Anthropology (catch all)

[marct]

Anyway, this Post will probably be sent to the My Bloody Soapbox section of this forum......

Not yet . Actually, Academic ethics fit here, and that's what you are talking about.

On the issue of "lying on employment applications", I do have a couple of comments. First, I have never felt comfortable with the race declarations that may American universities use. Technically, they are not required but, according to a number of people I've talked with, you'd better list yours. The first time I filled one out, I was flumoxed: the definitions were so "weird" and poorly defined that I ended up checking off every box. Needless to say, the head of HR emailed me wanting to know what the frak I was doing. My comments back were along the lines of my skin is white, my family lived in Spain 1200 years ago (their definition of "hispanic"), by Mohawk law I am a Mohawk (long story), my family originated on the Asian steppes 2000 years ago, and all modern humans came out of Africa. Her response was, we only care about 3 generations back. These days I just tick off "White" .

Let's get back to academic ethics for a minute. One of the things that has always fascinated me about "academic ethics" is how plastic it is depending on who you are and what your supposed identity is. For example, when I was applying for PhD programs, I originally wanted to study how modern Witchcraft was being institutionalized (I'd done my MA on that topic). I was informed by the Chair of one department that a) I knew a lot about the topic (we'd talked for over an hour) and b) I would never get a job in academia with that specialization because I was a man.

To my mind, "ethics" should be based on transcendent principles. I honestly think that Boas tried to do this 100 years ago. Somewhere along the line, however, these principles got replaced with moral statements masquerading as principles. For example, when I started my PhD fieldwork, it was drummed into me how "privileged" a position the ethnographer is in, and how unequal a power relationship exists between the ethnographer and their subjects. Certainly, this is true in some cases but, in my case, I was doing my fieldwork in the offices of the largest accounting / consulting firm in Canada. There was an unequal power relationship all right, but I certainly didn't have the whip hand!

I truly doubt that, had I been a student of Boas in the 1920's or 1930's, I would have had to deal with either of these problems .

Marc

[120mm]

I love your "race" comment, Marc. I am allegedly Irish-Something, but because I am an anonymous adoptee, who really knows?

My eye-doctor studies ethnic anthropomorphic(sp?) characteristics, and claims my large and well-developed epicanthric eye folds suggest Asian or Middle-eastern descent.

Basically, in the racist world of "equal opportunity" you are what you say you are.

[goesh]

Had Ward Churchill claimed Black heritage based on remotely reported ancestoral connections, like he did with his Native American lineage, he would have been drummed out long ago, despite his vehement, Liberal anti-American stances. He claimed Cherokee then Choctaw heritage. How much traction would he have had if he claimed his great, great, great, great Grandma was a slave on Georgia plantation, then next year he connected himself to a Grandfather coming out of a South Carolina plantation? None. Some cultures simply have more clout than others.

[marct]

Hi 120mm,

I love your "race" comment, Marc. I am allegedly Irish-Something, but because I am an anonymous adoptee, who really knows?

My eye-doctor studies ethnic anthropomorphic(sp?) characteristics, and claims my large and well-developed epicanthric eye folds suggest Asian or Middle-eastern descent.

Basically, in the racist world of "equal opportunity" you are what you say you are.

It is an odd setup in a lot of ways . One of the things that Boas really pushed was to look at individuals rather than phenotypic groups. You're right about the self-declared categories but, it's interesting to note, that you can only use "approved" categories.

I got called by Statistics Canada for a survey of PhD graduates, and one of the questions was my "ethnicity". Being in a somewhat frustrated mood with such silly questions, I answered with my father's family ethnicity, which is Visigoth (yeah, we can track our family back about 1600 - 2000 years, or at least the clan). Well, Visigoth wasn't an "approved" ethnicity so they asked for another one. I gave them Mohawk, which is legally true by Mohawk law (not Canadian law) even though I have no Mohawk blood (long story). It probably ruined their stats but, if they are going to not accept a self-defined ethnicity that they don't list, then their survey isn't worth much.

One of the things I've noticed about PC academia is that there is a distinct game of victim poker going on. The more "your people" have been "abused", the higher the cards in the game. This really came out when I was doing my MA (in Canadian Studies). I realized very quickly that I had 5 strikes against me: white, male, straight, Anglophone, from Toronto. I was informed by one professor that I could never "really understand Canadian culture" because of my "limitations" - this despite the fact that my family has been in Canada for over 200 years and she, who of course did understand Canadian culture, was an American who came to Canada in the early 1970's with her draft dodging boyfriend . Needless to say, I became quite "sensitized" to the "racist, sexist and homophobic" attitudes of my "culture", i.e. PC academia .

The one good thing about that entire experience was that I developed a distinct distaste for PC morality masquerading as "academic research".

Marc

[Steve Blair]

We see this in history as well, Marc, especially with the rise of the post-modernist mafia. I actually had an article come back with "feedback" saying that I wasn't telling enough of the Native American perspective. The article, by the way, was an analysis of the operation patterns of a cavalry regiment. It had more to do with where companies were stationed and their patterns of activity as opposed to any sort of battle history. In fact, there really was no Native American side to show.

