The great divide

"The Great Divide" by Hannah Fearn does not take into account the historical background of the theoretical schism in anthropology since its inception. Boas, a cultural relativist and physical anthropologist, was keenly interested in collecting and analyzing quantitative data of the whole spectrum of society. Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, functionalist-structuralists and social anthropologists, were more concerned about interpretations of components within a society (e.g., kinship, caste, class, mode of production and reproduction). Hence, cultural anthropology became more closely associated with physical and biological anthropology, and social anthropology became aligned with sociology and structuralisms. In time, it could be argued that cognitive sciences became a bridge between the two, particularly as applied by ethnoscience. As I recall, when I was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1980s, we had two very well defined moities (cf. Apinaye: A World Divided for All): (1) The social anthropologists and structuralists (William Shack, Elizabeth Colson, Gerald Berreman, Jack Potter, Laura Nader, and Paul Rabinow), who were housed on the second and third floors of Kroeber Hall; and (2) The cultural anthropologists and cognitivists (Brent Berlin, Paul Kay, William Geoghegan, and Eugene Hammel), who were housed at the Quantitative Anthropology Laboratory (QAL) in a quite separate location. It was quite laborious for QAL folks to walk a couple of blocks to ger their mail at Kroeber. Geographic separation was critical in maintaining theoretical domains. It was de rigeur for graduate students to join either the quantitative or the qualitative side early on, and this expressed alignment had to be upheld throughout their course of studies at Berkeley. These alignments determined things like research connections in the US and overseas, approval of field-statements, composition of dissertation committees, the degree itself, and whether or not the earned degree would be worth anything at all in terms of employment and publications. But this is a very long story and worthy of being told at length in book form with full documentation.

War between social and evolutionary anthropologies is new wine in old bottle long long ago. nature versus nurture war was famous in social science. This old controversy and scientists enjoy this kind game playing. Truth is always based between two.

This reminds me of the situation in psychology at the moment between clinical practitioners and researchers.

I recommend the following essay on this issue. The argument is that the current debate is a replay of an old theological debate as to whether we are one (biology) or many (culture), and Shore gives the history of the argument. Briefly, his own thesis is that culture is our way of being biological. <p>Human Diversity and Human Nature: <br>The Life and Times of a False Dichotomy <p>Bradd Shore <br>Anthropology Department <br>Emory University <br>Atlanta, Georgia <p>For inclusion in Being Human, Neil Roughley (ed.) <br>------------------------------------------------- <br>Here is one passage: <p>?Conventional wisdom within anthropology sees modern anthropology as an enlightenment reaction against traditional Christian views of the origin and nature of humanity. But there is an important sense in which the view of human nature that sees human variability as accidental rather than essential to human nature is an unexpected common ground for theological and scientific speculation. A deeply entrenched set of cultural and religious presuppositions linking human nature with universal rather than with variable aspects of humanity has had a significant impact on how modern scientists (including many anthropologists) have viewed being human.

Here's an example of the silliness of Darwinian Anthopology: <p>THE modern gentleman may prefer blondes. But new research has found that it was cavemen who were the first to be lured by flaxen locks. <p>According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. The study argues that blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses. Finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men. And, as if that were not enough of a hoot, how about this: <p>Some scientists believe that the fusing of lips evolved because it facilitates mate selection. “Kissing,” said evolutionary psychologist Gordon G. Gallup of the University at Albany, State University of New York, last September in an interview with the BBC, “involves a very complicated exchange of information—olfactory information, tactile information and postural types of adjustments that may tap into underlying evolved and unconscious mechanisms that enable people to make determinations … about the degree to which they are genetically incompatible.” Kissing may even reveal the extent to which a partner is willing to commit to raising children, a central issue in long-term relationships and crucial to the survival of our species. <p>I rest my case--made for me by these turkeys.

If anyone is looking for an undergraduate degree that combines both aspects I would highly recommend the Human Sciences degree at Oxford University.

Anthropology a science? Are those tied to Humanities disciplines so self-conscious that they need this label? Without being a science, disciplines such as history and anthropology still have much to offer to human knowledge.

