I am very pleased to announce that at its May meeting, the Executive Board (EB) agreed to explore and implement a pilot open access publication. Open Anthropology, the first public, open access digital-only publication of the American Anthropological Association, is expected to launch in 2013.

Wow, that’s some great news.  Here’s more:

In making this decision, the EB considered the extensive transformations taking place in scholarly publishing, as well as the importance of sharing information as widely as possible. In keeping with the AAA Statement of Purpose, Open Anthropology will help promote anthropology and anthropologists and “the dissemination of anthropological knowledge and its use to solve human problems.” We know anthropology has much to offer in this regard

Yes indeed, anthropology does have a lot to offer.  Nice!  This is sounding fantastic.  Almost too good to be true.  More:

By examining the conditions under which various practices and relationships arise, anthropologists have a great deal to say about how and why they change. It is this perspective that makes the discipline potentially applicable to addressing the pressing problems of today’s world.

Yes!  This is really getting good.  Tell me more:

Open Anthropology will be devoted to previously published AAA articles, review articles, book and audiovisual reviews, and reports and comments on topics of interest to the general public, and that may have direct or indirect public policy implications. Content in Open Anthropology will be culled from the full archive of AAA publications, curated into issues, and will be freely available on the internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles.

A really important, exciting idea.  Pretty cool, no?  There must be some kind of catch, right?  Oh wait, this just in:

There will be a specific policy for Open Anthropology on “ungating” and perhaps “re-gating” content after a certain period of time. We hope to make anthropological content more accessible and draw more people to anthropological data and analysis, but also ensure that AAA is able to maintain a financially viable, sustainable publishing program while serving its members and the wider public.

That would be the catch.  Did you see it?  Here it is again:

There will be a specific policy for Open Anthropology on “ungating” and perhaps “re-gating” content after a certain period of time.

Re-gating?  What on earth is that?  How is that open access?  So the AAA is going to do open access, but not really.  It’s like “kind of open access” and then not open anymore.  I think they need a new name for the publication they are proposing here.  Maybe “Open and then no so open anthropology”?  “Part-time open anthropology, except on weekends, holidays, Mondays, and blackout dates”?  That has a nice ring to it.  How about this: “Open anthropology with an asterisk”?  “Open For A Limited Time Offer Anthropology”?  “Oops who left the gate open anthropology?”  One last one: “I can’t believe it’s open oh wait it’s really not anthropology”?  I like that one.  Really hits the nail on the head.  Anyway, enough of the tomfoolery.

I don’t know, folks.  This doesn’t make any sense to me.  Why come up with all these great ideas and then pull back the “open” part of open access?  Making an open access publication is the whole point!  This would be like announcing the opening of an all new public park and then telling people later on, “Well, ok, you can go there for a week or so but after that it’s going to be locked up again.”  What’s the point?

So there’s the latest open access news.  I applaud the AAA for this new effort.  But, in the spirit of “re-gating,” I take it back and un-applaud them for throwing in the lame caveat.  Come on AAA folks, if you are going to do it, then do it right.

Awake, sleeper, for your dreams have become reality.

In principle a wiki where people could advertise their archives is a good idea — a similar effort to get people to share syllabi is really useful and cool (confession: I’ve been too busy to upload mine). But a site where the AAA supports its technology costs through banner ads? It seems like a parody, frankly, and I wouldn’t be convinced that the site is actually run by the AAA if I hadn’t seen the announcement on their blog.

In the past I’ve often been critical of the AAA for insisting on taking the high road when a more DIY approach would do — outsourcing web design to expensive consultants instead of paying a grad student to whip one up, and so forth. Taking the high road is simply too expensive for an organization our size and we end up being bled dry. But, whatever: the AAA wanted to go high-brow, sell off our creative work to Wiley-Blackwell, and so on in order to keep our association looking like a Lexus rather than a Corolla. I respect that choice, as much as I disagree with it.

It’s just that I’m not sure what sort of shift is being signaled now that our association is sharing a hosting service with the Dungeon Defenders Wiki. Except, frankly, my prediction is that in the long run the Dungeon Defenders wiki will do a much better job of informing the public about Dungeon Defenders than the AAA’s wiki will about anthropology.

I’m guessing this is part of the ‘grey literature portal’ that the AAA was asking members to donate money to support? Because I don’t see why we should have to pay for a grey portal site when we could simply rent out space on it to let people know about the new vaginal ring that prevents dryness or the new chicken crispers at Chili’s (you can order online!).

