[Social anthropology and anthropologists of the past and present: from exoticism and the imagined reciprocity to everyday inequalities].

In this article we examine two moments in anthropology. First we characterize anthropology as a subject specialized in the study of "the others", which developed in those countries that led the European and North American colonial expansion. We underline the links that existed between this historical context, the features of ethnography -the theoretic-methodological approach developed by anthropologistsand the concept of culture, that became the core of this discipline. Secondly, we intend to further the understanding of some trends of contemporary anthropology: the fact that nowadays anthropologists work on the societies they belong to, their operations (documenting the undocumented, unveiling dayliness, de-naturalizing), which find their roots in earlier anthropology. It also highlights the shift of focus from reciprocity relations to power and inequity relations. Finally it sheds light on some original developments in Latin American anthropology, considering some cases in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.