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Overspecialized Anthropology?
Bjorn Conrad Fry (bear@USNET.US.NET)
Sat, 10 Dec 1994 08:35:04 -0500
interdisciplinary approach to studying the human condition, I quite
sincerely fail to understand why there is so much resistance to addressing
how a particular discipline might touch upon or have relevance to another.
Is this what "modern" specialization means today? Science without
applicability or responsibility in a real world? Is a cultural
anthropologist nothing but a scientist with the single task of recording
and regurgitating? Does such an anthropologist have nothing to contribute
on the relative merits of certain family configurations and or concepts,
for example? Do they have nothing to say about the evolution of certain
cultural patterns and what that ultimately means? Are studies of cultural
causes and affects, both in an historical and a real world context, a new
taboo? Who is best qualified to do this? Who is supposed to do this? To
whom should we relegate this responsibility? Where is the "value" in
knowledge? Has institutionalized relativism, permissiveness, or the
preconceived notions of egalitarian wishful thinking, permeated and tainted
everything? Where is the courage and strength of character that allows for
the separation of objective observation and constructive rational
conclusions for our time? To deny this to the world is unforgivable. Where
is common sense and wisdom?
With or without you... And, you know if it is you I'm addressing.
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Let it be said, once again, that most of what is wrong, and of
what is most perfectable in this world, is located between our
own ears. If we don't first start living our own lives to the
fullest, as individuals, in just fashion, and as empowered exam-
ples, instead of languishing in the addictive maelstrom of blame,
dependency, and its powerlessness, there is little hope for us.
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Bjorn Conrad Fry - American
bear@us.net
Bethesda, Maryland
U.S.A.
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