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The difference between this “should” and “is” in terms of anthropology’s moral core is that there is a difference between the “moral core of anthropology” if such a thing exists, and the “moral core of a particular subset (in time and place) of actual anthropologists.”

Fair enough. As I think I’ve said, I’m trying to get at a way of talking about this, not declaring a universal Code of Anthropological Morality — and I do find myself slipping back and forth from the universal to the particular rather more than I’d like.

Unless you’re going to shield yourself with a wealth of no true scotsman fallacies, sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to the fact that the colonial anthropologists so frequently decried by modern anthropology were still “anthropologists.” Yet, they didn’t share the modern “moral core.”

Here I must object. Although I agree not all of the elements I tentatively listed before apply equally across time and space (suggesting a need for refinement, not a complete break from one point in time to another), there is a great deal of continuity between colonial anthropology and the present — or else, it wouldn’t matter to bring up the shortcomings of colonial anthropology, would it? What’s troubling about the work of folks like Evans-Pritchard and Malinowski and the BIA anthropologists and the WRA anthropologists and Murdock and so on is that, by and large, they espoused pretty much the same values that most modern-day anthropologists do. They saw their work (and I feel it is proper to give them the benefit of the doubt that their representation of their work accurately describes their goals and motivations) as actively working against oppression and generally making life better for the people they studied. Obviously their work didn’t end up achieving these goals, which is why I think it’s necessary to question the values we bring to the table and wonder if — and if so, how — they can be made to serve a master other than colonialism and its post-colonial descendents.

My research subject is Sol Tax’ Fox Project and the development of action anthropology. Now, Tax held a position very much in line with Rex’s position above, as late as 1945 — scientists produce knowledge, administrators use knowledge. However, in 1948 he reversed his position entirely, endorsing a program of conscious interference in the sociocultural life of the Meskwaki with the goal of improving their living conditions — while at the same time holding to the commitment that such a project could produce valid scientific knowledge. While as of yet I really cannot determine whether any real improvement in Meskwaki conditions came about because of these efforts, the ethnographic data that emerged — produced under conditions of intense politico-moral engagement — does not seem to suffer for it. In fact, much of it is pretty similar to much of the rest of the work at the time — that is, it looks like typical functionalist and culture-and-psych work of its time. This suggests to me one of two things:

a) Good research can be done regardless of the moral and political positions of the anthropologist in the field — which would in turn suggest that method and theory trump researcher bias, which would be surprising but certainly reassuring for those among us who feel anthropologists should take their subjects’ sides against oppression, domination, etc.

b) The Fox Project produced work similar to other research projects of the day because it was informed by the same set of values — differing only in making explicit those values and their involvement in the research.

Now, Rex and others might suggest that while there may well be values involved, they are not *moral* values. Perhaps — perhaps I gain nothing by expanding a definition of morality to encompass things like academic honesty, protection of sources, and the necessity of three-inch nails being three inches long. I’m not sure about this — as I suggested a long time ago, anthropology wouldn’t continue to be practiced unless someone felt that it did something good for society. While in theory someone could produce anthropological data solely for their own amusement, funded from their own pockets (and of course there were such people, and they are precisely the people Patrick derides above — “take what you can grab and put it in a museum, subjugate the natives, and the devil take the hindmost” — and it bears noting the opposition to their work has traditionally been expressed in moral terms), in practice we are quite often engaged in demonstrations of the utility of both our data and our discipline as a whole. Now, this doesn’t mean that anthropologists nor our funders are uniform in their assessment of what the good of anthropology is…

Maybe this is an uninteresting point — certainly I expected some controversy, but over some of the values I set forth as those informing anthropology, not over the notion that values and practice are imbrecated at all.

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The ‘strong’ moral core argument which I made was largely for the benefit of my audience — anthropologists in an activist department who held a conference about ‘threats to academia’, by which they mean ‘the right wing’. My point was for them to remove the beam from their own eye before they continued.

