Talk:Anthropology

Intro

Ah, yes, the all-important Intro. This intro is itself 228 words. So I offered a tentative start in it and suggested an outline. Input is more than welcomed, of course. Stephen Ewen 04:19, 27 February 2007 (CST)

Nice start. I'm worried, though, that your second paragraph gives the idea that Africans are physical, Haitians are cultural, Chamorro people are interesting only for their language and this all somehow gets applied in the U.S. Maybe it would be better to give examples for each subfield relating to a single group? Maybe I'm being overly careful.

Was it Geertz who described anthropology as an intellectual poaching license? I like that metaphor. --Joe Quick | Talk

It was Kluckhohn and Geertz quoted him, don't remember his point, however. I think the quote may be too nuanced for an intro, though. But Geertz is superbly rich. I give his "Notes on a Balinese Cockfight" to people newly interested in anthropology.

I think the idea of "covering the world" in some sense in the Intro is important to convey a sweeping sense of the scope and areas in which anthros work. We can think about changing the applied example to one from, say, development anthropology. I would like to include a Western example somewhere, however, to show that anthropology is not only done outside of the West among "those others". In the "Controversies" section, or perhaps better in "The Post-modern Challenge" section, one thing I am thinking is to include the core concern you are raising about "using" others. A fair bit of applied anthropology can be controversial, of course, e.g., the anthros right now in Iraq "helping" the military understand the on-ground situation, although the anthros themselves consider themselves doing a service to the Iraquis and maybe they are, all things considered in that the military is there. The "Controversies" section - I am wondering about things like that but am definitely thinking the Yanomami controversy and the AAA Code of Ethics in response. Everything is still of course tentative, however. Stephen Ewen 05:17, 27 February 2007 (CST)

That sounds good. Let's just flip the Chicago and Haiti examples. If there's one point we want to make by including the West, it is that we in the West aren't free from the "restraints" of culture after all. I think a cultural anthro example would be the most salient. --Joe Quick | Talk

Development of Anthropology

This page should help a lot with the historical section of the article... Joe Quick | Talk

Ideas about depth of discussion?

What are our goals for the length and depth of this article? I realize that this is a silly question, since we should mostly be able to tell as we're writing, but it might be smart to set out some goals/guidelines.

It should give a good overview of the field for someone who is just looking to find out what this anther-whatchsmacallit is all about, but we obviously can't include everything...

Each of the sub-disciplines will eventually have its own page, so we don't need try to cover everything here, but we still need to find a balance that will give a good idea of what the field is about. I would think not much more than a few paragraphs should suffice.

The sections on the development of anthropology and the successes and controversy sections will probably not be comprehensively covered elsewhere, so we'll need to be complete without being overwhelming. But how complete? And what is overwhelming? --Joe Quick | Talk

Looks like a great start! I think the article length should approximate biology. Once we get all the scaffolding and a lot of the boards in place, I'd like to copyedit it for a similar, personable-yet-encyclopedic tone as in the article. Stephen Ewen 01:24, 2 March 2007 (CST)

Biology is about 4000 words discounting section titles and the like. That works out to about 5 pages of normal single-spaced text, which sounds very reasonable.

What kind of scope do you have in mind for the sections titled "Successes of anthropology," "Controversy," "The continuing story," and "The postmodern challenge?"

With regard to "controversy": we have to be especially careful and circumspect with this section. I think that we'll certainly want to mention some of the more famous cases (e.g., El Dorado, phrenology, treatment of human remains & NAGPRA, use of ethnographic data in times of war [Korea, etc.]), but we should also make a point of distinguishing internal controversies from external ones, and which controversies are centered around disconnects between the assumptions held within anthropology by those with formal training, and those assumptions not understood by most people who are outside the discipline (e.g. many journalistic accounts). Especially for this controvery subsection, perhaps we shouldn't put up anything that doesn't cite from the get-go specific sources as examples or as arguments from particular positions. Maybe it's best to write these passages offline first, then bring them into the wiki pages with at least the first round fairly well referenced (more than is normally done for less sensitive passages). Richard J. Senghas 01:36, 30 March 2007 (CDT)

With regard to the PM Challenge: I'd like not to fan the flames too much of the so-called postmodern problem. I find too often that many anthropologists have a kneejerk reaction to the term and anything associated with it (or anyone admitting positive predispositions towards PM), and I frequently observe gratuitous disparaging remarks about it, even as PM recedes to being just another perspective among others, rather than "the latest fashion" (another derogatory stereotyping). Some PM contributions are awful, some useful, and some has been quite good. Richard J. Senghas 01:36, 30 March 2007 (CDT)