Even as I write this I’m sure the AAA is ponying up for the money to make the ads on their wiki disappear. I think, with complete seriousness, that this is a real shame. Now that the AAA has let the neoliberal genie out of the bottle I see no reason to put it back in. In a previous post I complained that the AAAs were a regressive tax on grad students and adjuncts. I think now I see the solution: why not seek corporate funding for the annual meetings and use the increased income to let adjuncts and grad students come to the meetings for free? It would be easy: we could simply change the name of the meetings from “American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings” to the “Frito-Lay American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings”. Perhaps instead of giving the under-employed name tags we could ask that they indicate their free registration to the security guards outside the book room, we could provide some sort of bright, colorful jersey for them to wear with advertising on it — you know, like sports teams wear in some countries. That way they would be earning their keep. Perhaps if we got Monsanto to sponsor American Anthropologist, we could give it away open access. After all, that’s the business model listings mags use.

I’m not kidding. Let’s run the numbers folks.

Over a week ago I got an email from Wiley saying that the latest number of American Anthropologist was available online. I saw immediately that this issue of the journal had an editorial from Tom Boellstorff, the outgoing editor of AA, arguing vigorously that the American Anthropological Association must move to a true ‘gold open access’ model where all of our articles are free for everyone, everywhere to read. It’s a big, huge, amazing deal that some one so experienced with our journal production, and so prominently placed within our organization, would make a statement like this.

Still, I put off blogging about it. I had read an earlier draft of the editorial, and I knew that getting the piece out into the blogosphere would involve responding to a lot of comments and rehashing arguments that, for me, are now years old. Finally I got an email from some non-americans asking about the editorial and my reaction to it, so I decided to get down to it and get my blog on.

Except I couldn’t download it.

Some of you may remember that over a year ago I complained that Wiley pulls a bait and switch on AAA members, sending out emails announcing that new journal issues are out, but then releasing them first at wiley.com and then, after a lag, putting them up on AnthroSource. To be clear, I believe this is the result of incompetence rather than malice, and frankly AnthroSource is so broken that I’m not surprised it takes a while for content to make its way on to the service. This belief was, for me, confirmed by the pushback I got from members of the ‘Committee on the Future of the Book’ or whatever it’s called, who argued hat I should have emailed them directly about the problem, since as the committee responsible for thinking about publications they couldn’t be expected to know anything about kinks in the production process unless a blogger alerted them to a problem. 

Well, the system is still broken. So all Wiley subscribers can now read a rousing pro-open access editorial, while the people who actually write and publish these articles will have to wait for sloppy seconds.

Truth be told, I don’t mind if the AAA and Wiley can’t get their act together and there’s a day or two lag between when articles go line on AnthroSource. but a week? After you already know there’s a problem? It’s just embarrassing. 

Luckily, Tom has self-archived a pre-print of his editorial and you can download and read it here.

I’d talk more about the editorial and its contents, but I just had to stop and for a moment and let some of my flabberghastedness spill out onto the page before gathering myself up and continuing. Thanks for reading — I feel better. Happy Weekend!

Currently we are envisioning a group that, like a human brain, is divided into two hemispheres — one inside the AAA and one on the outside. The group will be dues free and without a budget or elected officers. This organizational structure is not set in stone and may change in the near or distant future as the needs of the group dictate.

We are also looking for a name that is authentic and catchy, but not ephemeral. It should convey to other anthropologists in an instant who we are and what we do without being confusing or overwhelming.

Input on a mission statement will be of great benefit to our working group as we collaborate this month to draw up something formal to share with you here and on Neuroanthropology. After we get enough nominations for the name, maybe we could put it up for a vote somehow.

With gratitude,
//Matt

In last week’s post I asked readers to make a wish list of what they wanted such a “Digital Anthropology” group to do. Today I’d like to consider whether, given what we can realistically hope to accomplish, we still want to put our proposed group under the aegis of the AAA. I will start by laying out some of the pros and cons of being AAA affiliated.

Please refer to the Association’s protocols for establishing a new interest group. Notice that the AAA provides the option of self-organization as an interest group so that members may have a “vehicle for coming together.” Since it is the case that the web provides so many other platforms for pursuing our goals and shared interests, we don’t really need the AAA to help us make our group. There are plenty of other vehicles out there.

