In a series well worth listening to on BBC Radio 4, Farrah Jarral studies the history of anthropology, and in one particular episode suggests that anthropology has come a long way since its roots studying distant tribes; in short, anthropology is everywhere.

Farrah interviews Professor Lucy Suchman, of Lancaster University, who describes the important shift that took place in the relationship between anthropology and the corporate world, when it was understood that anthropologists could study the needs of consumers in an effort to better understand their customers; and Chief Scientific Advisor to match.com, Helen Fisher, explains her preference for trying to answer the question how we’re all alike, rather than how we’re all different.

But it was Claire Straty, undertaking ethnographic field work with car drivers in Birmingham to understand how they use their time in the car whose comment resonated:

“Even when you look at someone and you assume they’re going to be boring, they’re not. The second I feel judgement . . . it means I don’t get them, there’s a gap in my own understanding of that person or their situation or the place they’re in.”

So true.