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Perhaps this is the result when two different intellectual traditions starting from different premises and working with different philosophies attempt to answer the same questions….

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OK enough of this. I have to actually start doing some anthropology this weekend instead of just talking about it…

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I appreciate your continued statements that Ruth Mace has expertise in the relevant areas (although I notice in fact she has her D.Phil in zoology and not anthropology ;) )

I guess this is what I get for protesting too much, heh.

Well, its quite obvious that, you Know Your Stuff too. Yes, obviously struc-func is a 40s/50s thing, which has been on the decline since Evans-Pritchard (who presided over my soc anth education like a multiple-brass-bust-based colossus) wrote that it was in the early 50s. I wish I could name off the top of my head a good article on the nuanced differences of focus between British soc anth and American cultural anthropology in regards to their overall goals and their understanding of culture… I think however there are nuanced differences, and Pagel’s interview spoke to me of the British tradition, and the influence of struc-func thinking on human behavioural ecology*. Which would mean that his stuff ain’t based on “common sense notions”.

Anyway, sorry if the previous comment came across as “you are misunderstanding because you don’t understand British soc anth”. As you clearly do.

Er, UCL Soc Anth and struc-func… I’d have said Phil Burnham and Barrie Sharpe**, but its the behavioural ecology stuff which I think is closest.

*(I reserve the right to be completely wrong and blown out of the water on this, obviously)

** ditto, especially if they turn up here and repudiate me. That’d be embarassing.

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That one really wasn’t meant as a critique; believe it or not, I stopped short because I didn’t know if I was getting your point. But I’m still not sure I do; now I’m unclear on the “false dichotomy”. Is the “phenotypic gambit” a contrast to the “genotypic gambit” — that is, the question as to whether adaptive forces operate at the level of the entire organism or the individual gene? [Leaving aside questions of group selection?] Is this what they are “agnostic” about? Or is that off track? If you are so inclined, I think giving a classic example – or even a not-classic, rough illustration — would be really helpful.

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Pagel’s interview does pose problems for anthropologists on both sides of the Atlantic, and my entry describes two areas in which it does so: assumptions about human nature, as well as the internal homogeneity and external boundedness of cultural units. This is simply not an issue in national style, although I admit it does press buttons on Americans the way it doesn’t for the British.

This is just so transparently obvious to me I don’t really know what to say except deliver a long boring lecture on the history of British social anthropology beginning with Radcliffe-Brown (who was not one to theorize society as the result individuals attempting to maximize their chances of succsessful reproduction)and his opposition to Malinowskian functionalism and ending with Marilyn Strathern’s meditations on the relations between parts and wholes in social analysis (and problematizes the bounded notion of ‘a culture’) with detours in between including stops at Kuper’s criticism of the shortcomings of lineage theory or Freeman’s paper on the concept of the kindred, or J.A. Barnes’s brief note on African Models in the New Guinea Highlands or Political Systems of Highland Burma (or even Pul Eliya) — all of which took to pieces the natural-kinds model of society which R-B endorsed and which might underwrite the ‘cultures as species’ model that Pagel talks about in his interview. Given that this model has been on the way down _even in the British context_ since 1952 this isn’t surprising. Not one of the people on the UCL Social Anthropology staff seem classifiable as a ‘structure-functionalist’ to me. (They do all seem to be doing interesting work, though!)

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My point isn’t that Ruth Mace is smart per se (which I’d describe is a personality trait), but that she has expertise in the relevant areas. She could be really smart and know nothing about anthropology, after all.

I’m not convinced that the problems stemming from Pagel’s interview are particularly problematic for anthropologists (whereas political scientists and historians, oh yes, they’d piss me off), also I think there may be subtle problems here between an approach inspired by British social anthropology carried out by an evolutionary biologist and a behavioural ecologist – especially when explicated by the non-specialist, and how that appears when understood in the context of the American cultural anthropological tradition (of which, I’ve assumed you are a member). I think this might be an important part of the issue.

Ignore 4). if you like. The point was that if you’ve been in a group discussion about culture concepts, then you’ve got a pretty good idea of the structure of how a group discussion of species concepts goes.

I’ve got an old-fashioned British anthropology degree, which means I do not understand this four-field structure of which you speak. Quite literally, possibly, as undergrad anth here doesn’t usually include linguistics, but focuses on social anthropology, biological anthropology (mostly primate ethology and palaeoanthropology in my old undergrad dept, more genetics in other places) with a bit of archaeology thrown in.

I dunno if any discipline has All The Answers, especially not the “hard sciences”…

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Now, I *am* highly influenced by postmodernism (throwing that in there because of Rex’s concern about being identified as one and I’m not a fan of any kind of determinism so I’m always a little wary of any explanation that appears to look for one sole cause of human behaviour, whether it be biology, environment or culture. I *am*, however, open to an examination of how these various factors interconnect, whcih Pagel seems to at least touch on toward the end of the interview when he comments on the slow rate at which members of various cultural groups (the definition of which *are* problematic, I agree) intermate being partially due to economic choice and other cultural factors.

