Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[marct]

Hi Tom,

Long time, no chat !

I come from the field of criminology via anthropology, and as primarily an academic, I can safely say there are lots of stupid things that the social sciences do which make it hard to "translate" into actionable or practical application.

Too frakin' true! Not the least of which, IMKO, is the artificial, status-driven distintcions between "applied" and "Theoretical" (the capitalization shows which one is usually considered more important ).

One is the tendency to typologize or come up with names for things. This is usually either an exercise in semantics or some kind of ego trip in which the academic hopes the name will catch on and they will be forever cited in the literature because, after all, most literature reviews go like this: "Jones et al. remark that there are three types... whereas Smith holds the following four types exist...."

Again, spot on, although I will quibble with you on the semantics issue. I think most academics don't take semantics seriously except as a game, which is something I deplore.

Two is the deliberate fascination with theory building, an exercise devoted mainly to the development of "puzzles" for other academics to work on; i.e., providing the "stuff" or starting points for theses and dissertations. Most of this theory-testing only produces R-squares of .20 or .30 at best, which means a large percentage of known factors remain unknown. That's what makes social science a soft science, I suppose. We aren't dealing with close tolerances or things with 999.99% certainty like chemistry.

Yup. There's also so much energy put into turf wars that even if you could get an R-square of, say, 50-60% in an area, you will get hammered if you cross disciplines to do it: THAT's applied work !

Yet, there are some good practical applications derived from the occasional theoretical insight. Most of these are obtained by luck or serendipity rather than by design. Some are substantive, and the better ones involve being a polymath rather than toiling in the theory-practice divide.

Personally, I've often found that the best insights come when you do some insanely radical discipline crossing as well. For example, my choir is now prepping Schutz's musicalishe exequiens (1637), and some of the structures really only "make sense", in the sense of evoking a particular emotion via words and music, if you know something about the battlefield weaponry and tactics and the historical situation of the prince whose funeral it was written for.

Cheers,

Marc