Anthropology in Ruins?

I think many sciences understand that there's a dominant narrative that isn't always right... for instance, we've had a tendency to write and look at history as a succession of important, pivotal men. In this very outdated view, the reason the Tudor period in England was the way it was is because of Henry VIII and that's all that's important to say about it. More modern historians try to answer the questions about what life and society was like back then, and how that whole story of society shaped events more than just the politicking and daily lives of the most powerful monarch.

So, for history, you have a 'classical' approach of just focusing on the politics and intrigues of the most powerful, and you have a more 'modern' holistic way of going about it. I'd argue the latter is better, but to get there, there had to be some moments of open-mindedness and willingness to look at it from other angles.

My best guess is that many social sciences, including anthropology, are also undergoing some sort of 'classical' vs 'modern' approach, which I think is ultimately a good thing.

There used to be a time in the not-so-distant past where anthropologists would find, say, calendars that would count down 28 days and go "why would the men back then make a calendar that counts lunar cycles?" without ever thinking that maybe a woman made the calendar for herself. I think we're better off with a collective practice of anthropology that's capable of thinking those kinds of thoughts.

That having been said, though, I wouldn't want to be an anthropologist right now. It feels like they're throwing so many assumptions up in the air and questioning everything to the point that they can't really do studies of substance.

Like the whole bit about studying violence in native American cultures... doing such studies might impact the way those cultures are seen today, but surely there's a way to still study it in a way to mitigate those consequences? Surely it doesn't mean we can't even think about studying it?

I dunno, I think long-term we'll get a better anthropology practice out of all of this (I read a great but somewhat controversial book called "The Dawn of Everything" recently touching on some of this) but looking at it from the middle of the process without having any idea where it's going... it looks and probably is quite frustrating.

There’s a kernel of a good idea (treat people with respect, study the nature of power, re-examine received wisdom with a critical eye), which some take too far and fail to apply reflexively to their own ideas.

Much of the issue is semantic, where a newfound freedom to redefine words (like “violence”) to mean whatever someone thinks they should mean, has weakened our shared epistemological foundations, making it much harder to escape polarization traps and hold reasoned discourse. The result is the de-emphasis of reason and the ascent of pure power struggle between competing tribes who are losing the ability to talk to each other.

> I can’t understand it. Can anyone?

Sciences are ruled by their real-world applications.

The main real-world application of anthropology is justifying or condemning racism, nationalism, colonialism etc. So that's what it delivers most of the time (which one depends on the demand).

This isn't new BTW - for most of our history the conclusion was given (for example "god made it so") and scientists were only tasked with getting to the conclusion in a persuasive and flavorful manner.

Everything but the few "hard" sciences is going back to the scholastic ways step by step.

My response to the questions laid out will be massively biased towards what I myself have read, but regardless:

> I’m honestly shocked every time I read something like this. My first reaction is: where did this go so wrong? “Scepticism is violence”? Scepticism once was science! And everything I learned points to that it should be so.

The keyword that has to be pointed out is "violence".

From what I've been able to gather, there is a growing body of people within academic circles that view any & all conflicts as violent & destructive, and that should therefore be banned at all costs. The exceptions to that rule are when it comes towards the destruction of modernist ideologies, as a consequence of the mass application of post-modernist thought into STEM fields.

Reductively, they're engaging in a "Rules for thee, not for me" when it comes to academic rigor & objectivism: From a post-modernist lens, such qualia must be rejected in order to promote inclusion into the academic space, & that anyone not willing to follow this doctrine are engaging in "problematic behavior" as a consequence of such line of thinking.

> But then I think that I maybe get something wrong. Maybe I miss something on a deep level. Because so many seem to embrace “this” whatever it is. I can’t understand it. Can anyone?

As stated above, "this" is the systematic weakening of academic objectivism & rigor in order to promote inclusion into fields that had high requirements in the past. From a post-modernist perspective, they must be destroyed for the greater good.

> every time I read something like this

Your mistake as a historian is reading a primary source without considering what biases or social context it might have.

Postmodern relativism has encouraged viewing all knowledge on an equal footing, which is ridiculous, because the application of knowledge has varying consequences.

If you care about what's real and you care about progress, scientific explanations are better than traditional ones. But when one's identity is partially composed of traditional explanations, contradictions are seen as an attack on identity itself.

In other words, some people find comfort and meaning in the familiarity of relative ignorance, especially when that ignorance is culturally shared. Processing new and contrary information is uncomfortable.

But no one has the right to insist that others validate their own ignorance, which is effectively what equating skepticism with violence is. And these days, at the extreme, you may even be accused of trying to "erase" someone if you question their cherished ignorance.

And yes, everyone is ignorant, although not equally. One true mark of a person is how they navigate and synthesize new information. Seeking better knowledge is directional, even if it's also asymptotic.

Making any transcriptions, translations, interpretations, etc completely unfalsifiable. If anyone is actually doing this they are either a con artist or just devoid of any idea of how science works.

I don't even understand what is being "extracted" in the first place. If I go and take coal, diamonds, fish, what-have-you: yeah, there's a problem here. But learning about people's cultures...? How is that even remotely similar to mining? Do they now have less culture to share amongst themselves because The White Man came and "extracted" some of it?

