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Re: The new Am. AnthropologistR. C. Alvarado (rca2t@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU)Fri, 7 Oct 1994 13:28:34 -0400
>The overall tone of the editors intro struck me as a bit >higgledy-piggledy...we should all talk together but specific >disciplinary concerns can also be dismissed out of hand....i can't tell >if this is a call for more inclusive scholarship or some sort of left >over hippie plea for "come on people, let's get together and love one >another"...i await further evidence.... I have not yet seen the new AA, but it seems to confirm some of the suspicions I had when reading the Tedlocks' editorial statement they made in the AAA Newsletter a while back. What struck me then was a paradox that I think bedevils much of what passes for "multiculturalism" and "postmodernism," i.e. the new forms of prescriptive relativism that dominate academic discourse these days. The paradox is this: on the one hand, it is asserted that all modes of discourse--poetry and photography alongside positivist data analysis--should be included within the editorial purview, while on the other the practical result is the inclusion of only certain kinds of discourse; biological anthropology is apparently non grata now. The paradox stands on an irony, perhaps an hypocrasy: the will to be diverse and inclusive ends up as be totalitarian in its own way, *since it seeks to encompass diversity within two covers of a book*. True diversity, in my view, follows from the opposite editorial policy: define the specific values and goals that the journal seeks to match and *exclude all else*; and leave the selection of what counts as diverse to individuals, whose own editorial policies are reflected on the books they have on their shelves. What is repugnant about the Tedlocks' new editorial policy, if I may base my opinion on what I've read here, is their assuming of that role, of the one who selects what counts as diverse. This comes from a Mesoamericanist who finds both of the Tedlocks' work to be top rate. --
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