Over the past few months I have been in conflict with a professor. He teaches Anthropology, in a way that I have never understood Anthropology to function, as a method of social justice.
His area of study, Activist Anthropology, states that bias in inherent to all research, so we should accept and promote biases with politically/morally acceptable goals/orientations. Which makes me want to vomit.
Anthropology, as I understand it, is the fusion of 'hard science' and 'soft science' to better understand where humans have come from, where we are, and where we're going. In a contemporary theoretical sense, it means picking a population to study, spending time with them, learning how they view the world, how they love, hate, raise families, heal the sick, punish the guilty and reward the virtuous. Learn about them, and write in such a fashion that your audience can feel the distinct 'sameness' about them, the beauty of human community in different environments and histories.
Practically, there are benefits to the inclusion of Anthropological analysis in a lot of fields. In Ann Arbor, MI, the neonatal unit was having serious dietary issues with new mothers from China, or whose families were from the same. These women would not eat, or would not be permitted to eat, certain foods by their families. After anthropological analysis, the issue relates to the humoral medical tradition in Traditional Chinese Medicine, which ascribes 'hotness' or 'coldness' to foods. A new mother needs 'hot' foods to replenish her 'heat' that is lost in childbirth. Humorally 'cold' foods, such as most green vegetables, and much fruit, are considered to rob the new mother of what little 'heat' she has remaining after childbirth. With that understanding, and lists of 'hot' and 'cold' foods, the dietitians at the hospital were able to create dietary plans that were sensitive to the beliefs of their patients, which improves health outcomes.
In the readings I've had to do for this class, and the discussions we have had, I have seen no value added. In their attempt to be anti-essentialist and anti-orientalist, the authors my professors had us read gave almost no information about the lives of their informants. They talked a lot about 'political agency' and 'feminist paradigm shifts from state to market feminism' and how 'Racial history has no bearing on Indianness and Indiginity' with respect to indigenous rights over large tracts of the Amazon. To be politically correct, and not be paternalistic, these authors spend countless pages detailing historical systems of abuse and repression, and peasants reactions to them, but spend absolutely no time talking about the future of these people. About what they actually want, the changes that the average person in these society wants, and believes are possible.
I submitted my final exam, a series of ~1000 word essays, to our dropbox just now, with this note attached.
- Professor X,
I'm sorry that we were never able to come to an academic understanding. I have held nothing but respect and love for Anthropology my entire academic career. I plan on using my anthropological traning heavily in my chosen profession, hiring decisions willing. I tried, over the months of this course to take something of practical, moral or ethical value away, and I cannot honestly say I succeeded. I write you now to let you know that I have not taken our disagreements lightly, and I spoken online with several tenured anthropologists about my issues with Activist Anthropological theory. Over winter break I'll be reading Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber, in attempt to reconcile my own understanding with the antithetical concepts which you have espoused. My opinions are subject to change based on relevant datum, and I hope that Graeber is able to convey the value of this area of study in a way that I can understand and accept, before I wash my hands of the entirety of it and never think of it again.
I appreciate your efforts to try and help me understand, and I say that with absolute sincerity. I can tell that you are passionate about your work, and try your best to convey that enthusiasm to your students.
-Regards, Ben
We took a bonus test in AP History. I had one question that was too good a joke to pass up (I'd share it, but it's an in-joke to my home town that anyone born in the past 30 years wouldn't get). My teacher nearly fell out of her chair and asked if she could share my answer with the punchline of the joke. I told her she was welcome to if I got the point. I got one point on that test.
Profs in my university are too fair :( They correct everything while hiding the names so sucking up to the teacher does fuck all. It's kinda shitty when you're failing a class and can't talk your way out of it. So yeah, gotta actually study. Stuff's too fair, and that's unfair. (Disclaimer: I don't actually mean most of what I just said)
This is usually what happens in Germany too. Profs really try their hardest to be as fair as possible (in written tests. cleavage makes oral tests unfair). But sometimes, you can actually talk to them. Like the 1st year foreign students who learned german in a year and then jumped straight to academic level...
To get my undergrad degree I needed to pass Calculus 100. After I failed my mid-term, I told my prof that "All I want to do is pass." He gave me a D minus, and I passed.
