Separating the fluff
Alice Dreger was at the American Anthropological Association meeting when it moved to kick science out.
Interestingly, it isn’t just that the AAA leadership is ditching science. They’re also trying to position the AAA as being primarily about “public understanding” of humankind. As Stu Plattner, who served for many years as Cultural Anthropology Program Director for NSF, observed in email exchanges, this looks like “another step in the conversion of Anthropology from a social science into an esoteric branch of journalism.” Yeah, but the kind of journalism that is much more concerned with editorials than factual reporting.
So not one but two giant steps away from genuine truth-seeking.
Presumably, in the AAA’s tradition, the promotion of the “public understanding of humankind” will include anything that is politically unoffensive to the AAA leadership, and nothing offensive. It’s safe to assume the AAA will not be promoting the public understanding of how human behaviors evolved, especially if those human behaviors are anything that might make some or all humans look violent, greedy, harmful to the environment, or (worst of all) sexually dimorphic.
Among the scientific anthropologists I talked to about this yesterday, pretty much to a one, they were unsurprised yet angry. The primatologist Sarah Hrdy (a member of the National Academy of Sciences) wrote, “My reaction is one of dismay – actually, even more visceral and stronger than that – albeit not surprise.”
So they’re deciding whether to fight, or just give it up and leave.
In the messages flying back and forth, I was reminded why anthropologists refer to the annual conference as “the meetings,” plural: it’s because they go and meet with their own actual disciplinary types, in separate groups, so that the real scientists don’t have to deal too much with the fluff-head cultural anthropological types who think science is just another way of knowing.
Not all cultural anthropologists are fluff-heads, of course. You can usually tell the ones who are fluff-heads by their constant need to look like superheroes for oppressed peoples, and you can tell the non-fluff-heads by their attention to data. But the non-fluff-head cultural anthropologists are feeling utterly beleaguered in this environment that actively denigrates science and consistently promotes activism over data collection and scientific theorizing.
Wait, I have an idea – they could split, and the fluff-heads could all move to Women’s Studies departments. Meanwhile the non-fluff head WS people could move to departments that actually value data collection, though that could include history as well as scientific fields.
I can’t wait to show this to my husband. When I met him 27 years ago, he had just quit working on a PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the New School. Most of the time I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. At least after I read your book “Why Truth Matters” I understood WHY I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about! He (and I) have come a long way since then.
Off topic (again – sorry!) but some inside information on todays religious suicide bombing attack in Stockholm.
I was in town at the time but had left the specific area where the attack occurred (I had gone through there when I was taking my son to his saturday classes and when I picked him up again but, fortunately, the attack happened a while later when we had gone shopping elsewhere.)
Ophelia might know the area – it happened in the Hotorget – Drottninngatan section, probably one of the busiest places in Stockholm at this time of day and the main pedestrian shopping area in the city.
It looks like it was an attempt to kill members of the Swedish public in order to avenge the insult to Mohammed caused by the cartoonist Lars Vilks.
Here’s a Google Translation of the latest news from Expressen.
“In the middle of Stockholm at 17:02 on Saturday blew up a car.Two minutes later, there were more of an explosion and a man was found dead, according to the man blew himself.Ten minutes before the explosions came a letter to news agency TT, the letter was also addressed to the security police, SAPO.The letter includes an audio file in which a targeted threat to the Swedish people and the soldiers in Afghanistan.”Speak for yourself””Now, your children, daughters and sisters to die like that our brothers and sisters and children are dying” said the man according to TT.The man is also specific threats against artist Lars Vilks.”Our actions will speak for themselves. As long as you do not stop your war against Islam and degrading to the Prophet and your stupid support for the pig Vilks.”The letter urges the man Muslims to fight back against Islamophobia in Sweden. He calls to “stop suck up and humiliate you.” He ends the message with yet another call for “all the mujahideen in Europe and Sweden”:”
I’ve been having trouble getting through to psychologytoday.com, but fortunately Dr. Dreger has also published her post at http://alicedreger.com/AAA_purges_science.html.
