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Timothy Asch, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Visual Anthropology at the University of Southern California

While studying at Columbia University, he worked as a teaching assistant for Margaret Mead who got him interested in the potential use of visual media for instruction. He was intrigued by this field, and that’s probably why he made this his life long passion and career.

Napoleon Chagnon is a Professor of Sociobiology at the University of California, Santa Barbara

This article is the beginning of Ortner’s latest project: American ethnography and the examination of the relationship between class and capitalism in America. When she began her career anthropology, Ortner notes that research in America was unheard of. Since the advent of postmodernism, reflexivity and the exploration of experience that form an anthropologist's perspective have gained greater validity. Ortner’s current research is thus follows her high school classmates, whose culture helped form her perspective.

his was a previously inarticulated method of cultural analysis, but one nonetheless used frequently by anthropologists. Her purpose was to explicate this analysis before applying it to her monograph on the Sherpas on which she was simultaneously working.

There are two types of main symbols: summarizing and elaborating. Summarizing symbols, not surprisingly, combine several complete ideas into one symbol or sign that the participant perceives. This single symbol stands for all of these ideas simultaneously. This summarizing occurs often with sacred symbols such as the American flag. Summarizing symbols act as a catalyst in order to make an impact on the respondent.