The conflict between biological/evolutionary anthropology and social/cultural anthropology has erupted in especially acute ways in several American universities; at Stanford, for example, the department divided into two separate units several years ago, though the two departments were recently joined again, somewhat unhappily as I understand it. <p>An important context for this conflict is the competition for scarce resources within single departments of anthropology, where simple differences in research interests are pushed into ideological warfare over hiring priorities, etc. Biology and English Lit faculty co-exist comfortably in separate departments with separate budgets, happily acknowledging the validity of each other’s work, but if they were to find themselves in the same department tough choices about the focus of the program’s training and research agendas, the next hire, or the public reputation of that hypothetical department would be have to be made. <p>My evolutionary anthropology colleagues do interesting work, but I prefer to work on social and cultural anthropological issues that I see as fundamentally different in kind, not better or worse: I may be interested in the ways in which “love” works as an organizing trope in a body of literature, while my evolutionary colleagues study how “love” increases evolutionary fitness in reproducing communities, and with adequate resources we can both be happy. Sadly, those resources are rarely available.

Re: 'Darwinian anthropology' <p>'X' organism evolved 'Y' trait in order to.... is quite plainly wrong! Clearly, whenever any trait is said to have evolved it should be 'because' the environment exerted some selection pressure upon it, not 'in order to' achieve some end. <p>Richard Burnett Carter doesn't name the source of the ludicrous example cited, but it sounds very obviously journalistic, not academic. <p>"Some scientists believe that the fusing of lips evolved because it facilitates mate selection". Well, that's interesting, but so what? It sounds as if evolutionary psychology is a field ripe for new and fascinating areas of evidence-based speculation that defy empirical investigation. <p>I'll stick to social anthropology, thanks. It involves the imagination in quite a different way, it encourages critical reflection on the matter of epistemology instead of uncritically using science as legitimation for mere stories, and it's honest about the knowledge status of its claims. <p>I wasn't aware that any silly feud was still going on between physical and social anthropologists, but it seems there is. It seems absurd that there should be when the two disciplines are dealing with an entirely different subject matter, like astronomers and astrologers. Of course, neither discipline would wish to be thought of as the latter! Maybe it's whichever one makes the more dubious scientific claims..?

As an anthropology student in California in the early 1990s, I was unaware of this debate, though vaguely aware of some perceived differences between social and cultural anthropology in the UK and the US. <p>That I found this article via a link on fark.com is far more telling of the current state of affairs in anthropology, and of them what navel-gaze on what it was, is or should be.

As a biological and biocultural anthropologist with an undergraduate degree from the Univcersity of Maryland, College Park, I am interested in addressing problems related to human health, diet, nutrition, and other applied aspects of anthropology. My methods include genetics, ethnogenetic layering, DNA analysis, human-plant interactions, and computerized databases. For example, I study the significance of root-crop domestication and cultivation in the evolution of human diet and of small-scale tropical economies. I aim to propose solutions to pressing human problems, not to engage in text diatribes, and certainly, not to make contributions to the already super-saturated field of epistemology of theoretical knowledge in anthropology.

When are disciplines going to grow up? What every single discipline in the social sciences, humanities, medicine, and others willfully denies is that they are all using exactly the same raw material - humans. <p>But that admission might reduce the status, stipends, or space, available to people who 'need' to believe they have 'the' answer. <p>It all reminds me of sitting in a lecture, with a renowned geographer (UBC) of English extraction, while he presented theoretical 'fact' that directly contradicted his daily experience. <p>Perhaps it is time that disciplines were disciplined into non-existence - as the only way available to end the endless, pointless, infantile, and expensive sandbox fights.

Frauds, the lot of them. How about they be told to stop quarreling and go find real jobs suitable to their skills, like minding car parks and sweeping railroad platforms.