A ‘weak’ moral core argument is not about a disciplinary ‘core’ at all — its about the elective affinities of anthropologists, an ‘anthropology of anthropologists’. Indeed, the ‘reflective imperative’ that anthropoligsts feel necessary to be aware of their own biases is a corollary of the ‘weak moral’ argument. I think we’ve all agreed that there is such a thing, it’s uncontroversial, and a fascinating topic. I mean it sounds like oneman is interested in studying the culture of anthropologists — this is an unremarkable an unobjectionable project. Although it is an interesting one and he has some competition — George Stocking wouldn’t stop talking about Sol Tax the last time I talked to him :)

The argument that any time you say ‘should’ you are making a moral argument is, I believe incorrect. See my remarks about the difference between murder and three inch nails. Similarly, as I say very explicitly in the paper, there is an articulation between disciplinary logic and personal morality that is interesting, but just because something touches morality does not mean it is itself moral. Two things can be connected without being the same thing. Oneman says I fear the ‘taint’ of morality, but this is putting words in my mouth — I never used the word ‘taint’ and as I (and Weber) note, the relationship of morality to social science is ironic because detachment is fueled by, not anitpathetic to, a passion for and an engagement with life. I agree with him that life — including anthropology — includes moral negotiations. But, to repeat, just because something is connected with something else does not mean that it _is_ something else.

I think Oneman has trouble with the image of an amoral space because he imagines it to be 1) outside morality and 2) so removed from everyday life as to be useless. I tried in the metaphor of the submarine to fight this association of judiciousness with attachment (I also cited notions of prudence and phronesis hoping people might be able to latch onto these). The key to the metaphor is that the amoral space is not ‘outside’ moral argument, but ‘within’ it, and that it is the process of social life that creates a demand for someone to stand back from debate and give them the straight dope. Think, for instance, of how detached from public discourse ‘objective’ reports that hetersexuality is inherent in human nature — not very. Or what the likely economics effects of closing a military base is, or studies of the efficiency of disaster relief foundations. Again, the choice of topic is given by the values of the researcher, but the more ‘value free’ the research is, the less partisan and the more judicious the result is, the more likely its power to convince.

Finally a note on good arguments — they are, as Habermas put it, ‘weakly binding’. Appeals to emotion, loyalty to group, and rhetorical force almost always trump good argument. Let’s not kid ourselves — we are talking about arguments that are convincing, but hardly the most commonly or most effectively made.

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The point of my response to b) and c) speaks not of the amount of evidence you have, but to the conviction to which you hold the position that the moral core is both there and important, given the paucity of evidence. You appear to claim that there is a “direct concern” that an anthropology derived from an “amoral space” would produce knowledge ‘so removed from the real world as to be useless’. That is an incredibly strong negative statement to make. You’ve provided no evidence why that should be taken seriously, apart from your conviction that there is a moral core.

Patrick writes:

Unless you’re going to shield yourself with a wealth of no true scotsman fallacies, sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to the fact that the colonial anthropologists so frequently decried by modern anthropology were still “anthropologists.” Yet, they didn’t share the modern “moral core.”

I’m not certain colonial anthropologists could be said to share any sort of “moral core”…

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The difference between this “should” and “is” in terms of anthropology’s moral core is that there is a difference between the “moral core of anthropology” if such a thing exists, and the “moral core of a particular subset (in time and place) of actual anthropologists.”

Unless you’re going to shield yourself with a wealth of no true scotsman fallacies, sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to the fact that the colonial anthropologists so frequently decried by modern anthropology were still “anthropologists.” Yet, they didn’t share the modern “moral core.”

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In “b” my unwillingness to present conclusions on a project I am in the preocess of researching is taken as an absence of evidence. I am not sure this charge merits a defense.

The “amoral space” in “c” has nothing to do with whetehr anthropology can be fruitfully thought of as being undergirded by a specific set of moral beliefs/practices or not. It really has little to do with anthropology per se — my argument is that the claim that *anything* (at least in terms of human behavior/knowledge) exists outside the sphere of morality is problematic, and if, in fact, anthropological or any other sort of knowledge does exist in this amoral space, it needs explaining how this amoral space came to exist.

I suppose it bears repeating that my argument is not that anthropology *should* live up to a certain set of moral precepts, but rather that, in practice — and I have to leave open the question of whether this is necessarily so, as say a function of humans doing research on humans — anthropology demonstrates a certain set of moral attitudes. I cannot see why it would be problematic to wonder what values inform anthropological practice, but apparently this makes me the wooliest of wooly-headed idealists. Fortunately, I can live with that.

Baa!

