An Anthropological Lens

“I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?” That was one of the big names in anthropology, Margaret Mead, whose work on identity and culture made waves when it was first published. In this episode we talk to a Malaysian, Mohan Ambikaipaker about his journey into anthropology.