One aspect of the schism between social-cultural anthropology and physical-biological-paleo anthropology that goes unremarked in this piece is the long infatuation of social and cultural anthropologists with postmodernism and its rather nihilistic brand of relativism. It's not amiss to point out that at one point, social anthropologists had more in common with literary theorists, including a disdain for scientific knowledge as such, than with their nominal departmental colleagues who worried about human morphology, survival strategies, and the like. <p>The contemptuous attitude toward science was personified, in the US at least, by Clifford Geertz, an unapologetic champion of rampant subjectivity and "interpretation" that reflected the inner anguish of the anthropologist far more than the hard realities of the subject culture. Geertz, be it remembered, was the driving force behind the attempt to bring the nominal "anthropologist of science," Bruno Latour, to the Institute for Advanced Study, a move that, given Latour's contempt for science, matched only by his vanity and scientific ignorance, provoked the outright disgust of the mathematicians and physicists who have always been the people who have given IAS its enormous cachet. <p>Similar games have been played by other prominent academics like Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding under color of other "disciplines", but with the same tonality and point of view characteristic of social anthropologists. <p>Personally, I have had the experience of being ritually denounced by a convocation of cultural anthropologists for my writings defending science from its trendy (circa 1995) academic detractors. (I reserve details to protect whatever shreds on anonyity remain to me.) I took this as high, though unintended, praise. <p>For my money, the deep rift between scientific and impressionistic anthropology, institutionalized at a number of universities, is a rather good thing, first of all because it will allow the scientists, including the evolutionary anthropologists, to get on with their work without tiresome squabbles, but also because it may lead to the ultimate disintegration of the irretrieveably compromised field of "social anthopology," a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Darwin was a great scientist, but modern Darwinian fundamentalism is even more reductive that Christian fundamentalism--Southern Baptists believe that all truth is found in 66 books assembled in the Bible, Darwinian fundamentalists that all truth is found in ONE book. <p>Evolutionary anthropology, like evolutionary psychology, is pseudoscience--or often, not EVEN pseudoscience. Setting aside how questionable it is, a generalization such as "all humans are hardwired to believe in imaginary beings" is banal. Clearly it won't explain why some (but not all) humans have imaginary beliefs as fantastic and convoluted as Transubstantiation and will then conduct wars of annihilation over whether the bread changes its chemical makeup completely or the Real Presence is only "in, with, and under the bread and wine." (Not long ago, both groups attempted to exterminate those who said there is no Real Presence but just a symbolic ritual.) <p>Social and cultural anthropologists cannot answer questions about this the way chemists can answer questions about the periodic table of elements, but the social sciences certainly have protocols that are recognizably scientific. It is hilarious that the evolutionary anthropologists, with their empty formulas and pure armchair speculations and bogus experiments involving monopoly money, are trying to wrest the banner of empiricism from the real anthropologists. If the evolutionary anthropologists prevail, the field will no longer be a "soft science," but no science at all. <p>Only studies of culture and society can explain the fantastical systems of lies that we have believed for the purpose of strengthening our in-group identifications. Reductionism would be fatal to the project of understanding, because we are still reluctant to admit how great the derangements of culture have been, are, and promise to be for some time. <p>I am not an anthropologist. I am just someone who has had my eye on "evolutionary everything" for a decade or so. It promises to be the 21st century's Freudianism, which was the 20th century's Phrenology. The pseudosciences we have with us always.

Every nature versus nurture argument is an argument based on methodological limitations that obscure the rather obvious fact that it is always both nature and nurture (didn't Plato figure this out a couple thousand years ago?). One side uses worthless hammer-words like 'reductionism' (reduction can only be judged only bad on account of how one wants to study something, not how it ought to be studied), and the other says "nyah nyah we're more scientific." These debates are ugly, driven by self-interest, and their intellectual content is zero -- unless we count the cleverness expended on defending indefensible positions.

unite them under the rubric of the meme

The current divide can be bitter, divisive and insoluble: I have seen the disdain on both sides at first hand. However the notion of a new problem is less true. It is worth remembering that biological anthropology has been around as long as cultural - longer really, as anthropology in the mid-nineteenth century was driven by concerns of racial classification, soon followed by Darwinian preoccupations which continue to play a role in biological anthropology to this day. There is some mythology at work on the part of evolutionary anthropologists who wish to be seen as the 'reformers' of a vague and unscientific discipline, whereas in may ways they represent a renewal of an old paradigm. The way forward to my mind would be a much more inclusive sense of empiricism: for both sides to accept the importance of a diversity of scholarly, rigorous, empirical approaches to issues as complex as those of human culture and biology. Anthropology in this view might become a test case for a much more inclusive conversation across the current divide betwen science and the humanities/social sciences. Let's not achieve a unity of knowledge at the expense of rich rewards from a diversity of serious intellectual approaches.

Einstein addressed different questions and invented a different way of answering them than Newton did, yet both are equally valid, and useful, and transformation techniques abound, linking the two views of the universe: in the same manner cultural/social anthropologists address different questions than do evolutionary anthropologists, and what we must initiate are investigations into the transformation tools linking the two. <p>However, personal ideologies (not scientific theorizing), will probably preclude such investigations

We have begun a study of the interactions between the two sub-disciplines using the tools afforded by Anthropology to analyze the phenomenon. Provisionally we are calling the new field Anthropological Anthropology.

An interesting debate, but I would simply point out that Claude Lévi-Strauss celebrated his 100th birthday November 28, 2008. As the father of structural anthropology, or cultural anthropology in the last Century he is to be thanked for his contributions. I was inspired by Lévi-Strauss in my own field, epistemology and philosophy, and crafted my dissertation using his methodology. France is celebrating the occasion, and other ethnologically oriented universities should do the same. Thank you.