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Oneman’s reply for example, for which his response a) seems to return to some sort of metaphysical cant, whereby all arguments are rendered moral (the analogy to creationism here really is rather apt). His response in b) suggests that he has no evidential basis for holding these opinions:

My current research is, in part, an exploration of how this perspective is reflected in the practice of those who hold it—alas, I have no conclusions to relay at this time.

Yet in c) disregards the qualifiers he adds in a previous sentence:

My more direct concern, though, is that to arrive at this “amoral space” requires setting so many things aside that the knowledge that occupies it is so removed from the real world as to be useless.

Which appears to be entirely baseless when neither Oneman, nor any of the proponents, give any reason to conclude that there is a “moral core” (which, in this context, speaks to the difficulty or otherwise of the construction of the “amoral space” described above); neither does Oneman show that a critique of the anthropological method using a moral approach (whatever that is) is worthwhile, tractable, or even possible.
So on what grounds, exactly, should this “concern” be taken seriously at all?

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Nanda’s argument is also deeply flawed — with exactly the same problem she is troubled by in her take on “constructivist” views of science. Constructivists, she argues, defend a relativist position because it furthers their political aims. Instead, Nanda argues we should adopt a scientific universal stance — because it furthers our political aims. What she noticably does *not* argue is that we should back the universalist stance because it is a more accurate way of describing the world in which we live, in every case. If the universalist position is relevant only to certtain situations, then… well, then it’s relativistic.

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At the same time, I also feel that such characterizations fail to do justice to the explanatory value we gain from meta-critiques of scientistic discourse. While there is a need to reply to books like the Bell Curve in their own terms, there is also a need to realize that nearly every decade another book like this gets published and Anthropologists are once again called upon to attack these ideas. At some point we must examine the larger questions of why there is such a desire to create scientific arguments that proclaim the genetic inferiority of those less fortunate (or the “progressive” version which explains inferiority as a matter of environment). I deny that such investigations are simply moral arguments – I think that they are part of the very heart of social science, and what makes it different from the empirical sciences. I would say that ignoring the political and moral ramifications of asking certain types of questions – or why certain types of questions get asked with significant regularity – would be bad social science.

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a) This post is, in large part, a moral argument about how anthropological research should and should not be conducted.

b) The argument that “The fact that humans live in the world means they can never be ‘objective’ in some sort of cosmic sense… is something most of us have gotten over” is misleading. True enough, most anthropologists are not wholly paraliyzed by the inability to live up to some “vulgar” notion of objectivity. But this in itself raises an issue that is very important, at least from an “anthropology of anthropology” standpoint — what do anthropologists do in lieu of being objective? Not what *should* they/we do, but what *do* they/we do? My whole focus on morality and its multiple intersections with anthropological practice is aimed at exporing this in some way. Rex’s take — the anthropologist as neutral knowledge manufacturer — is one perspective, although it remains to be delineated how this perspective has been realized in anthropological practice. Another take, elaborated by Sol Tax in his development of the “action anthropology” approach, is that anthropologists are, by the nature of both our research subjects (human) and our selves, always already implicated in the processes we are describing. Tax called it “participant interference” — interference understood not as imagined violations of some Star Trekian “Prime Directive” but rather, in my understanding, in the Foucauldian sense that there is no position outside of society from which to observe society. My current research is, in part, an exploration of how this perspective is reflected in the practice of those who hold it — alas, I have no conclusions to relay at this time.

3) The notion of anthropology as “a space evacuated of morality but surrounded by it on all sides” sounds good but I’m having some trouble grappling with it. My first response is that a moral- or value-free space takes a lot of doing to create — and that doing is an act of power. The act of conducting anthropological research is itself a series of moral negotiations (“morality” here operating at a somewhat different level than what I had in mind in my earlier ruminations on the subject) — as Nancy would and has said, the people we study aren’t naturally falling over themselves to be studied. But this, I gather, is something different from what Rex is saying — if I understand properly, Rex is referring to the production of a body of knowledge that is itself free of the “taint” of morality. I doubt very much that this is achievable in practice, but more than that, I do not know (and when I say I don’t know, I mean I really am still sorting this out for myself, ntot aht Rex is necessarily wrong) that this is even desirable in theory. My more direct concern, though, is that to arrive at this “amoral space” requires setting so many things aside that the knowledge that occupies it is so removed from the real world as to be useless. Again, I don’t know — some further exposition by Rex on what is meant here might be useful.

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