Thanks for your post OftenBen. I wasn't aware of the field of Actvist Anthropology, so I looked a tiny bit into it. The University of Texas in Austin has a program in that field with a description of what it is. The description ends with this note: Here's a bit I found fascinating: The article raises four of the main problems with that research methodology, as does this short blog post. So if anyone wants to read further on OftenBen's issues, go to those items. I'd also like to learn more about it.I tried, over the months of this course to take something of practical, moral or ethical value away, and I cannot honestly say I succeeded.
Activist anthropology is an option, an emphasis within our graduate program. It is not for everyone. Yet it does promise to offer critical perspectives on issues central to our discipline, issues that no anthropologist can afford to ignore.
Clearly it isn't for everyone. The website contained a link to an article that answered the title question "What is Activist Anthropology?" (PDF, 762K)The goal is to carry out the research such that a specified group of people can actively participate, thereby learning research skills themselves, contributing to the data collection, taking an active role in the process of knowledge creation.
I've never seen it presented that way. The third part that you quoted is a slippery bit of writing. It's written several different ways in different sources that I've read about Activist Anthropologist theory, and each different phrasing allows for other, more radical things to slip in. The fundamental problem that I have is with the second sentence in the article. If a person learns about a group of people who is in poverty, oppressed politically, or actively waging war against their oppressors, and that person wants to go help, they should do so. If they want to learn about the situation, so that they can convince others to help, they should do that too. If an academic wants to go study a particular group of people, and while they are there, they are needed to help someone who is sick, or in danger, they should do so. If after their period of study, data collection, analysis and presentation they want to return and do pure activist work, and get their hands dirty, they should do so. BUT, most of the A.A. reading I've done, is simply worse quality anthropological research. It has less data, more opinions of the researcher about their informants lives and political opinions. They claim to go to these areas to help, but if they genuinely wanted to help, why not do work that is meaningful? Why not go to Somalia, live in a peasant village, buy them desalination equipment, tend their gardens with them? Instead of staying there for a few weeks under the guise of helping, just to go back to the States and tell everyone how shitty they have it? Because that's what's happening. It's the academic equivalent of those 5 day mission trips white kids take to Haiti or somewhere in high school because it looks good on their transcript. It makes you look really sensitive, caring, suuuuuper progressive and charitable. And it's eternally defensible because if you don't like it then 'you just don't care about these people or issues!'First, there is no necessary contradiction between active political commitment to resolving a problem, and rigorous scholarly research on that problem.
BUT, most of the A.A. reading I've done, is simply worse quality anthropological research. It has less data, more opinions of the researcher about their informants lives and political opinions.
Good point. Their goals might sound good in theory. The reality might be something else. As they say: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, theory and practice are different. (or something like that).
Keep in mind that "critical perspectives" is possibly a cryptoreference to Critical Theory, not an endorsement that these perspectives are relevant or useful in any way.
Do you have some insight into the uses of Critical Theory in various disciplines? I'd like to hear it.Critical theory maintains that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation.
We carry various biases into our work. If Critical Theory tries to make us aware of those biases, then it should be part of the curriculum. From the almost nothing that I know, it seems that Activist Anthropology takes that approach, but then has its own biases.
By the way I didn't mean to be flippant or anything, I think your note is really cool and fair and professors are probably happy to see that sort of thing. I just also thought it was funny how the note I had finished writing not ten minutes before was so uncool and unfair and shitty and yeah anyway.
Okay, like, I have never studied anthropology in a formal academic setting, so this is just mostly me talking out of my ass. From what I understand, it seems like ya'll were really at odds with what you expected from the class, ie. to learn something about other cultures, as objectively as possible (I'm probably wrong here), but there seems to be more of a focus on the tools of understanding (which have definitely changed over time) in this class, which I still think is pretty cool. Someone here a while back posted something about the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard, and they have an interesting (although I don't know how original) take on the the studying part. This might be more in line with what you are you are in to, so you might wanna check it out. This part: definitely seems the most problematic for that field. Just by being an outsider, and observer, you inherently change the dynamic between the individuals you are studying and yourself. It's never going to be essentially the same as being an individual in that community. Then translating the experience through you own perception? Then writing that in another language that may not even have the proper symbolic tools? Then expecting people to really feel that sameness in a way that the original context remains intact? It gets bit hard to swallow. And you put yourself just a couple rungs up from some racist doofus marching through the Congo in the late 1800s, shooting anything that moves and spinning tales of your goings-on for the mystified masses back home. It seems more like coming to odds with the fact that translation will be faulty, but you can absolutely identify with the western world's impact on others and the systems you understand working on those who are foreign to them. This includes methods of quantification as well, but the only thing I have to say to that is one time I read Foucault, and he does go on a bit about how the soft sciences can have a demonstrable impact on society. And, in the way that they were applied during colonial times, he makes a good point, but please don't ask me to defend him like I'm an acolyte. I don't know what that means, but it seems like it could get real hairy, real quick. I would like to know what that meant in the context of this class, but I'm assuming it generally rhymed with "brogressive". There seems to be a bit of cognitive dissonance here, though, in your thinking. I can imagine someone would reply to that, saying, "Well, future thinking and planning is very nation-state and capitalist-centric, and we can study the effects of these systems on indigenous peoples, but we are just observers on our best days." There have also been plenty of cases for why it is best to not stick our nose in the affairs of others' as well-intentioned as our noses may be. Again, in someone else's voice: "Those are their choices to make, we tend to corrupt anything we touch, and we just need to understand our own impact." Like I said, though, this isn't my field so I may even be siding with you more than I even know. That was a very honest response to your professor, though, I hope they aren't the vindictive type.states that bias in inherent to all research
accept and promote biases with politically/morally acceptable goals/orientations.
