Have people seen the science debate?

[Loralee Donath]

All,

I thought the proposed change in the wording was more precise and
avoided the nebulous question of what "science" means, who it includes.

In the NY Times article my favorite quote is by Dr. Peregrine (and stop
me if you think that you've heard this one before...), “Much of this is
like creationism in that it is based on the rejection of rational
argument and thought.”

Wow. 

As a person who studies the social/discursive construction of scientific
authority (among other things) in engineering culture, I was surprised
to be compared to a creationist who rejects rational argument and
thought. (Hey Mr. Peregrine! My best scores on the GRE were in the
analytical section!) Feminist and other critics of rational argument and
thought might also be surprised to be compared to creationists. Really,
I shouldn't be surprised that "this"... (what? methods, knowledge,
stance toward AAA policy?) is dismissed by Peregrine. A friend
critiquing Pinker's new book recently referred to (cultural anth?)
findings as "hocus pocus."

My approach is not like creationism, but it is probably also not like
Peregrine's in that I don't brand my knowledge creation in terms of
deductive logic and masked subjectivity. Maybe something to learn from
the debate is that the scientific method as a dominant ideology seems to
make other approaches to knowledge construction mysterious, perhaps
complicated and suspect. We would do well to make our methods more
visible to "the public" and to train our students to market them as part
of students' professional vision. 

On first reading about the controversy on the listserv, I found myself
asking what is meant by "science," and what/who might be included in
that grouping. Does it just include approaches that follow the
scientific method? But "science" often indexes 'rigorous inquiry', as
though any pursuit that doesn't qualify as "scientific" (read:
scientific method) is not considered rigorous. Can we go the other way
and consider any approach that is rigorous=scientific? (Perhaps
'rigorous' could be used in the statement wording). Sometimes we assert
just that, but when privilege is threatened, as it seems to be in this
debate, the historically privileged drown out that assertion with cries
about how they are persecuted from a seat of power.

I would particularly like to hear insights on the debate from feminists
scholars and experts on discourse & science...

Best wishes,

Lori Donath

On Fri, 2010-12-10 at 19:53 -0700, Leila Monaghan wrote:
> 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>
> RSS Feed
> [image: RSS] Get Science News From The New York Times
> »<http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Science.xml>
> 
> 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.
>