Anthropology (catch all)

[marct]

Hi Goesh,

Dr. Tyrrell referenced the Savage Minds blog. I browsed and read for a couple of months from Savage Minds about a year ago and I remember thinking to myself, "there is a fair amount of morality being injected here." I find the cited comments by Paul McDowell and Gerald Sider to be somewhat alarming, beyond disconcerting. I can't help but wonder what in their heart-of-hearts McDowell and Sider would truly have to say about the tactics of ELF and PETA for instance, in light of their blatant efforts to politicize their Discipline(s). Indeed! "We're trying to do something against mealy-mouthed policies that don't hold responsible those scum with Ph.D.'s who stand beside torturers" (Gerald Sider) This is the language of disciplined, objective, professional science and highly paid Academics? It sounds more Marxist avant-garde.

"Dr. Tyrrell"? Since when have you been so formal with me in your comments?

I definitely agree with you about the inclusion of "morality being injected" into the debates on Savage Minds. And believe me when I say it is not only there! The discipline has been politicized for years - sometimes for causes I would consider good, sometimes for causes I consider silly. BTW, Boas' work opposing race laws in the US in the 1920's - 1940's, his violent opposition to the Nazi takeover in Germany, and his insistence on mentoring and promoting women in academia are all examples of what I would consider to be "good causes".

I think that the major problem that has happened centers around an increasing marginalization of the discipline of Anthropology and the concomitant glorifying in marginal status by some people (not all). In part, this marginalization comes from a denying of advances in the biological sciences and an increasing refusal to consider biology as having anything to do with culture (this stems from a disciplinary reaction against the Nazi eugenics ideology).

I'm not going to write another paper here on it, so don't worry .

McDowell bemoans the poor, exploited Natives with this bitter polemic cited by Dr. Tyrrell:"Like the Government and its military, corporations don't give a rat's posterior about so-called target populations." Fine, but where was his voice and the voices of others like him when the poor Natives were being exploited by the likes of Ward Chruchill out of the Universtiy of Colorado? Here was a Prof. on the fast tenure track who not only fabricated and misrepresented information on Native Americans, he also plagarized and misrepresented himself as being an Indian. Boas wouldn't like that now would he? What I call the silence of the lambs on not only the part of Anthropologists but Academics in general over this fiasco and unprofessional product associated with a male bovine's posterior, can be directly attributed to the politicizing of Academia. In short, Ward Churchill was blatantly anti-American, anti-Government and a Bush hater, which is all that saved him from being publically and vigorously castigated. In fact, some universities, like Wisconsin, paid him to come and give a presentation. Talk about savage minds, Churchill actually had the audacity to claim heritage from a couple of different tribes and to this day, I am not aware of any outrage expressed over this from the Academic community. A number of Native Americans have spoken out over this of course but one would have expected at least some outrage coming from the Anthropology camp.

A very apropos question, Goesh, and one I can't really answer. I do know that some Anthropologists have spoken out against it but, in institutional settings where adopting that type of a moral stance is necessary for survival, it's not likely to happen that often. And, in many universities, the "anti-American, anti-Government and a Bush hater" trope is just normal <sigh>.

Marc