Most importantly calling ourselves a AAA interest group limits our potential membership and circumscribes our activities (see the AAA by-laws). One reader described this as “parochial” direction for us to take and that’s an apt turn of phrase. By forming within the AAA we will be, by definition, exclusive. Broke grad students and the un/underemployed, people outside the US, non-cultural professionals who belong to other associations may all be left out if they are not already AAA members. However, I would suggest that this limitation is not as consequential as it seems, more below.

There are still some good reasons why we should accept these limitations and proceed to organize within the AAA. Many of us are dissatisfied with the current state of our professional organization. On this very blog there have been calls to boycott and abandon the Association for what we perceive as its bad behavior. We want a different publication regime that includes Open Access principles and more recognition paid towards legitimating online activities for hiring, promotion, and tenure; we want everyone from the rank-and-file to Big Name Professors to join us in using net platforms for teaching, research, and communication.

These changes are not going to happen on their own. The AAA is not going to see the light unless WE flip the switch. Instead of giving up on our admittedly stodgy professional association, I am suggesting that we get inside the damn thing and take it over.

If the primary focus of this interest group lies outside the AAA then we shouldn’t organize under the AAA in the first place. If everyone is envisioning a collective that joins forces with international, cross-disciplinary organizations embracing all the net has to offer in linking everything and everyone in a new and truly global anthropology… fine. But then we’re talking about a whole other ball of wax. In that case the AAA would be a burden and we should just bypass it entirely.

If people want a AAA interest group then we’re going to have to be much more circumspect in what we actually do. As a AAA interest group our energies must be directed towards (1) fomenting change within the AAA, to bring it kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, and (2) serving the AAA membership, so that those of us who are wired can share our expertise and that others might be educated on why the issues that matter to us are important.

Is this parochial? Indubitably. Is this going to change the world? No, its only going to change our small part of it. But you gotta start somewhere, right?

I was and still am in awe of all the great ideas people floated in last week’s column. And being ambitious is great, in fact its encouraged. Our proposed AAA interest group does not have to curtail our dreams of global domination a truly transnational anthropology. Remember, we can always get together and talk about Anthropology 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever ’till our faces turn blue. An interest group does not preclude continued discussion and debate, nor does it limit who we can converse with. We can talk about anything, but what we do, the actions we take as a collective, are going to be rather narrow.

Ultimate and proximate goals.
Alright people, let’s all be realists now. Everyone has 101 things to do in their professional lives not counting all our personal obligations. Grad students gotta write, adjuncts gotta teach, junior faculty gotta make tenure. How much time are we really going to put into this thing? And given that our time is so precious, what are the most effective actions we can take?

If you’ve accepted my premise that the interest group needs to be “parochial” in its aims, then the ultimate goal is fomenting change within the AAA. Politically speaking, in order to accomplish that there are some steps we’re going to need to take in order to raise our profile and burnish our prestige so that the “powers that be” cannot ignore us. These comprise our proximate goals and, basically, they consist of serving the AAA membership.

Using the AAA annual meeting we can host panels, workshops, and roundtables that focus on how net platforms are challenging the way anthropology is taught, the way research is done, and how anthropologists communicate with each other, the public, and our subject communities. Technophobes can learn to tweet. Why blogging is awesome will be explained. The advantages of shared data can be considered. OA principles will be defended. Why do this in meatspace? Because our intended audience is not the choir, but the unconverted.

What about the anthropology of cyberworlds? I’m glad you asked. The people who study social networks and digital worlds can help shape our pedagogy and communication strategies. These are folks who have considered the consequences of the net for anthropology in depth and can help us develop best practices to disseminate to the membership at large. The number of people interested in, say, gender diversity in WoW is small, the number of people who can benefit from understanding what implications MMORP’s have on research methodology or making class assignments is, potentially, everyone and inclusive of non-cultural anthropologists. We want to harness the latter.

Using a website and blog we can archive everything we do, sharing our activities and insights with non-members. Annual meeting events (with the exception of the inevitable pub crawl) can be shared and white papers circulated to everyone who cares to point their browser at us. We’ll be one of the more public faces of the AAA and we can talk to whomever we want about everything under the sun. Will it matter that some people won’t be able to “join” us? Well, the fact that I am not able to “join” the faculty in your department does not mean we cannot collaborate. The same will be true here. You don’t have to be a member to see a website or leave a comment.

Once a year the Section Assembly meets and the Digital Anthropology Group (let’s call it DANG for fun) must file a memo accounting for everything we’ve done in the past year. The section chairs will see our report and say, “Wow, these DANG anthropologists are really useful to have around. Look at how they’re building connections across subfields.” This makes us look good in front of the Executive Board.

