Comments on: When Species Meet http://savageminds.org/2008/09/14/when-species-meet/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:06:13 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Juno http://savageminds.org/2008/09/14/when-species-meet/comment-page-1/#comment-496653 Juno Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:54:07 +0000 http://savageminds.org/?p=1329#comment-496653 I actually do some TA work already. Mostly I steal student's pencils and jackets to make sure they aren't falling asleep in class. Unfortunately, a lot of Taiwanese are afraid of dogs (because there are so many strays here), so I can't go to class too often. Haraway's stories do help build "a deeper emotional-intellectual nexus of understanding about the messy integrity of our relationships," but my owner complains that they still lack the "thickness" of good anthropological story telling. She seems to think that it is enough to tell the story and to let the reader extrapolate the significance. This flatters the reader. I know I didn't have any problem figuring out what she meant to say. But my owner thinks it leaves one thinking you've learned more than you really have. I actually do some TA work already. Mostly I steal student’s pencils and jackets to make sure they aren’t falling asleep in class. Unfortunately, a lot of Taiwanese are afraid of dogs (because there are so many strays here), so I can’t go to class too often.

Haraway’s stories do help build “a deeper emotional-intellectual nexus of understanding about the messy integrity of our relationships,” but my owner complains that they still lack the “thickness” of good anthropological story telling. She seems to think that it is enough to tell the story and to let the reader extrapolate the significance. This flatters the reader. I know I didn’t have any problem figuring out what she meant to say. But my owner thinks it leaves one thinking you’ve learned more than you really have.

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]]> By: Carl http://savageminds.org/2008/09/14/when-species-meet/comment-page-1/#comment-496353 Carl Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:53:30 +0000 http://savageminds.org/?p=1329#comment-496353 Juno, I really enjoyed this. I see a future for you as at least a teaching assistant or perhaps a journal editor. Your master is a smart man. Re: his key point "... that it’s a mistake to conflate ethical positions like this with instrumental arguments about scientific outcomes because it isn’t necessarily true that scientifically valid outcomes are dependent on ethical behavior," it's sadly the case that the terrible experiments conducted on unwilling human beings by German and Japanese doctors during WWII, and by U.S. gov't doctors on soldiers and African-Americans afterwards, among other like atrocities, yielded tremendously valuable information about the functioning of the living human body that is very much a part of our contemporary healing arts. So I agree that the instrumental argument is not only ethically thin but, if left on its own, catastrophically wrong. I wonder, though, if Haraway is telling her stories in an anthropologically thick kind of way to build, not an austerely coherent argument (of which there are many available, Rawls for example), but a deeper emotional-intellectual nexus of understanding about the messy integrity of our relationships? Juno, I really enjoyed this. I see a future for you as at least a teaching assistant or perhaps a journal editor.

Your master is a smart man. Re: his key point “… that it’s a mistake to conflate ethical positions like this with instrumental arguments about scientific outcomes because it isn’t necessarily true that scientifically valid outcomes are dependent on ethical behavior,” it’s sadly the case that the terrible experiments conducted on unwilling human beings by German and Japanese doctors during WWII, and by U.S. gov’t doctors on soldiers and African-Americans afterwards, among other like atrocities, yielded tremendously valuable information about the functioning of the living human body that is very much a part of our contemporary healing arts. So I agree that the instrumental argument is not only ethically thin but, if left on its own, catastrophically wrong.

I wonder, though, if Haraway is telling her stories in an anthropologically thick kind of way to build, not an austerely coherent argument (of which there are many available, Rawls for example), but a deeper emotional-intellectual nexus of understanding about the messy integrity of our relationships?

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]]> By: Rex http://savageminds.org/2008/09/14/when-species-meet/comment-page-1/#comment-494460 Rex Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:04:54 +0000 http://savageminds.org/?p=1329#comment-494460 I'll take this opportunity to once again plug Rebecca Cassidy's excellent "The Sport of Kings: Kinship, class and thoroughbred breeding in Newmarket" I’ll take this opportunity to once again plug Rebecca Cassidy’s excellent “The Sport of Kings: Kinship, class and thoroughbred breeding in Newmarket”

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]]> By: Fred http://savageminds.org/2008/09/14/when-species-meet/comment-page-1/#comment-494332 Fred Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:24:52 +0000 http://savageminds.org/?p=1329#comment-494332 Maybe Juno would like to review "The Hound of the Baskervilles" from the point of view of the unnamed hound? Talk about abusing the animal-human relationship: "Encounterings do not produce harmonious wholes" (not always). Obviously, in a mystery, death is the outcome, both for old Baskerville and the hound. Well, I don't have a story to share, but a quote from Groucho Marx: "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." Maybe Juno would like to review “The Hound of the Baskervilles” from the point of view of the unnamed hound? Talk about abusing the animal-human relationship: “Encounterings do not produce harmonious wholes” (not always). Obviously, in a mystery, death is the outcome, both for old Baskerville and the hound. Well, I don’t have a story to share, but a quote from Groucho Marx: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

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