However it remains a hallmark of social anthropological research that it is based on prolonged fieldwork, during which researchers involve themselves fully in the activities of the communities in which they are living so that they can get to know them from the 'inside'. And it is above all the inside view, with its sensitivity to the fine-grained texture of social and cultural life, that makes this kind of research so special. Yet, what is really distinctive about anthropology is that we do not so much study people as study with people. And that can lead us to perceive our own world quite differently too. But what anthropologists call 'the field' is just some place, somewhere, in this one world we all inhabit.
People can change where they live, they can move around, but they are always living somewhere.
So wherever you may live, you are in the field, surrounded by people you know, things you have used, and familiar landscapes. Life is fieldwork, fieldwork is life, and the anthropological problem of understanding other people's understandings is no different, in principle, from the problem that all of us face in relating to the people around us. Yet there is still something special about being an anthropologist. It lies in a certain attitude, which you carry with you wherever you go and bring into whatever you may be doing. The anthropologist, if you will, is continually looking over his or her shoulder, towards the possibility of alternative ways of being.