Have people seen the science debate?

[Leila Monaghan]

Hi, have you seen the NYT piece on anthropology and science, reflecting a
debate you probably read about from Virginia Dominguez?  Any one have any
comments on it?

all best,

Leila



Anthropology a Science? Statement Deepens a RiftBy NICHOLAS
WADE<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/nicholas_wade/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Published:
December 9, 2010

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Anthropologists have been thrown into turmoil about the nature and future of
their profession after a decision by the American Anthropological
Association at its recent annual meeting to strip the word “science” from a
statement of its long-range
plan.<http://www.aaanet.org/about/Governance/Long_range_plan.cfm>
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The decision has reopened a long-simmering tension between researchers in
science-based anthropological disciplines — including archaeologists,
physical anthropologists and some cultural anthropologists — and members of
the profession who study race, ethnicity and gender and see themselves as
advocates for native peoples or human rights.

During the last 10 years the two factions have been through a phase of
bitter tribal warfare after the more politically active group attacked work
on the Yanomamo people of Venezuela and Brazil by Napoleon Chagnon, a
science-oriented anthropologist, and James Neel, a medical geneticist who
died in 2000. With the wounds of this
conflict<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5959/1466.summary>
still
fresh, many science-based anthropologists were dismayed to learn last month
that the long-range plan of the association would no longer be to advance
anthropology as a science but rather to focus on “public understanding.”

Until now, the association’s long-range plan was “to advance anthropology as
the science that studies humankind in all its aspects.” The executive board
revised this last month to say, “The purposes of the association shall be to
advance public understanding of humankind in all its aspects.” This is
followed by a list of anthropological subdisciplines that includes political
research.

The word “science” has been excised from two other places in the revised
statement.

The association’s president, Virginia Dominguez of the University of
Illinois<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_illinois/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
said in an e-mail that the word had been dropped because the board sought to
include anthropologists who do not locate their work within the sciences, as
well as those who do. She said the new statement could be modified if the
board received any good suggestions for doing so.

The new long-range plan differs from the association’s “statement of
purpose,” which remains unchanged, Dr. Dominguez said. That statement still
describes anthropology as a science.

Peter Peregrine, president of the Society for Anthropological Sciences, an
affiliate of the American Anthropological Association, wrote in an e-mail to
members <http://www.unl.edu/rhames/AAA/AAA-LRP.pdf> that the proposed
changes would undermine American anthropology, and he urged members to make
their views known.

Dr. Peregrine, who is at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, said in an
interview that the dropping of the references to science “just blows the top
off” the tensions between the two factions. “Even if the board goes back to
the old wording, the cat’s out of the bag and is running around clawing up
the furniture,” he said.

He attributed what he viewed as an attack on science to two influences
within anthropology. One is that of so-called critical anthropologists, who
see anthropology as an arm of colonialism and therefore something that
should be done away with. The other is the postmodernist critique of the
authority of science. “Much of this is like creationism in that it is based
on the rejection of rational argument and thought,” he said.

Dr. Dominguez denied that critical anthropologists or postmodernist thinking
had influenced the new statement. She said in an e-mail that she was aware
that science-oriented anthropologists had from time to time expressed worry
about and disapproval of their nonscientific colleagues. “Marginalization is
never a welcome experience,” she said.

-- 
Leila Monaghan, PhD
Department of Anthropology
University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming