egalitarian ethos leads them to make peace by compensation payments
more readily than happens with the Pathans. Maximization and power,
then, mean different things in different societies, so that power is not a
standard quantum, but is also a matter of qualities. Marxist theory would
make the Hageners more like the Pathans; trying to make the Pathan
egalitarian would make them more like the Hageners than they are.
An unismatic anthropology is not a-theoretical or anti-theoretical. It
simply is one that will put theory to its uses rather than the theory putting
things to its use. Here we arrive also at one of the things we mean by
talking about a mindful anthropology. It would be mindless to imagine
that we can do without theory, just as it is mindless to suppose that theory
must dominate data. A mindful practice is to bring theory and description
together in such a way that a further truth or insight emerges from their
interactions.
9 AGAINST -ISMS 87