rivendellrose (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rivendellrose) wrote2010-12-07 02:16 pm
rivendellrose) wrote2010-12-07 02:16 pm
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further proof that I should have gone for a different degree...
The American Anthropological Association (the leading organization in anthropology in the US) has amended their mission statement to distance themselves from the practice of anthropology as science.
Well, that ought to be the last nail in the coffin of whether anthropology or sociology will win out as the study of human culture that will persist and continue to be worthy of consideration.
I've long had a feeling that there's a problem going on in anthropology, namely that while our little academic sibling sociology delves into broader, deeper, and more interesting subjects in the study of human society and takes advantage of all sorts of fascinating new blood from the fields of psychology, genetics, economics, statistics and science, anthropology... stares blindly around and sticks its collective head in the sand.
Now, to be fair, I kind of liked that I didn't have to do as much statistics in anthro as I did in soc, and I also liked that we tended in anthro to read more historical ethnography than, say, statistical studies from ten years ago. That was all part of why I majored in anthro instead of soc. So I have not exactly been part of the solution in this issue. But in the process of reading recent ethnography (for instance, Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day which, despite issues mainly stemming from the fact that I found it difficult to believe any intelligent gradudate student could be so fantastically naive as the author apparently was during his research, was a very fun and interesting non-academic book), I've noticed that all the good, new books that are actually getting attention... are filed under sociology, while the anthropology section of any bookstore I walk into consists almost entirely of Ruth Benedict, Margaret Meade, Thor Heyerdahl, and other books written pre-1980.
In short: If my field of academic study implodes, do I get a refund (or a re-do!) on my diploma? If I do, I think I'd like to study psychology this time. They're not ashamed of having science involved in their studies, and from the lectures I've been to they're a whole hell of a lot less in love with post-modern theory.
At least my English degree will never have this particular problem...
Well, that ought to be the last nail in the coffin of whether anthropology or sociology will win out as the study of human culture that will persist and continue to be worthy of consideration.
I've long had a feeling that there's a problem going on in anthropology, namely that while our little academic sibling sociology delves into broader, deeper, and more interesting subjects in the study of human society and takes advantage of all sorts of fascinating new blood from the fields of psychology, genetics, economics, statistics and science, anthropology... stares blindly around and sticks its collective head in the sand.
Now, to be fair, I kind of liked that I didn't have to do as much statistics in anthro as I did in soc, and I also liked that we tended in anthro to read more historical ethnography than, say, statistical studies from ten years ago. That was all part of why I majored in anthro instead of soc. So I have not exactly been part of the solution in this issue. But in the process of reading recent ethnography (for instance, Sudhir Venkatesh's Gang Leader for a Day which, despite issues mainly stemming from the fact that I found it difficult to believe any intelligent gradudate student could be so fantastically naive as the author apparently was during his research, was a very fun and interesting non-academic book), I've noticed that all the good, new books that are actually getting attention... are filed under sociology, while the anthropology section of any bookstore I walk into consists almost entirely of Ruth Benedict, Margaret Meade, Thor Heyerdahl, and other books written pre-1980.
In short: If my field of academic study implodes, do I get a refund (or a re-do!) on my diploma? If I do, I think I'd like to study psychology this time. They're not ashamed of having science involved in their studies, and from the lectures I've been to they're a whole hell of a lot less in love with post-modern theory.
At least my English degree will never have this particular problem...
no subject
What I don't like about it (and what I feel like this change is moving more toward) is the post-modernist theory and "there's no right answer" type of arguments, which... dude, sometimes there is a right answer. I know that culture is extremely complex, and I'm very much against being imperialist in our interactions with other cultures, but on the other hand I'm really against the sort of nonsense where people start defending FGM and murdering people for witchcraft or homosexuality because "it's their culture." Yeah, it's their culture, and it's wrong. For my money, that's different than our Victorian predecessors walking into other cultures and telling them to start dressing like civilized people and start worshiping the right god and speaking English. It's just not okay to stand by and say "we can't do anything" when people are actually being seriously hurt and traumatized.
...Sorry, rant. We got into a lot of big arguments about that kind of thing in my last few years of anthro, and it drove me up the wall because the moral questions made my head hurt and made me wish I could just curl up in a ball and make everything go away because I couldn't reconcile the ideas of protecting native cultures with the idea that sometimes those native cultures were really, seriously, horribly hurting people. It still drives me crazy, and I still feel like there's no good answer, but... I feel like there just has to be a line, you know?
Also, I feel like there's enough anti-science feeling around the world right now without my own field bowing to it, and that's making me really upset.
no subject
That sounds distressing. Sorry. :( I haven't actually gotten into those arguments, yet, mostly because I haven't taken classes where the cultures were particularly...violent, I guess? Most of what we've studied hasn't been controversial. Then again, I am only a sophomore.
The anti-science makes me sad. If my brain worked differently, I would be all over that. What worries me, though, is that this is really showing how people within the field don't even know where they stand with each other. And what this will lead to for those of us still in school. I mean, I would be totally fine not taking another physical class that is more primatology than humanity, but still.
no subject
If my brain worked differently, I would be all over that.
You and me, both, sister. I absorb theory like nobody's business, but once equations come into the matter it's like my poor little brain just shuts down. *Headdesk* It's awful. As for where it's going to lead the field, I know this debate's been brewing for a while (I remember it coming up in a few of my classes and articles I read in college), but I doubt it will really make a huge amount of difference for cultural anthro. If you were specializing in physical anthro it would probably be more of a worry, because those poor guys are really going to be wondering where their field fits now (my guess is they'll break off and go join the biologists, if things get too bad).
no subject
It really is an interesting dilemma, it just... yeah, gets distressing sometimes.
Sounds like all the interesting things. :P
Do you think they'll break into two separate big institutions? It sounds like some of the physical anthropologists are pissed and that they think the cultural anthropologists have been wanting them to leave for years.
no subject
They might? I'm not actually sure how these things happen. If I had to guess, I'd say that judging from what the AAA is doing they want to kick out the physical anthropologists (and probably by extension the archaeologists, who've been arguing for a long time that anthropology should be a science). Maybe that will mean closer contact between archy and phys. anth as they break off into their own thing, or maybe they'll get subsumed by some other science (biology seems like a good bet for phys. anth, but I really have no idea who could take in archaeology!).
It probably won't really matter except in terms of departmental squabbles and the structure and inclusion of groups in academic journals and conventions. That could lead to some groups having to make their own conventions and journals in order to get published, and it could lead to funding problems at various universities if the departmental stuff doesn't work out in a good way, but that happens. For an example, folklore and mythology didn't exist as departments at my university, and they were subsumed in the departments of Scandinavian studies and Classical (as well as Far East, Scandinavian, Near East, and American Indian) studies respectively. It got confusing sometimes, and it meant that people like me with an obsession with mythology in general had to hop around a lot, but it was okay. I suppose it's possible we could end up with the same kind of thing for archaeology. It's possible you could have to go to different departments for each region if you wanted to study archy, rather than going to the general department. That could lead to confusion, but probably no less than, for instance, the natural focuses that a given university's archaeology department gets based on where their professors did their work.