Anthropology (catch all)

[FascistLibertarian]

Hey Marct

Honestly, I really dislike the idea of hiring academics based on their secular politics - left or right. The "Academy", it its broad and idealistic sense, should be a place of competing views with a guiding spirit of inquiry - not a PC or right wing ideology farm designed to produce mental clones.

I agree with you. I just feel that anthropology could use more small c conservatives in general. I am of course against making a % of profs that have to be liberal or conservative etc. As someone who has at least right of centre views you must understand what I mean about the majority of anthro profs being hard or soft left.

I think the answer is to have more conservatives apply for jobs as profs. I think if there were more conservative anthro and soc people the debate would be a lot better and more intellegent. Anthro is always going to be a left wing subject but a little balance is always nice.

As to their response to your article I have to agree with the idea of informed consent, disclourse, and following the code of ethics if you wish to be an anthropologist (last page).

If you wish to get anthropological training and follow these rules and work for the US Govt I am fine with that. If you wish to get anthro training and work for the govt and not follow those rules I am fine with that as well, I just dont think that those people are anthropologists (this is not automatically a bad thing, most people who get anthro undergrads probabaly dont become anthropolgists and many people who get masters in anthro didnt get undergrads in it).

Overall I found your article very intresting, the subject is not something I know that much about.

On another note, have you ever read or looked through The Chrysanthemum and The Sword? If so what do you think of it? I have read the start of it and flipped through it but am really torn about what I think about it, on the whole it teaches us a lot about the Japanese but to me it kinda of comes off as unhelp racist sterotyping. The Japanese couldnt live without their emperor and were different that anyone else etc.

[marct]

Hi FL,

I agree with you. I just feel that anthropology could use more small c conservatives in general. I am of course against making a % of profs that have to be liberal or conservative etc. As someone who has at least right of centre views you must understand what I mean about the majority of anthro profs being hard or soft left.

I agree with you that many are either hard or soft "left", no question. I'm just worried about a greater degree of politicization in the academy. Most of the profs I had were sort of "leftish" and it made no difference - they were more interested in ideas than in ideology, which is a position I really like.

I think the answer is to have more conservatives apply for jobs as profs. I think if there were more conservative anthro and soc people the debate would be a lot better and more intellegent. Anthro is always going to be a left wing subject but a little balance is always nice.

Why do you say anthro will always be a left wing subject? The majority of the idealist values that the discipline has had over the past century are about the status of humans rather than about politics per se in any left or right wing sense.

As to their response to your article I have to agree with the idea of informed consent, disclourse, and following the code of ethics if you wish to be an anthropologist (last page).

If you wish get anthropological training and follow these rules and work for the US Govt I am fine with that. If you wish to get anthro training and work for the govt and not follow those rules I am fine with that as well, I just dont think that those people are anthropologists (this is not automatically a bad thing, most people who get anthro undergrads probabaly dont become anthropolgists and many people who get masters in anthro didnt get undergrads in it).

There is a very old debate in the profession's literature over whether or not an individual can be a professional within a discipline if they are not a member of the association which claims to represent that discipline. It's an interesting debate, and both sides can be argued until the cows come home without changing anyones minds . Personally, I am enough of an individualist to believe that if you have the training and the mindset, you are a member of the profession even if you choose not to join a particular association.

Overall I found your article very intresting, the subject is not something I know that much about.

On another note, have you ever read or looked through The Chrysanthemum and The Sword? If so what do you think of it? I have read the start of it and flipped through it but am really torn about what I think about it, on the whole it teaches us a lot about the Japanese but to me it kinda of comes off as unhelp racist sterotyping. The Japanese couldnt live without their emperor and were different that anyone else etc.

Thanks . The Chrysanthemum and The Sword is, in my opinion, one of the best books of its type. As with all ethnographies, it has to be contextualized, so you may want to read the preface carefully to see exactly who it was aimed at - the military and political crowd in late 1944. It was really designed as a manual for running an occupation, and all the fieldwork was conducted in the US. Worth reading over very carefully, as are all of Benedict's books.

Anyway, I'm down to 40 minutes connectivity left and I'm not sure when I'll get to login next. Sayonara!

