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Anthropology: unity through diversity?Jacobs Kenneth (jacobsk@ERE.UMONTREAL.CA)Thu, 13 Oct 1994 19:53:15 -0400
implicit homogeneity lurking in a view of anthropology as "a way of life"): > Re "noble sentiments": no unity implied. 40 anthropologists, is 40 > people going off in 40 different directions. > > Most of the time "anthropologists" are not, in fact, DOING > anthropology--in my opinion. We do all sorts of other > "standard"research. We DO anthropology only when we are acting to > syntesize multidimensional/multidisciplinary information/theories/whatever. > At least that is a proposition to explore. > Put in this form, I have no quibble. As I think I implied in my comments, anthropologists often are immigrants from other disciplines who, arriving under our banner, continue to pursue many of the same thoughts they previously entertained, just in a manner which wasn't acceptable "back home." As stated here, that manner includes synthesizing multidimensional........... and so on. I've often thought that anthropologists frequently treat of the same data as do epidemiologists, historians, geologists, biologists, or whatever, but do so with a peculiar slant or spin. (Or, to agree with MRK, they do *when* they in fact are DOING anthropology). I know faculty in other departments to whom I send my Master's students for cognate course work feel the same and often end up scratching their heads in wonder at the *intriguing* questions these non- historians (to take only one example) are able to raise, when the historically trained grad students sit there baffled. Ken Jacobs anthropologie U de Montreal jacobsk@ere.umontreal.ca
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