In the womb, from birth, and onwards, we are engaged in relationships which shape or influence our ability to act, relationships that form the groundwork for our current and future capacities. As social beings or social persons, we can be understood, from one anthropological angle at least, as adding up to the sum of our relationships. And herein lies an important difference between the ethnographer and the novelist. Whereas a novelist will typically focus our attention on an individual, their struggles and motivations, a similar starting point will take the ethnographer in an abstract direction. From the immediate features of a life or lives, an anthropologist will extract key elements and use them to understand and generalise social aspects of seemingly individual capacities and motivations.

//Huon Wardle & Paloma Gay y Blasco, How to Read Ethnography