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of articles dealing with the Frontier Army period that will dismiss the Army out of hand and go on to focus on the NA perspective or some such. I like balance in my history, but when you start seeing forced "perspective" then I get a little touchy...

[marct]

Hi Steve,

We see this in history as well, Marc, especially with the rise of the post-modernist mafia.

"Mafia" - a good description . Personally, being an individualist, I've always tended to refer to the extreme post-modernist crowd as suffering from Post Modernist Syndrome (PMS); a psychological syndrome characterized by occasional outbreaks of ego-maniacal paranoia, irrational assaults, and the adoption of psychotic forms of reality occasionally accompanied by command hallucinations (e.g. "Foucault has said that...") .

I actually had an article come back with "feedback" saying that I wasn't telling enough of the Native American perspective. The article, by the way, was an analysis of the operation patterns of a cavalry regiment. It had more to do with where companies were stationed and their patterns of activity as opposed to any sort of battle history. In fact, there really was no Native American side to show.

I've had the same thing happen, both from the PMS crowd and from Marxist-Leninist true believers. What always bothered me about the Anthro PMS crowd was their habit of disregarding anything pre-Geertz (~1970). Their rejection of the older works in the discipline didn't come from actually reading them but, rather, from the assumption that they were flawed. Certainly some of them were, but their automatic rejection of all works that didn't meet their "purity laws" meant that they also neglected all of the insights available. Since this included all of the core philosophical assumptions behind the post-modernist movement, many of which had been in Anthro from the 1920's, I was frequently left feeling that the pomos were acting like people who, having just reinvented the wheel, were trying to prove to the world that they were the first to come up with it .

On the other hand, I've seen plenty of articles dealing with the Frontier Army period that will dismiss the Army out of hand and go on to focus on the NA perspective or some such. I like balance in my history, but when you start seeing forced "perspective" then I get a little touchy...

Too true! I have no problems with biases since they are inevitable. Still and all, I think that biases should be stated - e.g. "This article is concerned with cavalry tactics" - or an attempt should be made to present all sides involved. A forced perspective, and maybe we should translate that as a PC perspective that valorizes "victims", is a travesty that, to my mind, erodes core scientific values. As you can tell, I get a bit "touchy" as well .

Marc

[Stan]

Evening Marc !

Fieldwork, for a cultural Anthropologist, is a lot more than going to bars and watching people. The North American tradition is to spend a "decent" amount of time, e.g. a minimum of nine months, living with the group you are studying, and time periods, on and off, of twenty to thirty years working with
the same group are not that uncommon. Officially, this time is required to gather data and gain a good understanding of the more subtle and hidden aspects of the culture.

This is not something new, but for some reason, we ignore it with our tours overseas. The typical tour abroad is 2 to 3 years. The first 6 months is literally a waste, as the individual can barely drive home on his/her own. About the point that Dick or Jane is productive, the tour is half over and once he/she rotates, the knowledge (if anything tangilble) is gone.

I might be one of the few exceptions staying for 10 to 12 years in one place. I felt comfort in my surroundings and communicated well with my counterparts. So well, that I began to understand the social and cultural exchanges as if I was one of them. Only then, did I begin to realize how much easier life was among them.

Case in point (Tom pointed out to me): I hated the Zairois even after 10 years of teaching and observing them. Thieves! But I somehow managed to get along with them even during a civil war where the white man was the enemy. I have no idea how I did it and kept my sanity.

I hope you write more (I need the free anthro lessons)
Regards, Stan

[120mm]

I have to confess that I didn't read the article until now. But I've been down with a virus for the last 5 days and am going stir-crazy, and now that I've read it, my pulse has pegged at least three times.

After I calmed down, I am reminded of a young Anthropologist who came to live with us in a small midwestern town in the early 90s. She was from upstate "NWYARK", and was studying the small town midwest (nothing like working what you know, eh?). In particular, she was interested in the interaction of the old guys downtown, and spent a lot of time just hanging around them.

I let her run on the line for about 3 months before I shattered her little idealistic world. I was working in a Social Work field at the time, which is how she came to us, and one night over supper the conversation turned to her work. She discussed some of what she'd "learned" in her observations, and I let the hammer drop. I merely asked her how she was dealing with contaminating her subject. Long silence and look of confusion. "Contaminating my subject?" she responded. In short, I asked her how she thought that she was actually observing genuine "old man in a midwestern town" behavior, when she was 23, from upstate "Nwyark" and quite beautiful. She had no idea that old men in a small midwestern town might adapt their behavior when in the presence of a young, beautiful woman who was considered by the men to be their social superior AND was there for some ulterior purpose. She also had absolutely no clue about male-female interaction, as she had been thoroughly washed in the PC "men and women are no different" blood.

If she is an example of what passes for Anthro today, I wonder just how useful Anthropologists will actually BE for the military.