Later, once we’ve shown ourselves to be worth two shakes and we want to submit a resolution before the Board about recognizing online work or preserving OA principles the Board will say, “Oh yeah. I know these guys. They know what they’re talking about.” And board member Dick will say, “I picked up a great class assignment idea at their workshop.” And board member Jane will say, “I found out about this great journal HAU through their website.” That’s how you get people to listen to what you have to say and bring them into your sphere of influence, by gift giving, here the gift of our expertise.

As we serve more AAA members our organization will grow, especially if we remain as an dues free interest group. At the same time we’re helping people, we’re creating a political constituency of voters who are educated on the issues that matter to us. If we get big enough we might be able to recruit a viable candidate to run for the Executive Board and really start to push for change. Normally an associate professor at Name Brand University would probably prefer to have her eyes plucked out than try to win some popularity contest. But what if we’ve already got the emails for, say, 200 people who will check the box on the ballot? Now that ring is within reach.

The AAA office staff was enthusiastic about our idea to start a new interest group. I was told that interest groups are growing in popularity (because they’re free) and that the Association is considering doing more to promote this medium. There are no elected officials or governing documents for the interest groups, only a “convener” who serves as a point of contact with the AAA. I am volunteering to serve as convener for a year or two and Daniel Lende is willing to serve as convener for a year or two after that. There’s already a group of us willing to work together to write a mission statement which we will share with you here and on Neuroanthropology.

It won’t be that hard to make this thing happen inside the AAA. The question is, before we proceed, are we sure that’s the direction we want to go in?

In this post I’d like to consider what else such a digital anthropology interest group could do. I compiled a list of different ideas readers brought up in the last column about an OA interest group. Let’s work together to add to the list! Being that we’re in the most incipient planning stages I suggest we brainstorm freely – make wishes even – and worry about sorting it all out later.

Once we’ve inventoried peoples’ ideas about the interest group we can draft a mission statement and share it here and on other blogs too in order to get the best feedback. So without further ado, here’s what we’ve come up with so far:

The purpose of a Digital Anthropology interest group

• Officially we are for “networking and/or the informal exchange of information.” So far, four important trends have developed:
• (a) Be a common meeting place for anthros to brainstorm about new platforms.
• (b) Compile and communicate important information relevant to our purpose
• (c) Be savvy about our place within the AAA
• (d) Build coalitions with other groups outside the AAA

(a) A common meeting place

• Organize events at the annual meeting of the AAA like roundtables, panels, and receptions
• Make any AAA event we’re in accessible to others via teh interwebs

(b) Compile and communicate important information

• Have an active online presence through multiple formats
• Create a one stop shop for OA issues: inventory OA publications, announce calls for papers or reviewers, publicize OA events, write strong statements on why and how we should support OA
• Make use of server space from AAA &/or utilize Kerim’s old Open Access Anthropology blog

(c)Be savvy about our place within the AAA

• Highlight anthropology blogs so that more members are aware that anthropology is happening online
• Raise awareness of digital anthropology issues within the AAA so that more members know why OA matters
• Make recommendations to the AAA Executive Board regarding OA, such as having an “official” OA venue alongside the AAA’s conventional publications
• Learn the history of the old “Scholarly Communications” interest group, especially why they disbanded
• Be proactive about talking to subject area librarians for anthropology and the folks involved in planning AnthroSource
• Don’t break the AAA’s precious rules and try to change the system from the inside

(d)Build alliances with groups outside the AAA

• Here the idea is to maintain open lines of communication with like minded folks and not form another alternative organization. This group, by definition, is a part of the AAA
• Comrades in arms to include: Open Anthropology Cooperative; World Council of Anthro Assoc; specific anthropology departments (but who?)

Okay everybody, what else you got?

One reader suggested that “section groups” within the AAA might organize in order to jointly fund a new OA venue. Unfortunately the section groups have an uneven track record when it comes to cooperation, especially when money is involved. If you’ve witnessed factionalism play out in your home department then you’re no doubt aware that academics are all too willing to collectively poke themselves in the eye instead of cooperating.

But what really nixes the deal is that section groups do not have direct control of their finances. Of course they may set dues for their membership and their executive boards oversee the allocation of those funds for various objectives such as awards, publications, and section conferences. However, the sections do not keep their own bank accounts separate from the AAA. The parent organization holds the section group’s money for them. If funds are needed they must request that the AAA write checks on their behalf.

