It has a depressive effect on the anthropological endeavour to adopt the view that social facts are the results of (previous [or spacially separate]) critical events rather than being themselves critical: it is more productive to assume... that everything influencing the shape of an event must be there asserting itself at the moment of the event.

Barth, Fredrik. 1981. Introduction. In Process and Form in Social Life. London: Routledge, p.6.