocrite to be caught out; ask what taking part does for them.
Which stories are told about how this group began, and on what occasions?
Why ask it
Note who is permitted to tell the story and what it is brought out to settle: a claim to land, a rank, a rule about marriage. It works on a nation, a religious community, a company or a family, and the version told to children is often the clearest.
What will people here not eat, and what reason do they give?
Why ask it
The gap between what a body could digest and what counts as food is one of the easiest places to see culture at work. Four people at one table can refuse the same dish on grounds of religion, disgust, health and respect for the animal, so collect the reasons one person at a time, and add what is eaten only at a feast.
Exchange and Things
When must a gift be given here, when must it be accepted, and how soon does it have to be returned?
Why ask it
Giving, receiving and repaying are the three obligations the classic studies of the gift begin from. Listen to what is said about someone who refuses a present, and about someone who pays it back at once and to the exact value, which in many places reads as wanting the relationship over.
What should never be bought or sold here, even though someone would pay?
Why ask it
Every group seems to keep something out of the market, whether land, a vote, a seat of honor or a neighbor's help at harvest. The border shows at the moment someone is insulted by an offer of money for a favor, so collect one such story.
Who feeds whom at a feast, and what does the host gain?
Why ask it
A feast is one of the ways wealth gets turned into standing, and the guest list is the record of it. Get three names from the most recent big meal: who had to be invited, who was served first and who would have been offended to be left out.
With whom do people here keep exact accounts, and with whom would counting be an insult?
Why ask it
A common pattern is no counting inside the household, a loose balance among neighbors and friends and a fixed price for strangers. Where a person sits on that scale tells you how close they are, so watch for the relative who is charged and the stranger who is not.
Whose work here is called work, and whose is called helping?
Why ask it
Go task by task: who fetches water or walks the children to school, who handles money, who would be laughed at for doing a given job. A written diary of one person's day, hour by hour, shows more than a general answer about men's and women's roles.
What gives a person standing here: wealth, generosity, age, descent, learning or something else?
Why ask it
Start with a name, the person everyone would point to, and then how they came by their position. Notice whether respect goes to the one who has the most or the one who has given the most away, and whether standing can be lost.
When one family wrongs another here, who steps in, and what has to be handed over before it counts as settled?
Why ask it
What closes the matter is the thing to watch for: a payment, a public apology or a shared meal each points to an aim, whether to punish someone or to get two families speaking again. Many disputes pass through an elder or a religious figure before any court, and formal law differs by country, so ask how the official route works there and when people avoid it.
Which objects here are kept and never sold, and who will get them next?
Why ask it
Take one object and ask for its biography: who made it, every hand it passed through and what was said when it changed hands. An argument over who inherits a ring or a cooking pot is often an argument about who the true heir of the family is.
How is a house laid out here: where is the front, who sleeps where, and how far in may a guest go?
Why ask it
Sketch a floor plan with the person and mark where a visitor, a relative and a stranger would each stop. The plan tends to show the lines between public and private, elder and younger, and cooking and receiving, and you should ask about rooms instead of asking to be shown them.
What do clothes and ornaments here tell a stranger at a glance?
Why ask it
The mistake is easier to describe than the rule, so begin with what would be wrong to wear to a funeral or a job interview. From there, work out what can be read from across a street: age, marital status, region, religion, rank or mourning.
Language and Body
Which distinctions does this language force a speaker to make that yours does not?
Why ask it
Hope for an answer like a formal and a familiar you, separate words for an older and a younger brother, or a verb ending that shows whether the speaker saw the thing happen. Someone who speaks both languages can tell you which one makes it impossible to stay vague, which is a smaller and safer claim than saying a language decides what its speakers can think.
How do you address someone older, someone younger and someone you have just met?
Why ask it
Every choice between a title, a first name, a nickname and a family word such as auntie for a non-relative sets a rank and a distance. Write down the moment someone invites you to change the form, and what was said when a child or a newcomer got it wrong.
Who switches language or accent here, and what does the switch do?
Why ask it
Catch the exact moment: a joke, a rebuke, a secret kept from a child, a show of respect to an official. A person who can tell you which language they use for anger, for prayer and for counting money has given you a map of where each one lives.
Who is allowed to tease whom here, and who must be treated with formal respect?
Why ask it
In many groups joking is licensed between particular pairs, such as cousins or a grandparent and grandchild, and careful distance is required between others, such as in-laws. Chart who jokes with whom at one family gathering; a person nobody teases may be very senior, or may not be counted as fully inside.
What is never said outright here, and how does the message get across anyway?
Why ask it
Pick a hard message, such as turning down an invitation or asking for money back, and find out how it travels without the words. A proverb, a go-between, a pointed silence or a remark made to a third person in earshot may carry it.
How close do people stand, who may touch whom, and where do the eyes go in conversation?
Why ask it
This is better watched than asked, since most people cannot state their own distances. Your own discomfort is a measuring tool here: note the moment you step back or look away, and compare how two friends stand with how a junior stands before a senior.
How do people here sit, carry a load and sleep, and who showed them how?
Why ask it
These are learned so early that they feel like anatomy, which is why a deep squat or a bundle balanced on the head looks effortless until you attempt it. Try the sitting or the carrying yourself, with permission and a light load, because the laughter and the corrections show you which part is skill.
What counts as being ill here, and who decides that someone is sick enough to stop working?
Why ask it
Being sick is a social position as well as a bodily state: someone has to grant it, and it brings duties to rest and duties to care. Collect the name the trouble has at home and the name it has at the clinic, and write both down without trying to diagnose anything.
What is done to the body itself to mark a change of status: a first haircut, a piercing, a tattoo, a shaved head?