To be politically correct, and not be paternalistic
...spend absolutely no time talking about the future of these people.
About what they actually want, the changes that the average person in these society wants, and believes are possible.
We probably do agree mostly. The course was titled 'Anthropology of Latin America' and I wasn't too enthused about taking it. The class that I wanted to take of equivalent level was full. What I understood from the course pack was that we would be studying revolution and social change from an anthropological perspective. To me, that means picking a specific country, or level of study (Personal Narrative, Small Community, Large Community, State, National), going over the general history of the region, the ethnic makeup of it's inhabitants, some of their cultural practices, and most heavily of all, their understanding of government/ their relationship to/with government. Include examples of how indigenous identity has evolved, how and when it was politicized, and how effective racial/ethnic organization has been in peaceful or violent revolution. What we ended up doing, is talking about how white people have been fucking over indigenous people for a long time, confusing racial matters by importing a bunch of slaves from everywhere, and how shitty things are, from the top of Mexico, to the bottom of Chile. How the core problem, at the root of everything else wrong with Latin America at the moment is the neoliberal economic and social policies instituted at the demand of the UN and World Bank. How you should feel terrible about eating bananas EVER, especially if you're white and your family has been in this country longer than a few days. All of this done in the most vague, politically correct, intentionally confused language I have ever heard from someone with a PHD. His choice of authors were all equally vague and to me, offensive. I read a lot, quickly, and I have great retention of what I've read. Reading the authors he gave us, most of the time felt like reading a really REALLY preachy SJW tumblr account. When I'm talking about futures I'm talking about finding out what these people want for themselves for the future, and not in any vague, tumblresque terms about 'end of patriarchyTM.' If a researcher wants to study social change, shouldn't they study what people WANT instead of just what they're fighting against? I agree we should keep our noses to ourselves. That doesn't seem to be happening. What seems to be happening is a bunch of people running into a village of starving peasants, taking pictures and going 'Man you guys have it so rough I want to help,' then going back home and feeling morally superior to their friends because they went and 'helped those starving bastards over there, look how bad they have it on my instagram.'
You're a better man than me. I studied engineering. The closest I got to liberal arts was Intro to Pop Song. It was a lecture with 1500 people in it and for my last final in my last class in college they played me out with Ice T's "Colors." Which is probably good because I got thrown out of a class every quarter in high school. I got thrown out of my Advanced Architectural Drafting class with ten minutes of the final left. I don't do well with people who pass off ideology as knowledge. Never have, never will. Put a girl through grad school. Social Work. Don't remember what the official title of the class was; it was pretty much White Guilt 501. The girlfriend related being told that there weren't two genders, there were five. Then when she asked what the other three were, the professor told her she was being oppressive. It didn't help that the professor was a Rajneeshee. There was something about a person accusing straight white people of oppression when that person had endorsed and participated in poisoning a salad bar to win a local election. I almost followed her to class to beat the shit out of the guy. I wish I could say it didn't color my perception of every transsexual/transgender discussion from that point forth, but as I said, you're a better man than me.
Well, I should've taken lil's approach and just read about the damn field first. It is an odd synthesis that kind of seems counter-intuitive and not really aligned with anything I had in mind when you say the word "anthropology". Man, I've seen that waaay to many times, in all kinds of settings, from academic, to even religious organizations, and it doesn't gross me out any less. However, you should still check out that link to that Harvard group, it's pretty interesting. 'Man you guys have it so rough I want to help,' then going back home and feeling morally superior to their friends because they went and 'helped those starving bastards over there, look how bad they have it on my instagram.'
