From: strange@acpub.duke.edu (Michael B. Scher)
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology
Subject: Re: The Bible In The Context of Its Time
Date: 12 Oct 92 14:57:20 GMT
Organization: Duke University; Durham, N.C.

In article <-1367013136snx@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au> gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>
>In article <1992Oct9.192405.21864@midway.uchicago.edu> coonstot@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>
> >      Certainly methodologies play a critical role, however I could
> > argue that there exist strong similarites between anthropological
> > and sociological methodologies.
> >  
> >  This is interesting, but I am not certain that what anthropology 
> > does in this case is conduct a study sociologically.
> >  
> >   Yes, and you will find that the questions asked by anthropology of
> > educational institutions still focus on the individual.
>
      [. . .]
>If you are proposing here a study of Anthropology as a discipline,
>please support your thesis with the facts surrounding the real-life
>work of anthropologists. Certainly there is an abundance of material,
>and I expect there are plenty of Anthropologists who would not be
>too disturbed by your following them around asking silly questions as
>they go about their work.
   
     Indeed, in the late '50's and through the 1960's, a group of
Sociologists performed such studies on their discipline.  Replacing Kant
with Husserl, they proposed a phenomenological Sociology that would try
to avoid as many a priori conclusions and readings of material as possible.
They continually self-criticised, even as to the focus of any of their
studies (something it took other social science areas another decade or
two to do).  They called themselves ethnomethodologists, and, with Sachs 
(or is it Sacks, hmm) in soci/anthro cross-over, sparked the ethnoscience
movement as well.

>At least you will probably not be chopped up with a machete for not
>seeking permission from the village before taking a tape measure to
>their land, or shot by the local political opposition. Should be
>fairly safe, so please do not hesitate on those grounds.
 
     Of course, the ethnomethodologists were kicked clean out of Sociology
in the early 1970's, and became a discipline unto themselves where they
survived, so it's not all that safe to examine closely the "aprioris" 
(Husserl's term) of a discipline.  Quite a huge percentage of both ethnometh
and ethnosci continue in Anthropology as discourse analysis and cognitive
anthro, respectively.  I think the differences between Anthropological
methods and Sociological methods are made plain by the history of
ethnomethodology:  one evicted the discipline, and the other adopted it.

Sociology has a difficult time out past the extreme Weberian end of things.

     Of course, it helps to actually have some solid idea of what it means
to "do anthropology" (to put it in Garfinkel-esque ethnometh terms).  This
discourse about "old" and "new" anthropology comes from discussion of "post
modern anthropology," which is portrayed as rising dominantly; however,
one should note that it, too, is already receiving heavy criticism; it goes 
like this:  the white male anthropology, now faced with the notion that it
can never wholely "know" the other and speak for it, now claims that it
can say anything in pastiche since NO ONE can speak for the other.  Having
lost the territory, they destroy it.  Such criticism comes from feminist
and also traditional anthropologists, particularly those who have always
recognized their biases and criticised their own methods.
     This is all nothing new in anthro -- we had these debates years ago
when Turnbull published his Mountain People, an example of a "bad" reading
of a people, and the methods, already under scrutiny, exploded into the
major journals.  That was in 1972.


-- 
Mike Scher                      strange@hercules.acpub.duke.edu
Duke University -- Durham, NC:  Law and Cultural Anthropology 
This post expressly not for use as toilet tissue.
(K) 1991 Net Prophet Productions - All lefts deserved.
Newsgroups: sci.anthropology