This passage, 4(h), from the AAA bylaws on the permissible actions of sections is also illuminating. A section, “May engage in publishing and program activities appropriate to its purposes; it may appoint editors and other agents of the Section and set publication and program policies for the Section, so long as the policies are not inimical to the interests of the Association” (my emphasis). Are we so sure that the Executive Board does not perceive OA as inimical to the interests of the Association?

Interest groups offer another way for AAA members to organize themselves and may prove helpful to our cause, at least in the near term. Interest groups differ from sections in terms of their size (minimum membership for a section is 225, for an interest group 25). Interest groups may not set dues, so any AAA member may join one at no cost – although the interest group can charge fees for services provided if the AAA Executive Board okays it. Whereas sections are required to have elected offices and a President, there are no hierarchical political structures imposed on the interest groups. Sections must compose a charter that defines their governance, but interest groups do not.

The major difference in terms of the two is that sections have more political clout within the Association because each of the sections send a representative, usually the President, to a council of sections. Although it is an uneven playing field (the larger, more prestigious sections have more clout) this committee does send a representative that reports directly to the Executive Board. Interest groups do not participate in this.

Sections also have the ability to sponsor conference panels, another way in which they can steer intellectual debate and communicate new knowledge. Interest groups cannot do this on their own, although I see no reason why an interest group could not collaborate with or otherwise persuade a section group to sponsor a panel or roundtable on their behalf. For example, after 9-11 there was a Justice Action Network of Anthropologists that (I think) overlapped with the leadership of the Society for the Anthropology of North America.

Are there 25 people out there interested in forming an OA interest group within the AAA?

The purpose of such a group, at least according to its description in the bylaws, is “networking and/or informal exchanges of information.” So we could hang out together, basically. It could be a way to meet others who are into OA too. We could submit an abstract for a roundtable at an annual meeting of the AAA. Certainly the fact that its free and without an organized leadership is in sympathy with the principles of OA.

Who knows, maybe if we really rocked this interest group thing it could be a stepping stone to a section group somewhere down the line?

And really, what’s the worst that could happen? A flash in the pan that is unable to sustain itself as a lasting organization? If its the case that we can’t effectively organize ourselves in meatspace, then we just go back online and blog. No worries.

I bring up the idea of forming an interest group because at this point I’m still searching for an answer to the underlying question of what to do next. Are we better off pushing for OA within the AAA, or should we seek to promote OA independent of our professional association? We could, for example, seek to build alliances with someone else, the SFAA or CASCA perhaps, and continue to support existing OA venues or start new ones.

But if we visualize a day when American Anthropologist and Cultural Anthropology are free and open to everyone we’re going to need a way to get our foot in the door at the AAA and try to turn, however slowly, that big ship around.

You can read the AAA bylaws here.

But, in case you don’t feel like scrolling right now, how about a couple of nice selections from the AAA response:

We write today to make the case that while we share the mutual objective of enhancing the public understanding of scientific enterprise and support the wide dissemination of materials that can reach those in the public who would benefit from such knowledge (consistent with our association’s mission), broad public access to information currently exists, and no federal government intervention is currently necessary.

Also:

We know of no research that demonstrates a problem with the existing system for making the content of scholarly journals available to those who might benefit from it.

Emphasis mine in both cases.  Take the time to check out the comments, which you can download as a PDF and share with your friends and colleagues (just an idea).  Comments?  Thoughts?

Update: Here is the direct link to the PDF of the AAA comment.

Update II: A few reactions from around the web:

Daniel Lende: American Anthropological Association Takes Public Stand Against Open Access

Dienekes Pontikos: The American Anthropological Association opposes open science

Michael E. Smith: American Anthropological Association joins the dark side of the force (with appropriate imagery)

Update III: For some background on what’s wrong with the RWA, check out this post by Barbara Fister

Update IV: Kristina Killgrove makes an excellent point about grad students who find themselves outside of the system, here.

