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It seems that Ingold is attacking this problem from a rather unexpected direction (i.e. unexpected by me). I’m not sure it would be entirely fair to argue some of the points before reading Ingold’s arguments for myself. I would note that in of itself there is nothing illogical with collapsing genotype and phenotype together. Whether doing so fundamentally obscures something important is a different question, an empirical one too. It does so for biology. And I’d argue for culture as well.

Those models which collapse the phenotype and genotype do not distinguish between the transmission of the genotype from the expression of the phenotype, so is open to criticism that cultural information is transmitted before (or at least simultaneously) with its expression. However, this is usually a matter of convenience: modeling necessarily abstracts from reality in order to achieve computationally advantageous simplicity. We have to understand our models, and if we are running them on computers they have to be runnable (it can be quite amazing how easily one can bog down a computer). At a theoretical level many see the process of transmission not as direct copying but as a sequence in which perception of expression leads to a reconstruction, by interpretation, of the cultural information which was (partly) responsible for its expression in the first place. In this picture, the problem at once disappears and the model gets much more complex.

An example: a word I make up, and have used before with a particular pronunciation, and which I will attempt to impart to you. I would use phonetic notation if I could.

vifrokel: any useful utensil or object

Now what has happened here? I have taken a word (not ever written out before, btw), attempted a transformation from the verbal form to the written form. And I’ve attempted to encapsulate its meaning in a few words (naturally I have not exhausted its nuance here). Now, electronically disseminated, you will (i hope) attempt to pronounce this word, at least in your head (I do not know if you will pronounce it correctly), and you will have some sense (though perhaps not my sense) of how to use the word or its meaning. On your end, you have interpreted a line of text appearing on a computer screen, and based on information already available to you (for example, the meaning of words, sounds of letters, and so on) you interpret that text, and have somewhere in your brain (though it may not last) something which, though it may not resemble mine at the neural level, will can be drawn upon to reproduce a linguistic and cultural behavior which may (if transmission was successful) be highly correlated to one of my own my own behaviors. Note that if and when you use the word yourself, you have at least two possible modes of expression: namely written or verbal, and that because of the mode of expression by which “vifrokel” was transmitted to you (ie in text), your expression in text may be more like mine than any verbal pronunciation of it- and this is an issue of fidelity. And since you don’t know me, and will not likely hear me using this word, you are unlikely to express it very often. More than likely, never, and this is fitness. But what is this “it” that is being transmitted and expressed? We can talk about it, but nowhere from my end to yours does its form remain unchanged.

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a) the use of the concept of ‘cultural traits’ that are ‘transmitted’ and ‘replicated’. Anthropologists abandoned trait thinking because of problems with reification, definition, lack of human agency etc. Traits are abstractions.

b)the formulation that cultural ‘information’ (the equivalent of the genotype) pre-exists its expression is illogical. Rather, sociocultural anthropologists see culture as ‘emergent’ in environmental and social contexts, and thus meaning cannot pre-exisit the processes that give rise to it. This is a phenomenological and ontological point as much as anything.

c) How can such information be ‘transmitted’ independently and in advance of its ‘expression’? Learning is a process of practical enskillment – information is not transmitted abstractly from one head to another.

d)neo-Darwinism is fundamentally circular. In Ingold’s words: “To establish the genotype of an organism, ‘evolutionary biology’ works backwards from its outward, phenotypic form and behaviour by factoring out variation due to environmental experience so as to arrive at a context-independent description, only to declare that its form and behaviour are expressions, within a particular environmental context, of an evolved genotype. The concept of ‘trait’, whether applied to genetic or cultural characters, at once embodies and conceals this circularity” (p.16).

Most of this boils down to a philosophical position that sees the culture/biology distinction as unfounded. Ingold argues for an ecological approach that sees culture as fundamentally biological, and biology as fundamentally emergent in cultural practice. People practice culture with their bodies, and their bodies develop in cultural contexts. His touchstone in current Biology is developmental systems theory – the work of people like Susan Oyama. The four points above are only briefly expounded in the article – Ingold lays out his objections in more detail in (what seems like hundreds of) other academic articles and his books.

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In terms of writing grants though, I think any claim to “changing anthropology” in toto has to be regarded as silly – but adding something to a small corner of the discipline is definitely required. You don’t have to subscribe to notions of progressive science to make a clear argument that your research is relevant and will solve, or open up, or add to an issue others have been debating.

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I also think that looking back would be profitable, as there remain substantive questions and methods left laying in the grass in the rush to be au courant. Of course, no one will hire you if you do this kind of work, but they won’t hire you anyway…so might as well have at it.

Yes, oh yes, indeed. The history of anthropology is not a history of rejected hypotheses, but instead a history of competing preparadigmatic approaches, none of which has attracted consistent work by a large enough number of several generations of scholars to become a fully fledged body of work. All critical eyes have been on what approaches lack—a cheap move actually, since any theory worth anything begins by abstraction from a more complex reality. The grunt work of filling in the detail that any approach requires for global/ historical coverage has been unrewarded and consequently lacking.

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I also think that looking back would be profitable, as there remain substantive questions and methods left laying in the grass in the rush to be au courant. Of course, no one will hire you if you do this kind of work, but they won’t hire you anyway…so might as well have at it.

Ah, my decision to leave the job market has given me the most delicious sense of freedom!

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I have to laugh – I was recently asked by UNF “how had my dissertation contributed empirically to the discipline” and I answered honestly that I didn’t think it had (nor do others-left unspoken). Needless to say I didn’t get the campus invite.

So obviously SOME anthros see it that way…

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–BWD

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As for Hideaway’s analysis of the condition of anthropology and his ad hominem attacks, what can one say? I’ve always maintained that ev psych is bad because it is bad science. It is as simple as that.

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I guess I got confused.

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