OK. This is about as lazy as blogging gets. Below the fold is a four way Twitter conversation I had with Thomas Strong, Ken Wissoker and Carole McGranahan. What started as a funny quote about Patrick Tierney’s Darkness in El Dorado turned into a discussion about which “big debates” in Anthropology get picked up by the mainstream press. But then, when we started trying to think of anthropological debates we would rather see in the press, we all fell short. Take a look at the conversation below and let us know in the comments what big anthropological kerfuffles you think are worthy of more media attention?
Why should the media care about debates within anthropology? Wouldn’t we rather have the media apply some anthropological knowledge or insights to current issues in the broader world?
I could not agree more with Michael Smith but I believe it is going to take some concerted and coordinated action to spread the message that there is a lot about the world that anthropology can help explain. There are some outstanding individuals who do us proud, such as Danah Boyd (ok not a pure anthro) or Gillian Tett but when media outlets seek academic insight on the issue of the day, who do they turn to? Psychologists are top of the list almost every time in the anglophone world. Sunderland & Denny wrote quite a good paper/chapter on this which I will post the citation for soon, but they suggest it boils down to a decision taken several decades ago by the primary psychology association in the US to gain as much exposure as possible for the discipline. If we want to demonstrate the value of anthropological thinking we can continue having important and interesting debates within anthropology, hoping that one day they get reported by a very august but let’s face it niche publication or we can complement what comes naturally with a more out there stance. What I am talking about is e.g. an association having sector experts on call who can be pushed forward with their take as soon as an issue hits. As part of a broader strategy, it works although it takes resources. Maybe it is being done already but it doesn’t seem to be working: what I see of anthropologists in the media (a good summary being at antropologi.info) tends to be blog based and for an audience of anthropologists (no offence). It’s perhaps time to harness some of that energy and direct it at mainstream channels without of course dumbing down too much. Please forgive the rant; finally I can stop lurking because it’s a subject I feel qualified to speak on (I came to a masters at UCL after 10 years in PR where I represented a couple of consultancies run by anthropologists).
The citation for the chapter I mentioned above on our cultural predilection for the psychological:
Psychology vs Anthropology: Where is culture in marketplace ethnography? By Patricia Sunderland and Rita Denny in Advertising Cultures edited by Brian Moeran.
I find this so interesting!
Can it be that you need a group of people making a concerted truth claim to spawn a debate worthy of the name? I sense a lot of “live and let live” in the cultural and ethnographic side of the discipline lately. But I could easily miss something that seems to practitioners quite central.
Can it be that you need a group of people making a concerted truth claim to spawn a debate worthy of the name?
Yes, oh yes, indeed.
I have not been pushing for debates lately, but I don’t think it’s because of a live-and-let-live. Rather it’s that
1) The meaning of “debate” has been so debased in today’s media world that it has no relation to what we might even pretend is a scientific debate. This is something the Intelligent Design people have seized upon–they challenge a biologist to a “debate,” and then lose on every point. But their purpose was not to win, simply to be on stage, having a “debate,” which they then claim is a “scientific debate.”
2) Following from #1, it seems the heat of debate is inversely proportional to the amount of available evidence. I’m not sure if this is always true, but it certainly applies to many debates inside and outside of anthropology–people get very worked up when there is not a lot of evidence.
3) Debates are often based on diametrically opposed stances which share common premises. It’s usually much more instructive to investigate those premises in order to go beyond the debate. It’s a lesson I’ve learned from teaching Tim Ingold’s Perception of the Environment and as I write this I’m realizing I’m parroting his language: “Two views that are diametrically opposed often turn out to be so because they are based on common premises” (2000:313).
4) And last, debates within and among anthropologists just don’t seem as important as getting more people acquainted with an anthropological perspective, which in some way brings me into agreement with Michael Smith’s comment above.
The 24 March issue of Nature has a vigorous response to Kuper & Marks signed by thirty (count ’em, thirty – in the supplemenatry materials) human behavioral ecologists and evolutionary psychologists. Does that count as a kerfuffle?
Oops, sorry for the (sort of) double post!
It’s not how many evolutionary psychologists you know, it’s how well you know evolutionary psychologists. (~_^)
Half or more of the signers of the Nature letter are anthropologists. While they may affiliate with behavior ecology and/or evolutionary psychology, they have PhDs in anthropology and they teach in anthropology departments. So it is not just the disciplinary Others who are critical of Kuper and Marks, but many anthropologists as well. See also:
http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2011/02/11/a-vision-of-anthropology-today-%E2%80%93-and-tomorrow/
http://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.com/2011/02/anthropologists-urged-to-unite-behind.html
The Kuper and Marks piece is just a fine thumbnail sketch of recent anthropological history regardless. And isn’t it damn depressing that their response is to a piece which ends by stating that “there is no future in a return to the feuding parties of the 1980s”?
With regard to the response to Kuper&Marks, I would like to return to Kerim’s original question: “what big anthropological kerfuffles you think are worthy of more media attention?” I haven’t paid the $18 to get through the Nature paywall, but it looks like the current kerfluffle is just an extension of the previous kerfluffle that resulted in the Nicholas Wade NYTimes treatment in December. So no need to give that one more media attention.
I’ve tried to put some of these anthro-moments in context as “Anthro-Flop-ology,” now updated to include the response letter to Kuper&Marks.