Social science research isn’t on the firmest ground in these days of economic malaise, but it’s not like this news is exactly exploding into the headlines across the nation.  Funding cuts, like the recent “trimming” of the Fulbright program,* seem to take place somewhat under the radar.   The same can be said of the recent debates about the value of social, behavioral, and economic (SBE) sciences that took place about a month ago in a congressional hearing on June 2, 2011 (this link has PDFs of the introductory statements and the testimony of all the witnesses).  The social sciences face an uphill battle, in part, because some folks see them as mere “soft sciences” that do not merit public support.  The House panel subcommittee meeting was about assessing the relative merit of the social sciences and how federal funding should or should not be allocated to researchers.  Did you hear about this?  Well, I didn’t–at least not until just a few days ago.  Funny what can happen in the middle of the summer, isn’t it?  Anyway, here’s a recap of what went down according to a summary from the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA):

The goal of this hearing is not to question whether the social, behavioral, and economic sciences produce interesting and sound research, as I believe we all can agree that they do. I come from a social science background. I have a degree in political science and economics. Rather, the goal of our hearing is to look at the need for federal investments in these disciplines, how we determine what those needs are in the context of national priorities, and how we prioritize funding for those needs, not only within the social science disciplines, but also within all science disciplines, particularly when federal research dollars are scarce.

Brooks’ language sounds cool, rational, and impartial.  However, according to journalist Jeffrey Mervis:

Brooks may have been pulling his punches. In comments to ScienceInsider after the hearing, Brooks expressed serious doubts about the value of the social sciences. The freshman legislator said he “understands the value of basic research” because his constituents in and around Huntsville, Alabama, make up “one of, if not the most, highly educated districts in the sciences.” Brooks did say that “my priorities would be to protect basic research in the sciences as much as possible, even to the extent of cutting entitlements, in order to generate enough funding for basic research.” But his definition of the term “basic research” turns out to be synonymous with the so-called hard sciences, and to exclude the social sciences.

Gutman, for his part, argued in defense of NSF funding for social science research.  From the COSSA report: “[Gutman] provided many examples of how SBE research has served the nation including research on human actions and decision making, terrorism, artificial speech, matching markets and kidney transplants, spectrum auctions and the importance of protecting social networks in disaster situations.” Elfeinbein, who is a psychologist by training, also provided testimony about the value and applicability of of social science research.  She discussed the applicability of her own research for business, the military, medicine, and education.  When asked why SBE science is important for science in general, the Federal government, and the American taxpayer, Elfeinbein stated (from the PDF of her actual testimony):

The social and behavioral sciences in general are important because technology, health, industry, and politics are ultimately in the hands of people–who behave rationally and irrationally.  The learning and implementation of all other sciences depends on the human factor.

That is certainly a point that many anthropologists would agree with.  Up next was the anthropologist in the crowd, Peter Wood.  His position was that “the SBE sciences should not be x-ed out completely from the budget of the NSF or other federal agencies.” However, Wood did say that he thinks a small percentage of SBE funding goes to what he called “trivialities and politicized programs.” Wood laid out a “triage” approach to cutting the SBE NSF budget, which he explained in more detail a few days later in a post he wrote for the Chronicle of High Ed called “How to Save the Social Sciences.”  Wood’s first point was that there is plenty of funding sources that are non-governmental, so NSF funding isn’t all that necessary.  His second point: there are already too many SBE PhD’s, and the NSF is making the situation worse by continuing to fund them.  His third point of this triage is where things start getting a little dicey.  Wood advised the panel to:

Pay attention to the rise of anti-scientific ideologies within SBE disciplines. In my field of anthropology, for example, the recent controversy over the attempt by the Executive Board of American Anthropological Association to jettison “science” from the AAA’s mission statement is a pertinent example. Should NSF fund “social science” research in fields that reject the paradigm of scientific investigation?

Since “social, behavioral and economic sciences research does not fit the conditions that define it as a ‘public good,'” […] it should receive no funding from the Federal government, particularly NSF. She indicated that Foundations were a source that SBE scientists could use and since Smith, Marx, and Keynes all conducted their research without government support, so could today’s economists and other social scientists.

On July 12, the American Association for the Advancement of Science issued a press release that speaks to these very issues:

More than 140 scientific societies and universities today sent a letter urging U.S. policymakers, in their need to cut spending, to avoid singling out specific programs—such as the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences—and to refrain from bypassing independent peer review.

The letter, routed to key lawmakers who are preparing to debate the Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill for fiscal year 2012, opposes any attempts to eliminate or substantially reduce funding for particular research programs. Defunding specific grants or entire scientific disciplines “sets a dangerous precedent that, in the end, will inhibit scientific progress and our international competitiveness,” the group warned.

While the Society for Anthropological Sciences is a part of the letter, the American Anthropological Association is curiously absent.  I’m not sure why.  Regardless, it would probably behoove the anthropological community to become a more active–and vocal–part of these discussions.  Silence, in this case, is certainly not golden.

