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rivendellroseThe 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...
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Date: 2010-12-08 12:24 am (UTC)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.