Marc

[selil]

Why do you say anthro will always be a left wing subject? The majority of the idealist values that the discipline has had over the past century are about the status of humans rather than about politics per se in any left or right wing sense.

The reason is that any academic discipline involving education, intelligence, and structured scholarly activity that is not considered a physical or chemical science is under attack by rabid conservatives. Many people get snookered into believing the lie rather than looking at the evidence, and it the lazy thinker who lets other people do the heavy lifting of cognition for them rather than doing their own thinking.

Our western culture for some time has been vilifying thinking and though I don't know the roots of it I can see the evidence of the behaviors.

[120mm]

I think it's more likely that as "social" sciences try to portray themselves as "hard" science, they build up a level of internal contradiction that critical thinkers start being deterred from entering the field.

It also doesn't help that academics are continually degraded into either a business or a "hoop" you jump through in order to get on with your life.

The reasons that "conservatives" attack academia, is probably because what they say is true: It has become a bastion of people who are limited by failed socialist/communist dogma, whose performance is self-adjudicated, and where they can deliver their screed to fairly defenseless minds of mush. Some of the poorest critical thinkers I have ever met are academicians.

[marct]

Hi Folks,

(I'm back home again, although still a touch jet lagged)

The reason is that any academic discipline involving education, intelligence, and structured scholarly activity that is not considered a physical or chemical science is under attack by rabid conservatives. Many people get snookered into believing the lie rather than looking at the evidence, and it the lazy thinker who lets other people do the heavy lifting of cognition for them rather than doing their own thinking.

Our western culture for some time has been vilifying thinking and though I don't know the roots of it I can see the evidence of the behaviors.

Selil, that's a somewhat jaundiced, if accurate, view of NA culture . I have a suspicion that the roots lie in several developments, including the sacralization of Science (i.e. turning science into a secular "religion") that happened in the 1940's and 50's (a bastard descendant of the Darwin debates of the 1860's) and the use of many social science tools to manipulate the general culture (e.g. via market research, opinion polling, etc. cf Quetelet's une treatise sur l'homme or, for the X-files fans, Michael Flynn's In the Country of the Blind).

To misquote my friend Stewart Clegg, it's all about power. If one group has the tools to manipulate another group, they will do what they have to do in order to make those tools more effective, including destroying the education system. There is an interesting evolutionary analogy in the biological world - look at Richard Dawkin's arguments about the development of the oil sack in the head of a sperm whale.

I think it's more likely that as "social" sciences try to portray themselves as "hard" science, they build up a level of internal contradiction that critical thinkers start being deterred from entering the field.

Yeah, that is part of it I suspect. The social sciences aren't really paradigms in Kuhn's sense; they are more of "schools". Trying to turn them into paradigms tends to make them fall apart, in part because of the experimentation requirement. About the only place, outside of totalitarian societies, where experimentation can take place is in either voluntary organizations (e.g. the commune movement, religious communities, etc.) or in private corporations. Since social scientists are usually prohibited from setting up any of these experimental "communities" by professional ethics codes, all that can be done is to analyze ones hat have been set up and use inference to analyze them.

The problem that you mention with critical thinkers being deterred from entering the various disciplines, to my mind, comes from a distinct lack of desire on the part of social scientists to admit that what we practice is an art (a school in Kuhn's terminology) and not a science in the paradigmatic sense. This is made even worse by not spelling out the specific logics of trying to develop paradigms that actually do operate in the social sciences, and by not rigorously analyzing the epistemologies that underly these models.

It also doesn't help that academics are continually degraded into either a business or a "hoop" you jump through in order to get on with your life.

Too true!

The reasons that "conservatives" attack academia, is probably because what they say is true: It has become a bastion of people who are limited by failed socialist/communist dogma, whose performance is self-adjudicated, and where they can deliver their screed to fairly defenseless minds of mush. Some of the poorest critical thinkers I have ever met are academicians.

Well, I won't deny that - I've met some pretty poor thinkers in academia as well . I have often, in recent years, felt that academia is suffering its own period of circumscribed decadence with the absinthe of 100 years ago replaced by screeching post-modernism and the overly rotted stench of communist doctrines dulling our senses. The few people inside the academy who I have viewed as trying to cut through the haze and malaise tend to not be taught any more - Gregory Bateson comes to mind.