This won’t work for several reasons: First, because of my position on the earth, it is probably not Valentine’s Day where you are. Second, there is a strong chance that I’m opening the flood gates for endless cynical, bodice-ripping parodies. But I’d still like to give it a shot.

This idea is simple: in the next seven days, for a few thousand words, somewhere public on the Internet, write about why you like anthropology. Then we’ll make the guys at Neuroanthropology do a round up.

Back in the good old days of last month, when #AAAfail was on everyone’s lips, I suggested that we ask anthropology bloggers to provide ‘creeds’ or statements of belief about what anthropology was or should be. I let the idea drop because it seemed sort of dogmatic and unfun to list what you think The Deal is with anthropology. I’m hoping that the Valentine’s Day format will help accomplish a similar thing, but with a little bit of fun thrown in.

So let’s see whether anyone wants to take up the V-Day challenge in the next week and talk about what what anthropology is and why they like — nay, even love — it. Get cracking!

It is easy to see why. Being an activist requires two main ingredients: 1) moral certainty (that something in the world is wrong) and 2) empirical confidence (of the changes necessary to make things better). Postmodernism (to a first approximation) is characterized by 1) a suspicion of foundational moral thinking and 2) not a very robust theory of causation. Postmodernism, in brief, is inimical to intervention.

Intervention in the world by anthropologists — whether it be ‘critical’ or ‘applied’ — is typically grounded by a firm belief that you know what is going on. Indeed, the most famous cases of overreaching political planning (think Robespierre) were a result of too much faith in Science. While Real Scientists can have some sort of beef with ‘critical’ anthropologists, it will have to be a complicated and well-thought out beef about the relationship between scientific knowledge, civic participation, fair dealings with research communities, and ‘broader impacts’ (to use the language of the NSF) over research. But it cannot be a simple one that anthropology ‘ought not get involved’, at least not if one wants to avoid taking the untenable position that urban planners are deeply unethical when they embrace the value judgment that local communities deserve functioning traffic lights and graded roads. Neither can it be an epistemological one that critical anthropologists have no theory of truth, causation, and so forth, since in fact such a theory is necessary (to a first approximation) for any attempt at intervention.

In short, a commitment to positive knowledge unites critical anthropologists and Real Scientists against postmodernism, not the other way around.

A good example of this can be seen in the exchange between Bob Scholte and Steven Tylor in the pages of Critique of Anthropology (volume seven issue one if you want to look it up) in 1987. Scholte is a bit of a forgotten figure in anthropology, a leftist and philosophically-inclined anthropologist who was poised to become a major figure in the field until he passed away unexpectedly at a young age. His review of Writing Culture — a key postmodernist text in anthropology — was thus fairly influential in its time, and was a summary of white the older generation of Marxist scholars who came up in the sixties thought about the newer postmodern trends of the eighties.

For Scholte, postmodernism is not a fellow fighter against Truth and Objectivity, but rather a threat to it. A postmodern approach to the poetics of a text is insufficient to normatively ground anthropological critique. Scholte finds

an exclusive appeal to aesthetics and poetry politically inadequate. On the one hand, there is no guarantee that the ’Mephistophelian urge to power’ cannot also infect the poet. On the other hand, there is no guarantee that poetry by definition generates positive or desirable political consequences.

This is, in fact, not a problem of postmodernism but of the Geertzian interpretive anthropology out of which it grew:

spinning textual tapestries inspired by native designs does not, of course, guarantee a moral center. In fact, the latter threatens to disappear from anthropological praxis altogether. And there is the rub. Politics may become merely academic – literally so. Specifically, the politics of interpretation in the academy threatens to draw a ’cordon sanitaire’ (p. 257) around the interpretation of politics in society. That, I would argue, is the greatest danger of symbolic anthropology and – by implication – its literary turn.

Thus Scholte, like some of the Real Scientists involved in #AAAfail, finds the politics of political correctness and academic posturing — the “politics of interpretation in the academy” — totally unappetizing.

While Scholte’s review — like much of his writing — tends to ramble, Tylor’s response does a much better job of summarizing Scholte’s charge against him than Scholte himself. Scholte, he writes, “faults the book for avoiding politics and praxis, for failing to confront the political realities that make the context of its own Mandarin concerns with literary effect” and being, in essence, “a cowardly retreat into a feckless literary aestheticism”.

Tylor was in 1987 nothing if not a poster boy for the more caricatureable branch of postmodernism, and his response to Scholte does not disappoint. “Where Bob finds these essays unpolitical, or evasive in their politics, or unmindful of political contexts,” he writes, “they strike me as being excessively political, too trapped in the discourse of RAYT – of power, politics, reason, epistemology, praxis, critique, and normative import.”