Anyway, I don’t really have a strong opinion on the interview one way or the other . . .just thought I’d share some observations.

Ooops . . .almost forgot: I also wanted to quickly comment on the whole Canadian thing as well. I didn’t see the implication that we were in the same cultural group as USAnians. As for Tad’s comment: “Canadians and Americans are two different groups, if in label only! (We do speak the same language, afterall … don’t we?)”, I just wanted to send a very friendly reminder that not all of us speak English as a first language in Canada :)

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If I was to get interested in plant genetics it would behoove me to collaborate with a plant geneticist. That is good. It would also behoove me to speak in major magazines as if I has heard of a century’s worth of botany and genetics. That would be bad, and what Pagel did in a forum that will be more widely read, I’m sure, than much of his academic research results.

I can’t really parse #4 — it’s a bit cryptic. Regardless, I’d reiterate two points: first, I agree a four fields approach (if this what you mean by “soc/bioanth education”?) is valuable. Second, anthropologists have many clear conclusions about how culture operates, although we don’t have All The Answers and our discipline conducts itself in a way that may seem strange to people from the ‘hard’ sciences.

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1). This was pretty much in response to your writing a ‘full-on rant about the shortcomings of sociobiology/ evolutionary psychology/ evolutionary biology’ which I felt was a bit of needless conflation (it’d confuse poor Richard Lewontin, for one thing).

2). I think he’s gone about doing what he set out to do in the right way. To go back to your example, had you decided to start researching the genetic consitution of plants, and started collaborating in a research programme with a plant geneticist how would that be any different than what he’s done? I think generally what he’s done has been positive, and interesting, and doesn’t deserve the mandatory rant.
Interestingly, you brought up structural functionalism in your post, which might be quite important. Mace is a behavioural ecologist. Now, certainly I remember reading “Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia” by 1940s struc-funker Audrey Richards as an undergrad and this being seen as an intellectual antecedent to behavioural ecology work then going on in the department. So Mace’s own position may play quite a part in this (and maybe * shrugs * she doesn’t like press). We were quite a bit of a struc-funk department, really.

2a). The “heresy” is to soc anth in general, not the blog (which is still in a liminal state, and thus cannot have heretics, surely?)

3). They may or may not be lovely people. I’ve no reason to think they’re not lovely (mind you, two of my best mates are evo psych-ers, wrong as they are) My point is Ruth Mace Knows Her Stuff.

4). Benefits of a soc/bioanth education:
group discussions on species concepts -> no clear conclusion
group discussions on culture concepts -> no clear conclusion

5). Crikey, I wish I didn’t know who Tooby and Cosmides are (they set down the evo psych paradigm in The Adapted Mind, 1992). I’d think anyone who claimed they could use general models of cultural motors (however well empirically founded) to make definitive claims about the nature of change within modern nation states would piss off political scientists and historians. It’d piss me off if I were a such a person.

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1. I agree with you that Pagel isn’t an evolutionary psychologist. I never claimed he was. I claimed he was an evolutionary biologist. That’s what the title of the post was “Mandatory ‘biologists don’t get people’ Rant” rather than “Mandatory ‘pscyhologists don’t get people’ Rant”. So I agree with you. He is not an evolutionary psychologist.

2. I also agree that Pagel has coauthored papers with Mace. As I said,I am not talking about his published work, which I mentioned was more nuanced than the interview. I was just talking about the interview. The remarks made therein are embarrassing. Obviously, just because Pagels works with a licensed anthropologist doesn’t mean that we should stop critically examining what he says in public because he “works with the good guys.” If Mace has been explaining to Pagel these older definitional problems, he sure doesn’t seem to have gotten them in the interview.

(2a. The point isn’t toeing the line and demanding that people not be ‘heretical’ (go ahead and be heretical if you want — this is a BLOG after all, not AE) and follow the party line. The point is that what he said is poorly conceptualized)

3. I’ve never met Mace or Pagel. I am sure they are perfectly decent people and very smart. I have nothing against them personally. Let’s make that clear.

4. I agree it would be interesting to see how debates in biology over problematizing the issue of ‘species’ mirror debates over ‘culture’ as both fields develop methods and theories that challenge previously taken for granted certainties. However, we don’t see any of that in the interview.

5. I don’t know who Tooby and Cosmides are. Nor do I know how political scientists or historians might respond to evolutionary biology/anthropological imperialism. I am sure that there are people out there who are sloppier than Pagel. Who knows — maybe he’s not to blame and the editors butchered the interview? All I know is that Pagel’s interview was annoyingly sloppy.

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