rivendellrose: (drama)
[personal profile] rivendellrose
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...

Date: 2010-12-07 11:31 pm (UTC)
ext_18428: (daydream)
From: [identity profile] rivendellrose.livejournal.com
I didn't have a whole lot more exposure to soc than you did, to be honest.

But I'm curious - your definition seems like it could work, but I'm still not sure how we would draw lines. What would you give as examples of the two? It seems like ethnography would fall on the sociology side of your definition, and maybe the study of particular facets of the culture (religion, child-rearing, etc) would fall in the other? But it's awfully hard to look at those aspects without looking at how they affect the people within the culture.

Date: 2010-12-07 11:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] velvet-midnight.livejournal.com
From what I've read--I haven't taken the Classics of Ethnography class yet--ethnography is the detailing of what happens day-to-day, what people do, how people act. Right? That is a detailing of the culture, and yes, the individual effects are part of that with social status and what that entails, but it's not focused on that. From what I've seen of my soc class, we've focused a lot on political aspects and "special groups," a la women, the "poor," farmers. We didn't spend a lot of time on the whole thing, just pieces and parts.

I do agree that they're very closely tied and, much as I railed about it at the beginning of the semester, it's good to see it both ways. My soc class has been all about the political and economic connections, which I'm not sure is indicative of sociology as a whole.

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