Kambiz has a post over at Anthropology.net, On Human Genetic Variation and Human Identity, where he riffs on the discussion that Martin & I just had about the intersection of genes and culture. More broadly it is a rumination upon the methods and paradigms which might be brought to bear on the study of humanity, broadly interpreted. In the comments I have also had some harsh things to say about cultural anthropology. In short: I think most cultural anthropology is crap. But I should put it in context and be clear about my sentiment: I prefer fiction to literary criticism. In other words, pure reporting of facts on particular societies is interesting to me, and I'm a pretty avid reader of ethnographic works. That being said, when scholars move from reportage to interpretation they use Theories which often tell us more about the state of American (or European) academe than they do about alien societies. I am aware that some people enjoy literary criticism, so I'm sure there are those who dig the stylings of assorted Theorists, but I'm interesting in learning stuff about the world, not the most current fad in academics. Of course there are cultural anthropologists whose work I find of use. Dan Sperber & others in the Naturalistic Paradigm actually seem to be trying to say something sensible and communicate more than their own narcissistic location in the world as white-upper-middle-class-heteronormative-class-privileged academics. Of course, Dan Sperber has implied that only around four anthropologists exist within this school; I notice that Joe Henrich, one of the young scholars who takes this tack is now in a psychology department.
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Fascinating and informative debate, though a bit frustrating at times for both sides. It makes me wonder though, is cultural anthropology redeemable as a discipline? Certainly, it along with the other social sciences are simply rotten with junk theory and historical revisionism, perhaps past the point of no return (hence my departure from it), but can there exist a niche for the general approach?
Suffice to say, I think it's very necessary that there be some sort of branch of study where people focus completely on bringing about a synthesis of genetic studies, ethnographies, historical texts/oral accounts and archeological evidence to create a better whole picture, for just as I sense a load of bollocks in all the critical theory influenced social thought, the time spent reading many blogs dedicated to social expressions of genetic difference between peoples and other evo-devo stuff makes me feel that out of 5% hard scientific fact, 95% just-so stories and other massive oversimplifications are being spun out (I'll not name names here, suffice to say that you are a sterling example of explanatory cautiousness that *should* be emulated by more folks blogging on this kind of stuff).
1) i think psychology and economics are going to have to give rise to the synthetic scholars; mostly because they haven't rejected scientific methodology. perhaps biological anthropologists...but fundamentally when you people so much time into stuff like osteology and forensic analysis how much time do you have for other stuff?
2) sure, there's a lot of overreach. the problem is that skepticism is one of the major things you need to bring to the table for critical thinking. but cult. anthropologists are almost pyrrhonian in their aversion to the general. that being said, they don't have that much skepticism about their own ideological biases.
I'm not all that familiar with (cultural) anthropology and was puzzled until I saw the link to post-structuralism. Yes, nonsense like that is obviously degenerative.
I'm most familiar with anthropology via monographs from the likes of Steven Pinker, Christopher Boehm, Robert Wright, Marc Hauser, Frans de Waal. All of those authors draw on ethnography in cultural anthropology in addition to comparative anthropology (misleading considering it's a multidisciplinary effort combining anthropology, ethology, primatology, psychology, history, philosophy, etc)
My perception from reading those authors and others is that many of the interesting questions have already been answered. Browsing around, looking at abstracts it seems to me there isn't much engagement with big questions relevant to wider interests. For example, in the second half of the last century there was much work that led to discussions of human universals. Those concerns have been adequately answered and the baton is now passed to other disciplines for further investigation.
I'm not dismissing the fact that much of the work coming out of that research programme is useless retrospectively, however it reminded me of a book review I saw last year in either Nature and Science. It was a discussion of the historiography that led to the idea that Alchemy was a pseudoscience with no insights when it is more accurate that its concepts, ideas, methods were important to the later development of chemistry. I'm not drawing that parallel to suggest that anthropology is as irrelevant as alchemy, only that there is a common attitude in some of us amateurs that leads to the outright dismissal of disciplines without proper consideration.
Razib is articulate and thoughtful in his discussions about many topics, therefore he isn't prototypical of this. The post merely evoked a line of thought that made me think of some of the modes of reasoning/pillorying that occurs on blogs/elsewhere.
I'm most familiar with anthropology via monographs from the likes of Steven Pinker, Christopher Boehm, Robert Wright, Marc Hauser, Frans de Waal.
none of these individuals is a cultural anthropologist of course. i think there's an issue there in that there is a gap in the level of analysis between psychology and evolutionary psychology. look, here's the sort of specific question i'm interested in: why did the hungarians hungarianize their slavic subjects while the bulgars were slavicized by their slavic subjects? this isn't going to be addressed via human universals, nor by the study of psychology. additionally, studying the bulgarians or hungarians alone and in isolation isn't going to give you comparative clarity.
Spike Gomes:
...I'll not name names here, suffice to say that you are a sterling example of explanatory cautiousness that *should* be emulated by more folks blogging on this kind of stuff).
I'll second that emotion!