On Being a Good Neighbor, or Things I Learned in the Field

Abstract

This article explores the possibility of anthropology as Bildung, or self‐cultivation. As an educational mode, Bildung is focused on the moral education of students, encouraging them to broaden themselves in their encounters with others. I will discuss this process in terms of a lesson I learned from the highland Maya about being a good neighbor and will demonstrate how neighborliness can offer students a possibility for their own self‐cultivation.