I didn't know the professor was a social justice warrior. Before taking this class I wasn't even aware this sub-field existed. If you had told me before the class what Activist Anthropologists were doing I would have said (And still will say) that they are ineffective at best, and complete quacks at worst. Of the people with degrees that I've spoken to, the Graeber book that I listed in my note is supposed to explain how Activist Anthropology is supposed to function, without any of this nonsense about using bias as a theoretical base. I looked over the Harvard site and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be seeing. I can't watch any of the films, and I can only vaguely understand that they are studying sensory formation cross-culturally, which I'm not certain I completely understand. I'm personally interested in the practical value that Anthropological perspective can provide to improve health outcomes.
I think this is kind of like saying "I'm only interested in scientific research that improves health outcomes." and sounds like you walked in with a pretty strong bias against their central tenants. It's a field of it's own right that isn't necessarily limited to the practical outcomes that you desire. Which is whatever, but you're getting pretty polemic and shitting all over the SJW thing, which is the hot thing to do right now, but social justice is a concept that's far older than Tumblr and has merits of it's own right that have become permutated into something that isn't easily digestible, and then is regurgitated assiduously to the point that it digresses from the original context. Although it seems you may be surrounded by that right now, so I could understand your exacerbation. As for the Harvard thing, well, if your intent is only as stated, that may not even be interesting to you, but they attempt to use images and film as a means of studying particular aspects of anthropology, hoping for an even more authentic experience that doesn't get caught in the bias of language and traditional data capturing. I gather from what I have seen of their work, that, for instance, if the sensation of isolation or religious ecstasy is something they are trying to show, doing so in a format that involves sensory input in a more natural realm (using visuals instead of the written word), may be a better way to achieve a fitting understanding.I'm personally interested in the practical value that Anthropological perspective can provide to improve health outcomes.
I didn't have a bias going in. I walked in with an open mind, expecting 400 level anthropological data and analysis. I believe that those in political minority should not remain so. I believe that all humans have there right to act entirely as they wish as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. I believe that women should be paid just as much as men for equal work. I hate on the WARRIORS. I hate on people trying to make me feel bad because of the color of my skin, or because I was lucky enough to be born somewhere that hasn't been a center of civil unrest for decades. Believe me, I think about that daily. If I were born practically anywhere, or anywhen else, I would not have lived past infancy. I know how lucky I am, and it makes me feel like shit. I don't need someone who is paid to do so reminding me of it. Yes, I am only actively interested in research that can improve health outcomes. I plan on working in hospitals for the majority of my life, so that is where I focus my efforts. I cannot, I repeat, CAN NOT, take the time to learn everything about everything, as much as I try to anyway. I have to select which sources of information I will ignore, or I will drown. So I'll give the book I was recommended a try, and if it cannot change my mind, I will wash my hands of this nonsense and never let it bother me again. I have taken something of practical, or at least intellectual value away from every ANP class I've ever been a part of. I got nothing from this, and not for lack of trying.
Regarding Harvard, I can appreciate the artistic merit of what they're doing. I think that multimedia environments are definitely better at conveying the real import of various ethnic/religious experiences than the written account. If I could actually watch the videos, I'm sure I would enjoy them.
Word. I apologize that my remarks insinuated anything to the contrary, but the ire has been high on the internet lately and it bothers me that others saying similar remarks usually takes a pretty harsh contrarian stance and rejects all the things you outlined, but that's on me and I didn't ask. Where I live is kinda the mecca for a lot of activist, liberal arts post-grads, and once I was even dis-invited to a potluck because the house had a strict "only two white cis-males under our roof at a time" policy. While I was cooking. I do not count people like that amongst my friends or allies. And since you're probably pre-med(?) and focused on your career, it makes a lot of since as to why this wasn't very relevant. Good luck with the rest of your finals, if you have any left! What field are you aiming towards? I know how lucky I am, and it makes me feel like shit. I don't need someone who is paid to do so reminding me of it.
Not pre-med. I was for a short time, but I got a chance to visit the cadaver lab at my school. No longer interested. I don't have the stomach for the hands on work. Instead my focus is on research systems and methodology, hopefully making the process as easy on patients as possible. I have one exam left on thursday, then it's time to get started on my winter break reading.