|
|
Re: WHITAKER'S LAWS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE
Bob Whitaker (bwhit@conterra.com)
Mon, 27 Jan 1997 20:44:30 -0500
smaceach@polar.bowdoin.edu wrote:
>
> bwhit@conterra.com wrote:
> >
> > It is alwayts the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, which means
> > that no one who offends the most militantly Poltically Correct people on
> > earth, the sociologists, goes nowhere in his academic career. Do you
> > think people do not understand academic politics?
>
> Ohhh, no, lots of people understand academic politics. I simply think
> that _you_ don't. I've got the AAA Guide here, which you use to find
> academic anthropologists in North America; it's organized by departments.
> Between 2/3 and 3/4 of the university/college departments are independent
> anthro departments (estimate -- I'm damned if I'm going to count them, you
> go ahead); the rest are soc/anthro, anthro/soc and a whole bunch of weird
> ones (marine biology??). The combined ones are pretty much all at small
> places, with relatively low enrollments and fewer resources.
>
> Doesn't really matter, though, as that's no evidence of one discipline
> controlling the other. Tell ya what, Bobby ol' boy -- it's _extremely_
> common to have Departments of Romance Languages in universities, too --
> so in your opinion, does that mean that French controls Italian, or
> Spanish controls Catalan, or what?
>
> > You are claiming YOU are being scientific by using genetic
> > terminology. But every conclusion is always Poltically Correct.
>
> I think that that should be an indication to you that _your_
> political philosophy may be obsolete.
Boy, I've heard that one down through the years! The PhD in the
fifties who told me that the very idea that punishment could reduce
crime was out-of-date, with all the other Poltical Correctness freaks
chiming in. The PhD's in economics agreeing that
all Modern Thinkers knew that an economy owned by the government and run
by bureaucrats was a guarantee of efficiency -- disagreement was out of
date. The idea that anything was inherited was chorused by you PC
academic buraucrats to be Nazism.
You always agree on whawt's Modern, but when you try it out in the real
world, it's always a disaster.
For anyone with a bit of sense, your credibility is shot.
You've amply demonstrated that
> you're not equipped to argue anthropological questions on evidentiary
> grounds -- so you just dismiss them as politically correct. Cop-out.
>
> > Well, at least you've dropped the scientifc pretense. You have simply
> > stated taht your polical faith is the true faith.
>
> Nope. I didn't sign anything when I got my Fudd that said that I couldn't
> make ethical judgements on issues -- neither do any of the rest of us. And
> anthropological examination of the race concept,anthropological examination
> of gender roles in different societies, anthropolgical examination of
> the variation in human culture that has helped these issues along a bit.
> Good thing too. Anthropological research can't take all, or even much, of
> the credit for that, but every bit helps, I guess.
>
> If you'd wanted successes strictly within my sub-discipline, archaeology,
> I would've talked about processualism and post-processualism, settlement
> archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, the increase in gender studies, the
> great extensions of lithic research, faunal analysis, style theories...
> lots of other stuff over say the last 30 years. I'd let the cultural people
> talk about their side of it. But I didn't want to lose you completely.
>
> > What successes?
>
> All of 'em, both those strictly within the discipline and those that have
> resonances outside it.
>
> Scott
> __________________________
>
> Scott MacEachern
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bowdoin College
> Brunswick, ME 04011
>
> -------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
|