I must admit, if it isn’t set in hard empirical data, then it isn’t science. It doesn’t surprise me that the social sciences are a mess, and that they can spin head first into complete irrationality.
I would rather see the natural sciences be expanded and anthropology could become a interdisciplinary science, rather like astrobiology.
But anything that isn’t natural science just isn’t science as far as I’m concerned, although I see no reason why natural sciences can’t be expanded, so long as primarily it rests in facts and not opinion.
Jeezis! I hadn’t heard about that – thanks Sigmund – and omg I’m glad you and your son weren’t there at the time. Yes I’m familiar with the area – it was near there (but on Sveavagen) that Ulrika took that photo of me.
There are a few comments about the explosions on Lars Vilks’s FB page, but not surprisingly they’re in Swedish.
Jaja, så fick vi tydligen lite äkta terror i Sverige till slut. Terroristerna har bestämt sig för att sätta skräck i Sverige. Redan finns det röster som höjs för att man skulle ha stoppat Vilks i tid. Då får man väl göra det nu och samtidigt avsluta kriget i Afghanistan. Och så införa Sharialagar eller vad nu terroristerna kräver. Bäst att vara medgörlig…
Translation
Well, we got some apparently genuine terror in Sweden in the end. The terrorists have decided to strike terror in Sweden. Already there are voices being raised that would have stopped Vilks in time. Then you’ll do it now while ending the war in Afghanistan. And so impose Shariah, or whatever the terrorists demand. Best to be accommodating…..
It’s hard to know what this change at AAA means. I have always thought of anthropology as being rather borderline as a science, so it isn’t clear whether the change is simply one of being more honest about the profession.
The world has changed a lot over time. Most cultures have been strongly influenced by western ideas, so perhaps much of the raw material for anthropological research is no longer available.
What this means is that eventually the public votes on whether you’re an anthropologist or not. They might not know the difference between good careful analysis on the one hand, and bullshit on the other, but they know what they like. And next week we’ll have a vote on whether to keep or repeal the law of gravity. What’s so hard about that?
Egbert:
It depends on the social science. All social science has its problems because good data is hard to come by and the phenomena being studied are so complicated. But Economics (for example) has no post-modern wing. I suspect this is because you have to learn quite a lot of math to get through economics.
I guess science will never win in cultural anthropology. Just as people were beginning to do decent work rather than simply making up just-so stories as Margaret Mead did, the “activists” came along to rot things. I never liked those activists – every single one I’ve met was hell-bent on ensuring that tribal populations remain primitive and unaffected by the growing cities of the world. They’re the sort of people who want the indigenous people of North America to remain in freak shows and essentially imprisoned on reservations.
James K,
I’m not so sure Economics is free from irrationality. I remember watching one of Adam Curtis’s documentaries, The Trap, in which he exposes the shortcomings of game theory.
But the most urgent in need for some reason and science is of course politics. Politics seems utterly hopeless and prone to pseudo-science and plain ignorance, and yet this is the most influential and powerful of all social sciences.
It sucks, because it’s possible to be an activist anthropologist and a scientist, but the “we’re the champions of the oppressed” side of AAA has been gaining prominence for years now. About five or six years ago I commented when we do that we’re leaving ourselves open to be used or manipulated by every special interest out there, and apparently it’s now come to pass. As Dreger said, it’s not a surprise to any of us, but it is depressing.
Egbert:
I wouldn’t dare claim that any field of human endeavour is free of irrationality, much less my own. All I meant was that postmodernism doesn’t exist in economics, I make no claims about other forms of irrationality.
As for The Trap, since I haven’t seen it I can’t comment on any criticism levelled against Game Theory, but I would caution that when outsiders criticise a field of knowledge they often do so without a proper understanding of what the experts in that field actually believe. It’s entirely possible that any criticism made is already well understood by Game Theorists.
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