Anthropology (catch all)

[marct]

Hi Steve,

You also have to remember one of the axioms of PC research - you're doing the work to confirm what you already know is true.

Oh, too true! What's that old saying? "Everything has to happen immediately for puppies, 2 year olds and reformers of any age"? I'd add PC theologians to the list. BTW, it this exact axiom that has led me to refer to them as "theologians" - they "know" the "Truth" and anything that disagree with it is "false consciousness".

One of the most irritating things I've encountered in the history PC community is the smug conviction that the practitioner of PC history somehow has a unique insight to truth just because they happen to be PC or of a specific gender/racial subset. By this I mean that "only a woman can truly understand Women's History", but she is somehow also qualified by this unique insight to pass unquestionable judgment on any other subset of history she happens to encounter (to include African-American History, Native American History, Political Science, and anything else she latches onto). By the same token, this "researcher" (although often of upper-middle class origins) is somehow qualified by gender or race to understand the situation faced by those of a much lower social class, whose lifestyle she may never have seen up close, let alone experienced.

Yupper, that's definitely one of the big ones. One of the problems I've always had with it is that it is actually antithetical to the entire idea of verstehen; which leads me to wonder how any cultural Anthropologist with two neurons to ru together could actually support it!

Sorry...PC always gets my pulse rate spiked.

Mine too . Someday, when we're in an F2F situation, I'l recount what one of the great female Anthropologists told me (it's on how to distinguish a "true" post-modernist from a post-modernist manquee, but it can't be posted on a public board ).

Marc