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addresses for Sherry Ortner & Richard Scaglion
Mike Salovesh (t20mxs1@CORN.CSO.NIU.EDU)
Tue, 18 Apr 1995 05:18:00 -0500
OK, folks, PLEASE stop asking. Below are a few of the early verses of
"The anthropologist". Sing it to the tune of "Jesse James", and bust your
whatever to get the lines to scan. I accept no responsibility for
recording this to replay in courses on the history of anthropological
theory; you'll have to sing it yourself.
Hey--at this point, I hereby assert copyright. Who knows, somebody might
record it and make me a million dollars!
But "Talking Chiapas blues" is only for the initiates.
Tunefully yours,
-- mike salovesh <salovesh@niu.edu>
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST
CHORUS:
I'm an anthropologist
And I've got a good trait list
With the structure and the function well in view;
I've got a lot of poop
On the nature of the corporate group
And multilineal evolution too.
Verse:
L.H. Morgan was a man
Who had a little plan
To line all the cultures up by stages.
We thought that he was dead
But his words can still be read
In the middle of most Marvin Harris pages!
CHORUS
Oh, they went to Torres Straits/Just to study culture traits
Taking doctors along to study the Abos' livers
Which all had the dire result/Of the founding of a cult
To study kinship as prescribed by old Doc Rivers.
CHORUS
Reo Fortune and Maggie Mead/They had the natives treed
Asking questions of every Melanesian girl and boy-uh
But when Maggie started on sex/Reo soon became her ex
And to compensate gave Dobuans paranoia.
CHORUS
Robert Lowie didn't know/Where to go with the Crow
So he looked at kinship, what an awful bore
Just to prove that he was boss/He made all their cousins cross
Almost provoking a new Plains Indian war
CHORUS
Old man Kroeber wrote a book/In which he took a look
At 333 topics--quite an act
It's a pity it was fated to be rated as outdated
Compared with Linton's written twelve years before the fact.
CHORUS
Levi-Strauss and the French/Seem to think that a wench
Is a token that increases solidarity
They ignore the individual/Say her rights are just residual
Durkheim lives! And he's a French peculiarity.
CHORUS
G.P. Murdock while at Yale/Got statistics by the bale
At the numbers game he's never been exceeded
Even with IBM to aid him/Understanding will evade him
'Cause it's ideas, not numbers, that are needed
CHORUS
-- and on into the night. This song is best sung while drinking Ocosingo
Manhattans: Ron Bonampak and Come Caca Clasica, poured, not stirred or
shaken. And if you're not stirred you should be shaken.
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