…is in ruins.
It’s been sick for a very long time, perhaps going all the way back to Margaret Meade.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sorry, link fixed now.
15 thoughts on “Anthropology”
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…is in ruins.
It’s been sick for a very long time, perhaps going all the way back to Margaret Meade.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sorry, link fixed now.
Comments are closed.
Margaret Meade got it wrong, hilariously, in Samoa, fell for teenage village girls’ lurid stories, and got it wrong again, in New Guinea, generalising without checking. And got lionized for her insights. Heh.
As a former anthro major, from back when it was still a science, I can verify that your account of Meade is precisely on target. She was a joke among real anthropologists. As soon as I see somebody bringing up Meade as an anthropological authority, my bullshit detector starts flashing red lights and beeping loudly.
That might be a wrong link but I haven’t watched the movie to say for sure.
It’s actually a fun movie. We watched it last night. Think of it as Godzilla in Norway. But you’ll probably want subtitles.
Thanks, I’ll check it out.
Not sure what movie your are talking about but Troll on Netflix is Godzilla in Norway. The plot was the same and they reused some dialog and camera shots from the old Godzilla movies.
On topic, not even the space field is escaping this insanity. It is not at the same intensity but if we are not careful it will be.
Is the linked page is correct, anthropology is pining for the fjords.
Oh c’mon. For those of us late to the party. Please re-post the original link! Here you got my Norwegian Blue all excited when I told her, I actually had to remove the nails….
No one escapes. STEM didn’t so anthro had no chance. At least there are places like Razib Khan were we can get information without the dogma.
A long time ago, I was indirectly connected to the physical anthropology world via my involvement with isotope geochemistry. Things weren’t “woke” back then, but I can tell you that anthropologists working in the early man field could all be ego donors.
As long as the government can print money arbitrarily and funnel it toward whatever cause they choose, no field of inquiry is safe. The grants seem so innocuous at first, but of course they eventually through regulating and pricing out competitors they become the only lifeline. You have maybe a human lifetime or two of reputational inertia to coast on until the remnant is seen for what it is: an arm of politics, just as dirty as the king or congress or lawyers or bureuacrats. To paraphrase Curtis Yarvin, you can dump toxic waste into a pristine lake for a long time and it will still look nice, but eventually you’re left with a toxic waste dump.
My understanding is, Margaret Mead wasn’t so much hoodwinked as concocting a narrative she could sell at a time when Freud was all the rage. As part of my slapdash STEM education, I took 15 credits of physical and cultural anthropology, and archaeology. It was already pretty leftist back then (50 years ago).
Sentiment over knowledge. Never a good trade-off.
Anthropology, like a lot of other majors, only has a small number of jobs available. Real anthropology can be quite tough but not everyone wants to do hard work and again, there isn’t much of it available. This leads to the postmodern triviality spiral as anthros have to compete with who can be the most progressive Marxist rather than who can produce the most discoveries in order to justify their academic positions and salary.
Paleoanthropology and physical anthropology are hard, with few job openings. Too much math and chemistry. Cultural anthropology is yet another “proposal writer” field with unlimited job openings.