Tylor continues to use the term RAYT — get it?!? — throughout the review, taking Writing Culture to task because the chapters in it “still spin their tales cocooned by the security of representational discourse. Still unmetamorphased, they do not burgeon into light, nor challenge the dark hegemony of politics and epistemology, but presuppose it even in the ironies that enshroud their purposes.” As a result they “preserves the myth of a privileged discourse that founds or grounds all the others.”

In contrast, “post-modernism grants no priority to any discourse. It aims to deconstruct the divisions that give the illusion of separate, hierarchically ordered discourses… It is a way of using these discourses against themselves neither in order to re-hierarchize them nor even to overcome them, but to realize that parodic potential which is their fullest implication.”

This is clearly not a brief for intervention. In fact, Tylor seems to find the idea of intervention in the world ludicrous: “Who now believes that politics or science works any positive transformation? Anthropology, modem science, and history have all conspired to teach us to disavow this hubris of the modem age,” he writes. Even worse, critical anthropology leads to “boredom” since “those complementary modes of demystification called symbolic anthropology and critical anthropology” leads to a “dialectic that mystifies the past and projects an unreachable future that always escapes final totalization in the clash of conflicting interests – until – by this prattling parabasis lulled into slumber, succumbed to the rhythm of their rupture and continuity we are succussed into some new succession RAYTING still.”

It is not clear what Tylor’s solution is — except perhaps that he is beyond looking for one. It is useful, I think, to be reminded that ‘postmodernism’ can be something more than a term of abuse. And as this exchange makes clear, it is not automatically aligned with ‘critical anthropology’ in the fight against ‘Real Science’. After all, one of the ideas behind many brands of Marxism is that it is ‘science’. Too often we assume that we remember what the alignment of forces were in a debate, or we simply don’t learn the specifics of a debate at all because ‘we all know what someone said’. I think it is important that there is some precision and history is necessary in debates about our discipline.

A two-prong impulse to apperceive and cenceive at once empirically and holistically. We constitute one of the smaller learned professions, but we aim to take in perhaps more phenomenal territory than any other discipline Our coverage must of necessity be somewhat thin. Yet it is rarely either vague or abstruse — we start with concrete facts which we sense to carry an interest, and we stick with them. Perhaps our coverage can fairly be called spotty; though without the implication of being random, irrelevant, disconnected. If a whole is steadily envisaged, the relation of its fragments can be significant, provided the parts are specifically known and are specifically located within the totality. So the holistic urge is perhaps what is most characterlistic of us.

This taproot we share with the humanities. And we also tend strongly here toward the natural history approach. Sociologists have called us “nature lovers” and “-bird watchers,” Steve Hart says; and from their angle, the epithets stick. There are anthropological museums of tangible objects, but no sociological ones. We are strong on photographs, films, and tapes that reproduce sights and sounds. We write chapters on art in ethnographies and and sometimes offer courses on primitive art. How many sociologists would venture that, or even wish to venture it?…. We insist on field workd as an opportunity, a privelege, and a profesional cachet. We want the face-to-face experience with our sbjects. The anonymity of the sociological questionnare seems to us bloodless.

Since personalities are initially determined by their ancestry, it is highly relevant that anthropology was not a social science at all originally. Its father was natural science; its mother, aesthetically tinged humanities. Both parents want to attain reasoned and general conclusions; but they both also want to reach them by way of their senses… anthropology settled down to starting directly from experienced phenomena, with a bare minimum of ready-made abstraction and theory, but with a glowing conviction that it was entering new territory and making discovery. The visions was wide, charged,and stirring.. It may perhaps fairly be called romantic: certainly,it emerged historically about at the point when aesthetic romanticism was intellecturalizing. The pursuit of anthropology must have seemed strange to many people; but no one has ever called it an arid or a dismal science.

Now, maturity has stolen upon us… The times, and utilitarianism, have caught up with us, and we find ourselvres classified and assigned to the social sciences. It is a dimmer atmosphere, with the smog of Jargon sometimes hanging heavy. Generalizations no longer suffice; we are taught to worship Abstraction; sharp sensory outlines have melted into vagueoness.  As our daily bread, we invent hypotheses in order to test them, as we are told is the constant practice of the high tribe of physicists. If at times some of you, like myself, feel ill at ease in the house of social science, do not wonder; we are changelings therein; our true paternity lies elsewhere.