There was a story some months ago on HN about an anthropologist recording a dying language with just a few speakers left. They described just how eager many of the elderly people were to share their language and culture, glad their heritage wouldn't completely perish when they would. It's my experience most people are happy and willing to share their culture. Exceptions apply for some cultures, but the Nuxalk people here agreed to do the interviews, so I presume they were in the "happy to share" camp.

And all it takes is a few words: "do you mind of I record it?" Here she is making the decision for the indigenous people instead of empowering them to make their own decisions. I believe there is a word to describe that sort of thing...

Isn't she extracting information, just by talking to them? Shame on her, then.

When they passed laws that put tribal myths on the same level as western science. Found a 10,000 year old skeleton? Sorry, the Lakota-Sioux say he's an ancestor and you're racist if you want to test DNA to confirm (not that DNA could ever show tribal membership). If you pay big bucks they'll let you test, but the right to do anything with the results will depend on the tribe's assessment of your results. Repatriation laws as they exist are cancer.

Of course, tenured academics have strong incentive to support the paradigm that doesn't require any real work, so there's that.

I think there is a substantial fear that any result based on genetics can lead to a result of "therefore these genes are better", at least when taken at the most surface level (the level a typical headline and widely circulated article might take). Nobody wants to be associated with such an article and so anyone involved is extremely zealous in filtering out topics that might lead in that direction.

There is still a shadow of eugenics over any field studying human genetics, anthropology perhaps more than others. Personally I think its because the concepts of race and genetic ability were rejected primarily on moral grounds, rather than a scientific ones.

Any time you intermingle a religion with science this is what happens.

CLE requirements are and always have been nothing more than a handout to providers. The jurisdictions that don't have them are doing fine. The best thing you can do if you're sitting at a CLE is complete another CLE on your laptop so you don't have to waste any more time on that crap than necessary.

Edit: Correction; high-end ones are an excuse for big law lawyers to booze and schmooze on the company dime.

Amazing that they praised it given how apologist their retraction note seemed.

I think a big part of the author's issue is the focus on current anthropological "study" rather than historical anthropological science – both when it comes to the things studied (their issue with the talk you mention) but also when it comes to priorities, e.g. caring too much (my impression of author's opinion) about whether or not something is sacred / etc.

Clearly the author is a person that likes anthropology for what it can tell us about history and the past and prefers to do this in a way that is as strongly scientific as possible (read: falsifiable). Whether or not her version of anthropology is the right one is up to the reader.

As with a lot of modern science there is a lot of jockying for funding, and Weiss is potentially venting frustration that such things are getting funding in place of work she finds more important / productive.

She said to look for the best source material, regardless of the author's immutable characteristics. Isn't that what you expect from scientists?

If you take that approach, don't mind if everybody starts ignoring everything that might be related to an organization pushing an agenda. You're basically advocating that everyone stays in their own echo chamber, an anti-scientific attitude if there ever was one.

"The narrative must be preserved! We can't have any wrongthink hit the front page!"

> It's very "weird" how lately these proxy sites pushing socially conservative agendas that turn out to be run by conservative think tanks have been landing and languishing on the front page here

Culture war material is explicitly against the HN rules, so you can flag it with a clear conscience.

I don't think many hackers know much about anthropology to start with, which is a shame.

> It's very "weird" how lately these proxy sites pushing socially conservative agendas that turn out to be run by conservative think tanks have been landing and languishing on the front page here

The issue is these sites are the only ones that will write about it at all, as many more left and centre publications avoid the topic so this is all we're left with.

There is a cheat-code argument that prevents more centre-aligned people from writing about it: "it's {racist,harmful,transphobic,etc...} if you write about X". Sometimes, this is true, but usually it is asserted without any argument as an axiom. No one likes to defend themselves against accusations of racism; you've already lost if you're in that position.

We should of course be having conversations about what exactly is racist, harmful, transphobic, etc. but these are not "conversations" and mere "accusations.

If you go to the "right-wing outrage sites" – which this site doesn't seem to be by the way – you'll see a lot of outrage nonsense interspersed with actually some pretty decent stories (often badly written up, but good stories nonetheless) that no one else will report. Every ideology or "side" has its blind spots, something people seem to forgot at times. A group that doesn't allow self-criticism tends to become increasingly more anti-intellectual over time.

The last time I took one of those "political spectrum tests" I was further to the left than Lenin. It's kind-of a bullshit test but it goes to show I'm not exactly on the right-hand side of the political spectrum. Yet, I've found it's become impossible to comment on platforms with a left-wing bias, as merely saying things such as "wait, I think I have a better idea to solve this social problem: [...] What do you think?" can quickly result in quite horrible accusations and insults being thrown your way.

I don't understand this attitude; we agree about the problem, we just have different ideas about how to best solve it. How can you NOT be interested in a possible better way to solve what we both consider a serious problem? It is of course completely fine to disagree, but what I get is not "I disagree, because ...", it's "you need to shut the fuck up you rightoid!"

Thing is, they do have some valid points, even if they often end up buried in a heap of muck. E.g. I don't think that criticizing this is only possible from a conservative perspective:

"In her work with the Nuxalk, Leischner decided not to record any of the interviews, so as not to continue the legacy of extraction."

Isn't the retraction of the paper the author's point? That people are pushing nonsense and it is getting into "peer-reviewed" journals?

The rest of your comment doesn't really follow the HN guidelines when it comes to the principle of charity – you seem to be trying to deliberately come up with the worst possible interpretation of each point rather than actually attempting to have a constructive conversation about these things.