Human situations need to be over-explained [or killing a joke as an anthropologist]

There is a joke I heard in Turkish-speaking circles when people want to ridicule sciences in general or any serious attempts to understand what human is. It goes like this:

A group of academics get stranded out in a rural area. They find a village nearby, and a villager graciously offers to host the academics for the night. They are welcome into the main room of the village house, which is heated by a stove. The stove, however, stands on a stack of bricks. While waiting for some tea and treats, academics speculate on why the stove stands on bricks.

The sociologist goes: “I am sure this is a community-wide practice, as this part of the country is very community-oriented.”

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