Anthropology is defined by comparing embedded concepts, not by fieldwork

Evidence

In my view anthropology is more than a method, and it should not be equated—as it has popularly become—with the direction given to inquiry by the pseudoscientific notion of “fieldwork.” … What is distinctive about modern anthropology is the comparison of embedded concepts (representations) between societies differently located in time or space. The important thing in this comparative analysis is not their origin (Western or non-Western), but the forms of life that articulate them, the powers they release or disable. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 77