Argh! Now I'm starting to get depressed . Time to stop this and et back to work....

Marc

[John T. Fishel]

Hi Marc--

And welcome back. I guess that while I generally agree with your comments I can't get so depressed by the situation in academia and the social sciences. The bright spots are found where academic leadership insists on civility in disagreement. I saw this in the School of International Service of American University under its Dean, Louis Goodman and I see it among my colleagues here at Oklahoma, and, of course, in this non-academic setting of the SWC.

The old debate of science or non-science I find somewhat sterile. Clearly, Astronomy is a science but one where no experimentation is possible. What one can do in the social sciences is frame questions carefully, build hyptheses which can be tested, and from that develop theories that both explain and predict in probabilistic terms. That all depends on careful observation and recording of data. Out of that effort, does one build a paradigm or a school? I don't think it matters very much. In practice, if what you define as a school is what I would call a paradigm, then if I want to talk to you I will gladly call it a school.

To drop back a bit, I find the debate about your article within your profession rather encouragin. Here are some guys who really disagree with your approach who are willing to do battle on your turf. Perhaps, this is the start of a dialogue within Anthropology that will set some new and more realistic ethical parameters - ones that can extend to the rest of the social sciences and other academic disciplines.

Cheers

JohnT

[selil]

I have an interesting relationship with academia. I'm a faculty member at my institution and a PhD student at another. There seems to be this boundary between technology and science and as I was discussing some of the issues we've been discussing in several threads on SWC my PhD adviser said "then create a course and reading list for us...." oops. My job this summer when I'm normally drinking Corona and trying to determine if the lawn will mow itself is instead to consider the philosophy of science. Egads.

Thanks Marct

[marct]

Hi John,

And welcome back.

Thanks . My head is still halfway somewhere in Europe and in singing mode.

I guess that while I generally agree with your comments I can't get so depressed by the situation in academia and the social sciences.

I'll admit that I find myself wandering in and out of being depressed with academia. Sometimes, I am actually quite optimistic about it, but that is usually when I dealing with people, colleagues and students, who have a passion for discovery.

The bright spots are found where academic leadership insists on civility in disagreement. I saw this in the School of International Service of American University under its Dean, Louis Goodman and I see it among my colleagues here at Oklahoma, and, of course, in this non-academic setting of the SWC.

I agree - I have certainly found that in The Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies at Carleton, with ICAN at UTS and here at the SWC. It makes all the difference.

The old debate of science or non-science I find somewhat sterile. Clearly, Astronomy is a science but one where no experimentation is possible. What one can do in the social sciences is frame questions carefully, build hyptheses which can be tested, and from that develop theories that both explain and predict in probabilistic terms. That all depends on careful observation and recording of data. Out of that effort, does one build a paradigm or a school? I don't think it matters very much. In practice, if what you define as a school is what I would call a paradigm, then if I want to talk to you I will gladly call it a school.

A couple of really good points, John. BTW, I would distinguish between a "school" and a "paradigm" based on a) predictive capacity (schools often have non-statistically significant predictive capacities) and b) dominance / acceptance within a discipline (20th century Physics is the oddball in Kuhn's thesis because there were two equally accepted paradigms).

I think that we are starting to see the gradual emergence of a paradigm in social sciences but, I suspect, that is because we are finally getting direct observational evidence of the way in which the brain operates.

To drop back a bit, I find the debate about your article within your profession rather encouragin. Here are some guys who really disagree with your approach who are willing to do battle on your turf. Perhaps, this is the start of a dialogue within Anthropology that will set some new and more realistic ethical parameters - ones that can extend to the rest of the social sciences and other academic disciplines.

One can hope . I had a long talk with my wife last night about ethics, morality, and the philosophy of science (red wine and gin and tonic will lead us into some intriguing areas ). I had been telling her about what I perceived as the shortcomings in modern theories of ethics (hearkening back to our earlier conversations here at SWC), and the trouble I was having with describing a model I could "see" in my mind, but only describe using the vocabulary of theology (and pretty mystical theology at that). No conclusions really came out of the discussion, but I think I am starting to get a better feel for how I can describe my perceptions. I think it's time to re-read Mary Douglas' How Institutions Think...

Marc