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Anthropologists unite!
Anthropology isn’t in the crisis that parts of the media would have you believe,
but it must do better, argue Adam Kuper and Jonathan Marks.
I
n December 2010, The New York Times which seems to translate into antiscience.” anthropologists cannot agree on what the
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new developments in evolutionary theory. Geertz followed that road down to a relativist faculties of science or medicine. Cultural
They show little interest in archaeology dead end. All generalizations about human anthropologists allied themselves with the
— except perhaps the archaeology of very beings were suspect, except for the iron law humanities. Archaeologists sought shel-
ancient humans — or in ethnography, that culture trumps biology 3. ter where they could. In Europe the main
except for snippets of information about The controversies of the 1980s, which branches of anthropology had gone their
sex and violence. Some do seem to feel lingered on into the 1990s, often hinged on own ways after the Second World War. It now
that if only they could spare the time they claims about race, sex and violence, and so seemed as though the Americans were belat-
would be able to knock some evolutionist they caught the attention of a wider public. edly following the same route. However, in the
sense into cultural anthropology. But they In a popular book published in 1928, Mar- new millennium, the brief and localized trend
are too busy. garet Mead had reported that Samoan girls reversed itself. This is because there is a stu-
Meanwhile, the ethnographers agree that enjoyed sexual freedom, and so experienced dent demand for the whole package, the study
their first task is to document the great diver- an untroubled passage through adoles- of human origins, history and diversity.
sity of human ways of life. Generalizations cence4. More than half a century later (and Today, anthropologists may teach more or
about human nature should not be based after Mead’s death), Derek Freeman trashed less happily in interdisciplinary teams, but
on a single report of Amazonian violence, her account, insisting that the girls were they seldom collaborate in research projects
or Tibetan polyandry, or woman–woman remarkably chaste5. Rather mysteriously, the that breach their disciplinary specialities.
marriage among the Lovedu of South Africa. sex life of Samoan girls became a popular In the past few years
But they do not agree on how to make sense test-case for the nature–nurture argument. they have drifted to
of the customs of faraway peoples. Social (Recent commentaries are kinder to Mead “There a sadder-but-wiser
anthropologists engage with models and than to Freeman, although it has become is a need default position, some
theories current in the social sciences obvious that neither Freeman nor Mead can for a truly documenting the
(ideally, although they seldom keep up as be relied on uncritically for the description comparative range of differences
well as they should). Some cultural anthro- of Samoan adolescence, let alone for the science of in human biology,
pologists aim rather to understand and explanation6.) human beings others studying the
translate, and they look for inspiration to Young women might find happiness in a throughout world of social insti-
literary theorists and philosophers (prefer- liberated sex life, but were young men given their history, tutions and belief sys-
ably French, even if they have to be read in rather to violence? Napoleon Chagnon and all over tems. Only a handful
often impenetrable translations). claimed that among the Yanomami of the the world.” still try to understand
For a long time the main branches of Amazon, the most violent men got the girls. the origins and pos-
anthropology largely ignored one another, (And he suggested that, in something like a sible connections
but in the 1980s two radical movements state of nature, all men are Yanomami under between biological, social and cultural
provoked a confrontation. Sociobiologists the skin7.) His account of these people was forms, or to debate the relative significance
claimed that genetics was about to revolu- challenged by other ethnographers, who of history and microevolution in specific,
tionize the human sciences. These would reported significant local variation even well-documented instances.
become at last a branch of biology, although among the 22,500-strong Yanomami, not This is a great pity, and not only because
the great biologist Ernst Mayr did warn that least in rates of homicide and the abduction the silence of the anthropologists has left the
“the profound differences in social behaviour of women8. In any case, the Yanomami are field to blockbusting books by amateurs that
among human groups, some of them closely not typical even of the most isolated, small- are long on speculation and short on reliable
related, show how much of this behaviour is scale, technologically limited societies. Many information. Anthropologists hardly bother
cultural rather than genetic”. Sociobiologists ethnographies document easy-going gender any longer to take issue with even the most
also drew on ethology, relationships between hunter-gatherers, outlandish generalizations about human
an older movement “The real from Alaska to the Kalahari Desert, or offer nature. Not their business.
that made much of shocker is that historical accounts of peace-loving Indian
parallels between anthropologists chiefs with many wives, presiding over a betteR togetheR
human and primate cannot agree monastic soldiery. To be sure, it is not easy to make general
— or even insect — what the Race was altogether a more serious matter, statements about human nature, or even to
behaviour, provoking discipline but on this the anthropologists were not fun- define it. One obstacle is the often-taken-for-
Sherwood Washburn, damentally divided. The 1994 publication by granted opposition between the notoriously
is about.”
a leading biological psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and politi- — perhaps necessarily — unstable ideas of
anthropologist, to cal scientist Charles Murray of their book The ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. The human species has
comment that human ethology “might be Bell Curve9 provoked a national debate about been co-evolving with technology for mil-
defined as the science that pretends humans race and inequality. The AAA and the Ameri- lions of years. Advances in contraceptive
cannot speak”. can Association of Physical Anthropologists techniques have transformed our sexual
Inspired by the elegant essays of Clifford issued parallel statements summarizing the behaviour. The most fundamentally hard-
Geertz, another new movement appeared scientific understanding on race. In brief, they wired human adaptations — walking and
centre-stage in the 1980s (in fact another agreed that human variation is structured bio- talking — are actively learned by every per-
very old movement, in modern dress). culturally, clinally and locally. Nothing corre- son, in each generation. So whatever human
Cultural theorists, identifying themselves sponding to the zoological subspecies exists nature may be, it clearly takes a variety of
with the humanities, insisted that foreign within extant Homo sapiens. Individuals and local forms, and is in constant flux.
ways of thought are resistant to translation, groups of people do indeed differ biologically. The obvious conclusion is that inter-
that variation and change characterize even However, social inequalities are overwhelm- disciplinary research is imperative. Yet too
the most isolated populations, and that it is ingly the product of political and economic few biological anthropologists attend to
therefore not easy to say what the Bushmen history, not of microevolution. social or cultural or historical factors. A
do, or the Trobrianders, or for that matter the In the course of the feuding 1980s, several minority of cultural anthropologists and
English (all of them? Always?), so com- flagship anthropology departments in the archaeologists do apply evolutionary theory,
parisons are problematic. Some disciples of United States split up. The biologists joined or cognitive science, or adopt an ecological
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