How do you define anthropology?
Sociocultural anthropology is the study of all alternative world knowledges. Political knowledges, religious knowledges, scientific knowledges, medical knowledges - that there are a lot of different ways to think about things.
Good example of the idealistic bias in anthropology. First of all he is asked to define anthropology but he only defines sociocultural anthropology. And his definition is all about what is in people's heads and says nothing about what they actually do. Our job is to just to identify and classify the ways in which people think about things. We put them into these discrete categories and call them knowledges. I prefer to think that anthropologists in general and sociocultural anthropologists in particular have a lot to say about what people actually do, why they do those things, whey they think certain things, how does thinking relate to doing, etc. This is like defining a biologist as a taxonomist. Although, not really because at least taxonomists are systematic in how they seek to classify the entire range of variations of species and try to organize them and generalize across species types. I doubt there is a parallel in the study of knowledges.
PS My spell check does not like the word knowledges. I have something in common with my spell checker.
2 comments:
"the study of all alternative world knowledges" - alternative to what? There seems to be some subconscious ethnocentrism (or some other kind of -centrism) lurking behind his use of the word "alternative."
Maybe it's like alternative music.
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