A human being exists in BOTH an objective/material and subjective/immaterial world--I have a mind and a body--and we exist in the singular and the plural. That all influence each other should be obvious. That one would have different approaches to describe each should be obvious. That all are necessary to understand HUMAN BEINGS should also be obvious. Specialize in one perspective--no problem. Claim that your perspective is the only valid one--problem. A committee member not allowing other perspectives in the form of literature, other committee members, or attendance at a conference in another subdiscipline--big problem. <p>I wonder how much this schism is simply an old problem passed down from an older generation resistant to change. My hope is that the succeeding generation will see this polemic as the false dichotomy that it is and begin to integrate that understanding into the world of research, money, curriculum, and departmental structure where these problems play out. <p>Whatever happened to unity over diversity anyway? Or is that just some idealistic slogan we don't really expect anyone to live by? "Become the change you wish to see in the world." Apt.

I'm in harmony with the view that there should not be any factions among anthropologists. Fundamentally. anthropology is a study of human science. So, i believe that anthropology in any form is fine as long as they study about the humans; Social or Biological anthropology is least mattered here.

There was never a time when there was no split in the clan of anthropologists, especially in relation to this issue. Just check the history of the discipline even from the days when it did not have a name of its own. The same split is replicated in the other social sciences. It is simply the debate between extreme idealist doctrines and extreme materialist positions, nature vs nurture, sociobiology vs culturalism, etc. We even find a variant of this debate in a field such as literary criticism where this time, as Ernst Fischer tells us in Art Against Ideology, the debate is whether works of art are products of the autonomous imagination or spun from the inexorable conditions of social reality; conditions that some say are themselves made psosible by the fact that we are biological beings subject everlastingly to natural selection and the struggle for survival. This biological argument, needless to say, is too rich for falsification and leads us nowhere. Because if aggressions like rape for instance are a biological imperative, then there is little culture and sociolization can do about the situation.

And of course the extreme idealist position leads to the essentialisms that lock a people up in the prison of a particular conjuncture of historical factors. It creates the denials that result in the barbarization and retrenchment of the other. And hasn't it happened that both extreme positions have been synthesized in some of the most brutal forms of rationalization, eg Nazism.

Good ethnographies are thick in the sense that their descriptions show an sensitivity for the complexity and overdetermination of the factors, both physical and cultural, that environ human societies.

It's increasingly clear that archaeology needs to continue to distance itself from anthropology and cast off the notion that it is a subfield of that discipline. <p>The battle-lines discussed here are indeed deeply rooted and irreconcilable in that they are based in fundamental differences in understanding the basic make-up of humans and the forces that made us what we are, There probably needs to be room for a multi-vocality of perspectives, but don't expect a meaningful reconciliation soon or ever.

This is dumb! Here we give students a basic grounding in all aspects of anthropology; social cultural, biological, evolutionary, archaeology, they decide which area interests them most. For me it was biological. There are no arguments, just people working a one large area of study with differing emphases and skills to offer each other. This article is akin to saying that orthopaedic surgeons are warring with paediatric surgeons in the field of medicine. Some shouldn't take themselves so seriously

It amazes me that after the Margaret Mead affair, social anthropology has any credibility at all. The American Anthropological Association voted to expel anyone who did not agree with Mead and when Freeman gave a lecture at Victoria University of Wellington shortly before dying none of the social anthropologists would attend. <p>Social anthropology and sociology are politically programmatic nonsense dressed up in a load of jargon to make them look academic. At undergraduate level they are just a load of "gee-whiz fancy that" facts about other cultures in which life is nasty brutish and short. Neither discipline grows as a science should by constant expansion of its ability to explain, both are marked by periodic complete changes of direction in response to some armchair theorist's new idea. <p>They do produce some useful and interesting observational data but no particular theoretical background is required to interpret it. <p>Economics offers a general theory of human behaviour which has close ties with evolutionary theory. Sociology and social anthropology are no nearer a general theory than they were 100 years ago. They are united only by an unreasoning rejection of the economic model (or rather of an ignorant caricature of it) and have no other agreed theoretical basis at all.

This is an oversimplification. So many anthropologists are working on bioethics and other issues that anthropology has become meta-epistemological: juggling science, the humanities, and indigenous forms of knowledge. Only the crusty old feminist cultural anthropologist are purely anti-scientific these days.

Bernard Robertson claims above that "The American Anthropological Association voted to expel anyone who did not agree with Mead and when Freeman gave a lecture at Victoria University of Wellington shortly before dying none of the social anthropologists would attend." <p>In my 40 years as a member of the AAA I cannot recall any such vote, and I challenge Robertson to document this claim. <p>By the end of his life Derek Freeman was a sad figure, his schizophrenia having overwhelmed his judgment, and his obsession with Mead was viewed less as factually incorrect -- no one took Mead's early Samoa research seriously -- than as a tragic monomania. If social anthropologists stopped listening to him, it's probably because he had nothing left to say.

