Thus, it surprised me to hear her complain that she could always tell when editorial reviewers were social scientists because they invariably made inquiries about her methods. She said she felt it was ethnocentric to expect that from all scholarly papers; “that’s something you guys do, we don’t do that,” she said.

I wanted to reply that when reading and writing various kinds of texts is the method everyone uses, then it’s understandable that’s assumed and not addressed explicitly. And when texts are the objects of knowledge, it’s pretty clear from reading a paper which particular texts were read. However, when you venture to study something like the rhetoric of game developers, and write about people’s beliefs and practices, it is not unreasonable to expect a word or two about how you know what it is you say you know. Rather than ethnocentrism, I’d say that good evidentiary practice compels it.

Of course, methods are no fun to write about and I’ve often viewed them as a chore, but I was completely floored at how foreign the concept was to my colleague. She very much has a discipline, but one that, much like Anthro, has spilled over it’s traditional banks, and I keep wanting to point out the many things on these shores that (a) are not texts, and (b) are not like texts in some pretty salient ways.

1) Obviously only the oldest of fogies would object in principle to the idea that studying anything from dark matter to dark metal is fine, as long as you can make something of it. But still, I am not really convinced that all grist is equal, any more than that all mills are equal. Thin grist + poor mill = unsatisfying bread, like what Marcus and Fischer (I think) call “thin ethnography”. Its the combination that causes people to think a study is not worthy of interest. But there is still a traditional bias too – Mary Douglas wrote about Leviticus, but it is not on most anthropologists radar, no matter how good.

2) Me neither. Except that we probably are, depending on what we accept as having ‘good’ foundations. Are you really dead keen on talking to someone doing ‘good work’ in Astrology, or Cryptozoology or Psychiatry? [joke]. There’s still a black boxed definition of good (science?) in there somewhere. In principal I like talking to and reading the work of Historians, in practice I often get frustrated because there is not enough interpretation to satisfy me. But anthropologists are less likely to object to History than Cultural Studies because a) the data boundaries are clearer, b) tradition, c) common commitment to an apolitical project (see 4 below).

3) Agree.

4) Its hard to see how to do much more with women’s mags than just reiterate some lesson from Birth of the Clinic or whatever if all you do is read them. Lots of anthro students do projects like that, and we let them because they are proving they can perform coherent research. But it is not the anthropological ideal – which would be something like what ted suggests. Example: we accept STS because of methodological depth. And someone like Daniel Miller can write 3 different books on shopping, because he does it through the lens of sacrifice, kinship…in a thick description ethnographic way. Its good because his terms of reference are broad, holistic, drawn from a wealth of other ethnographies etc… it is satisfying, rigorous.

Making the same political points over and again with different data is not as satisfying, but it is political. I think the political factor is important because it colours expectations about what is ‘good’. If your purpose is to deploy your “radically contextual…articulations of knowledge and power” to political ends then all those ethnographic details are less important than your wider project of challenging The Man. Its ‘good’ because its right on. Thus your career can be “tampon ads and the construction of feminine subjectivity” followed by “celebrity gossip and the construction of feminine subjectivity” followed by “high fashion and the construction of feminine subjectivity”, or “Jane Austen and the construction of feminine subjectivity”… because at least you have a coherent political project however obtuse. The same is true for Applied Anth, and for Indigenous Studies, and lots of those other “studies” that Jenny mentions. So I think the standards are different, there’s a different aesthetic stance (e.g. the students quote from ted). I think of those debates between Trask and Keesing, and Obeyesekere and Sahlins…

And then, after the slideshow of all that ‘white male gaze’ of oppression and stereotyping,the lecture about pickininnies and watermelons and the never satisfied “man eating Venus” the ‘feminist’ female prof says about the black athlete….”and girls he is sooo sooo hooOOOOt, isn’t he *drool*?!”

You sound bitter…..;-)

11. UR in my base interviewing all my d00dz.

I took the initial post by Rex as an inquiry on usage, “cultural studies” as a term of abuse, and so reply from an actor-centered POV, along the lines of Grad Student Guy’s things that irritate me about cultural studies.

While I’d never dismiss any scholarly work as mere “cultural studies,” (not even “mere statistics!”) I’ve got to admit getting pretty irritated myself, not at the institutional level (which I don’t yet know about), but in terms of the discourse.