Why ask it
Find out at what age it happens, who performs it and whether anyone may refuse. A mark that cannot be undone suggests a status meant to be permanent, while a haircut that grows out suits a stage a person is expected to leave.
How are grief, anger and joy supposed to be shown here, and by whom?
Why ask it
Loud mourning is required in some places and composure in others, and the rule often differs for men, women and children. Never read quiet as lack of feeling; ask what was said about someone who showed too much or too little at a recent funeral.
The Observer
Who do people here think you are, and what does that change about what they tell you?
Why ask it
You will be given a role whether or not you choose one: student, inspector, missionary, journalist, somebody's guest. Have a person you trust tell you what has been said about you, and write it into your account, since it explains which doors opened.
Whose version are you hearing, and who have you not been able to talk to?
Why ask it
The first people to welcome a stranger are often those with spare time, a second language or a reason to want an outside ally. Tally the people in your notes by age, sex and rank; a description built on five talkative men is a description of what five men say.
What did you watch people do, and what were you only told they do?
Why ask it
Stated rules describe the ideal, and the interesting material sits where what you watched departs from it. For each such gap, go back with a question about one named occasion, and put it as curiosity, not as catching anyone out.
Which words in your notes are theirs, and which are yours?
Why ask it
The headings on this page, kinship, ritual, exchange and the rest, are the analyst's boxes, and the people you are describing may cut the world differently. Record their term and everything it covers; if one of their words spans two of yours, that mismatch is a result to report.
What surprised you in the first week, and what had you been taking for granted?
Why ask it
Write surprises down at once, because within a month the strange becomes ordinary and you lose the ability to see it. Each surprise points back at an assumption from home, which is the half of the comparison most write-ups leave out.
What do the people you are studying get out of it, and what would they say about what you wrote?
Why ask it
Decide before you begin what goes back: copies of photographs, a plain-language summary, a share of the work. If the project is for a class or a degree, ask what consent and ethics review your institution requires, and where you can, read a draft to the people in it.
What have you been asked to keep out of your notes, and will you honor that?
Why ask it
Some knowledge belongs to one family, one sex or the initiated, and being told it does not make it yours to publish. Settle your answer before anyone confides in you, and remember that in a small place a changed name does little to hide a person.
What would you have concluded if you had stayed twice as long, or come in another season?
Why ask it
A harvest month and a lean month, a festival week and an ordinary one can look like two different communities. For a class project that lasts one afternoon, the honest version is to name the day and the occasion and claim nothing about the rest of the year.
Using these questions in class, on paper and in the field
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Matching the question to the task
In a seminar
Bring one question from Being Human and one case to argue it with, from a reading or from your own household. Anthropology makes its arguments through particular cases, so a claim about all people that cannot survive one counterexample from the room is the discussion you want.
In an essay plan
Narrow the question until it names a group, a practice and something to compare it with. 'How do gifts create obligation' is a topic. 'What does a wedding gift oblige a guest to do in two communities, and what happens to a guest who ignores it' can be answered from sources.
In an ethnographic interview
Change the general question into one about a particular occasion. 'Who is invited to a wedding here' gets the rule, while 'tell me who came to the last wedding in your family' gets names, seating and the cousin who was left out.
On your own household first
Before putting a question to anyone else, answer it for the home you grew up in. If you cannot say who had to be told first about a death, or what your family will not eat and why, you have learned how much the question asks of a stranger.
Putting the questions to real people
Say who you are and what it is for
Open by saying who you are, what the work is for, who will read it and whether names will appear. Rules on consent and recording are set by schools, universities and sometimes by the community itself, so ask what applies where you are before the first interview, not after it.
Ask about the last time
People tend to describe one specific event more accurately than they describe a custom. Follow every general answer with the most recent example, and note where the example departs from the rule the person just gave you.
Give them something to point at
A kinship chart, a floor plan or a seating plan drawn together on one sheet does what ten questions cannot. People correct a drawing freely, and the corrections are the data.
Keep their words
When someone uses a term you do not know, keep it in their language in your notes and ask for three examples of it. Translating on the spot into the nearest word you own is how a finding gets lost.
Take a refusal as an answer
A subject someone will not discuss, a room you are not shown or a question that gets a laugh and a change of topic all mark something that matters. Write down that it happened and move on without pressing.
Errors that spoil a first account
The village outside time
Writing 'they marry their cousins' in the present tense makes a people sound fixed forever. Give the year, say who told you, and mention what the grandparents did differently.
One voice for everyone
A single helpful person, often educated, bilingual and unusual, can end up standing for a whole community. Say whose account each claim rests on, and seek out a person of another age, sex or standing before you generalize.
Strange there, natural here
If a gift at a distant wedding is 'ritual exchange' and a gift at your cousin's wedding is just a present, the analysis is lopsided. Ask every question of your own side with the same seriousness.
Your theory in their mouths
Saying a feast exists to bind the group together is an analyst's reading, and the hosts will give other reasons. Report their reasons as theirs and your reading as yours, in separate sentences.
Understanding mistaken for agreement
Explaining a practice in its own terms is the method, and it commits you to nothing about whether the practice is good. Finish the description first, and then you are free to say what you think and why.
Getting from notes to an argument
Write before you sleep
Notes made the same evening hold the order of events, the exact phrases and who was standing where. By the next week memory has tidied the day into a story that agrees with what you expected.
Three kinds of line
Mark each line as something you saw, something you were told or something you are guessing. When you draft, the guesses are the first sentences to check and the seen lines are the ones to build on.
One thing across two cases
An account of one group becomes anthropology when it is set beside another: two weddings, two households, the same market in two seasons. Choose a single thing to compare and hold the question steady across both.
Tell the reader where you stood
Give a short paragraph on how long you were there, who introduced you, what language you worked in and what you could not see. A reader trusts an account more, not less, when its limits are stated.