I'm reminded of Ben Stein's documentary "Expelled". To my mind, perhaps the most helpful statement from it was something like this: worldview precedes/influences conclusions. I am inclined to think that this debate, perhaps like every human debate, is rooted first and foremost in worldview. <p>I've sipped the postmodernists kook-aid and imbibed this much: no one researches a thing free of their own biases.

Perhaps its time to create a new discipline - the anthropology of anthropologists.?

"the anthropology of anthropologists" <p>I ask, in all seriousness, are you sure this hasn't been done already? <p>Considering a) there are areas of social anthropology which deal with both occupational studies and the study of knowledge production, b) reflexivity is demanded in ethnographic study, and c) even autobiography is considered legitimate practice in social anthropological writing, it's unlikely that an anthropology of anthropologists would be thought of as covering a new and distinct subject matter. <p>It might, however, as the sole focus of study, make quite a good topic for a PhD thesis.

Let's put this in perspective: isn't this the case in all academic disciplines, journalism, politics, and just about any other category of human public life? Dissent is what gets attention, fame, and funding. Look how many of the books that come out these days have a subtitle that reads something like: "Why everything you thought you knew about this aspect of social history/politics/some phenomenon is wrong". Just refute the other guy and you've got your argument. <p>I'm a whippersnapper social anthropology undergraduate at a program that requires all anthropology majors to take both social and physical anthropology courses, as well as courses in linguistics and archeology. And by the way, I've never been assigned to read Mead yet. Our methods do change, you know.

anthropology / like economics, political science etc.. is a pseudoscience as it is to my knowlede based on laws which vcan be verified by repetition and replication.all anthropolgIies dealing with hman sociieties and cultures have a core that is the subtratum of all mankind as biological entity -biologivcal needs, instinct for self preservation, geed, jealosy, kindness, etd., which have reached their peak values in mankind. statistically we may derive certain inferences which cannot be termed law .

h.v.jayaram, you seem to have a misconception of what anthropology is, and also what social science is. <p>Anthropology, economics and political science are not 'pseudoscience', but social science. They are sciences in the sense of an organized body of knowledge on a subject, not in the sense of being based upon objective principles involving systematized observation and experiment (the scientific method). Psychology should also be properly regarded as a social science, except that a great many of its practitioners imagine it to be a 'real' science purely because they conduct experiments. <p>Interpretivist social anthropology (not functionalist, not Durkheimian, not Marxist) does not seek to establish laws that can be verified by repetition and replication. That is a particularly old-fashioned and formalist view of anthropology. A great deal of social anthropology is substantivist these days, and concerns itself principally with understanding social phenomena, not reducing culture or social interaction to universal laws or mathematical formulae.

If evolutionary anthropology tries to avoid any form of ethical and moral intervention, then I am a social anthropologist. If social anthropology is used as a redemptive intellectual tool greased by cultural critique, then I am an evolutionary anthropologist. <p>Actually, can I just be an anthropologist?

Plainly, anthropology is not a science. Science is about providing evidence to support its propositions about the world. It is also about what Rutherford is reputed to have termed "stamp collecting", but this where this activity leads to the synthesis of a new understanding, it is very valuable stamps that are collected. <p>Neither the social or evolutionary variety of this strange discipline seems capable of offering any such evidence in support of its content, assertions, musings or whatever. Both are therefore either significant stamp collecting in need of a new Darwin, or intellectual entertainments. In the latter case, the diversion of getting hot under the collar about favourite theories is, I suppose, the most one can expect from the various protagonists.

Michel Foucault: 'What types of knowledge do you want to disqualify in the very instant of your demand: "Is it a science?" Which speaking, discoursing subjects-- which subjects of experience and knowledge-- do you then want to "diminish" when you say: "i who conduct this discourse am conducting a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist"?' <p>It is easier for us cultural types to accept that the biological exists than it is for many self-proclaimed scientists to submit to this question. That is a principal barrier to conversation across the aisle.

This debate is a great example of a very well understood phenomenon in anthropology. It's called "segmentarity." It can be summed up in the following proverb: "I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, my brother and my cousin and I against the world." The need for groups struggling for resources/protection/identity to differentiate themselves is rather well-documented and widespread. Sure, we like to argue, but put a biological anthropologist and a cultural anthropologist in a room with an economist and see what happens... It's a shame to see that so many people have apparently bought the hype.

I am because I am, said the particle to the wave; I am because I am, said the wave to the particle.