Sure, some of my attitude toward cultural studies is chauvinism pure and simple, and boundary policing, but I confess a skepticism of anything called “studies” whether visual studies, media studies, women’s studies, or cultural. As an undergrad, I used to call it “Madonna studies.” In unguarded moments, I’ve said “studies” was a euphemism for “without discipline, as in we haven’t yet decided on our major.” Mean and reductionsit? Yes, indeed, but a bit of healthy rivalry strengthens the spirit, no?

And, of course, none of this precludes reading Raymond Williams, or Stuart Hall, or any current work, or brightly covered anthology, that interests me simply because it is cultural studies. But it does, I think, reflect some genuine gripes of content, not reducible to power moves and games of rhetoric or to scientistic, positivism. Of course, looking at those gripes with critical rigor isn’t in the cards today.

I was, however, inspired by this thread, to want a late-night-show style “Top 10 Things That Irritate Me about Cultural Studies,” by A. Anthropologist.

I know many, if not most, SM readers could come up with much funnier, more incisive ones than these, and I implore you to improve on my humble efforts and share your gems. Meanwhile, here are my lumps of coal…

“Top 10 Things That Irritate Me about Cultural Studies,” by A. Anthropologist

1. Culture is pre-conscious, it has more to do with how you blow your nose or wipe your ass than conscious expressions of identity.

2. Damn, poachers! Culture’s our dinner, go find your own.

3. Academic poaching license, feh, we anthropologists invented it!

2. The magazine and TV advertisement is not the archetype of all cultural communication/reproduction.

3. Mass observation: all the spectacle of fieldwork without the overnight stays.

4. Symbols are not vehicles or windows onto “culture” but operators in social processes of culture. (Some insights aren’t fun.)

5. Culture is the product of human evolution and agency, not the top-40 x a Fruitopia of difference.

6. Culture and society, not just a book by Raymond Williams, but concepts to reflect on, grasshopper,

7. “Cultural Studies,” what doesn’t that cover? Could you be less ambiguous, something say, like, “the study of humanity.”

8. Getting a henna tattoo isn’t participant-observation.

9. Look, this culture concept is muddled enough without you guys coming in here with your free-wheeling notions and literary filigree.

10. It’s all about the book covers.

Richard: I understand the value of fieldwork. But don’t you think there are other disciplines that don’t do field work but still study people that do good work? What is the difference between those fields and cultural studies that makes you like the former but not the later?

2) I am also not particularly concerned with the arrangement of academic units. If people are doing good work I don’t care if they’re in Astronomy of Assyrian Studies, I want to talk to them about their work.

You might care when you are department chair, and you have to fight for resources. I won’t bore you or SM readers with a long recitation of the many issues, but I’ll make the simple observation that when it comes to academic departments, size matters: budgets gets bigger, more graduate students get supported, there is more money to pay for everything from faculty conference travel to new laptops.

That sounds dreadfully serious – and having been a department chair for 8 years I know it’s not fun to have to compete with excellent departments for access to money, faculty lines, assistantships, etc – but I hope I retain a sense of humor in my mock outrage! And in the same spirit I’ll say that I find the best Cultural Studies work to be the worst: when I read a really outstanding piece by someone who identifies themselves as a prof. of English Lit I regret that they are not in an anthropology department…

[REx says:

Cultcrit: what part of “And there is the final problem with all of this—that there are now departments of cultural studies with people doing cultural studies, and none of this finger pointing addresses the quality of their work or even what it is.” didn’t you understand?]

Try this perspective on the turf issue, Grad Student Guy: I’m glad if there are more programs in which anthropologists can get jobs. You may be too, one day.

2) I am also not particularly concerned with the arrangement of academic units. If people are doing good work I don’t care if they’re in Astronomy of Assyrian Studies, I want to talk to them about their work.

3) I think that part of the sour grapes is the sense that ‘cultural studies’ (again, a strawman here) has been successful even as (or perhaps _because_) it assumes the underdog role, and when we strike it down it become more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

but

4) I think the issue for me is not the apoliticized image of ‘progress’ in the discipline (as Tim puts it) but really whether the work is any good or not (*ahem* the same could be said of ‘applied anthropology’). “I read some (sermons from Derbyshire/fashion mags) and it kinda made me think about this thing in Foucault….” is different from a real — I keep using the work — rigorous understanding of fashion mags. The thing is that it may also be an image of anthropological practice, while we tell ourselves it is something that only ‘cultural studies’ does….