The Importance of Critics (A Critique of Jonathan Marks’ Critique of The Bell Curve)

          This critique will not so much be a traditional critique of a reading, for Elizabeth did an excellent job synthesizing and analyzing the same article in her post from April 21 (found here: http://theoryisthenewblack.blogspot.com/2014/04/cracks-in-bell-curve.html). But I was so fascinated by how and why Jonathan Marks critiques The Bell Curve (1994) that I thought it warranted another post, one that was more a defense of his work and encouragement for future anthropologists to keep a critical eye on their colleagues’ works.

            The importance of public anthropology, in my mind, is that it brings anthropological research and theory out of the closed-off world of academia, and into the public sector- making it available for all people, not just anthropologists. Additionally, the field allows for anthropology to help the world deal with certain issues and debates as they arise and as they are important to regular people. Instead of discussing the symbolism of the Kula ring or the kinship patterns of the Native American tribes, public anthropology brings the study of people and cultures into present discussions that are happening in many other disciplines. It makes anthropology practical, not just theoretical.

            However, one of the dangers of public anthropology is the same as why I so revere it: it brings anthropology to an audience that is not necessarily educated in the discipline. Though this opens a lot of doors for expanding the way people think, if research is not done well or explained correctly, it can be seriously misleading, yet convincing. This was the case with R. Herrnstein and C. Murray’s The Bell Curve, which used pseudoscience of the past to state that intelligence is inherited and not affected by environmental factors at all. It played off of the public’s interest in the nature vs. nurture debate, and led them down a dangerous road towards increased racism. This poor science and subsequent racism could have impacted public policy, if it were not for the anthropologists that still had a keen eye for critique, like Jonathan Marks.

            Jonathan Marks, in the article “Anthropology and The Bell Curve,” from the book, Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back (2005), easily disproves the science of Herrnstein and Murray in a manner that is just as easy for the public to read and understand. Marks clearly shows the link between the “science” of their research and the political influence they were trying to have, concluding by saying “given its scholarship, citations, and associations, it is hard to see the goal of The Bell Curve as other than to rationalize economic inequality, to perpetuate injustice, and to justify social oppression” (543). Marks goes through the arguments in The Bell Curve and step-by-step breaks them down, so that it is an argument that is not too theoretical. This is key for critiquing public anthropological work: the critiques have to be just as easy for the public to understand as the original research.

            The public tends to be easy to convince, especially if the person presenting information sounds like they know what they are talking about. They tend not to have a critical eye for things they read, especially if what they are reading has become super popular. Because of this, public anthropology must continue to have critics, like Jonathan Marks, who expose poor research and prevent the name of anthropology from being discounted because of a few not-so-great (read: abhorrent) anthropologists. Without this critics, public anthropology will become more dangerous than good. 

Foucauldian Discourse of Hindu Caste System

Foucauldian Discourse is a system of analysis that takes broader contexts and dissects them individually instead of using one large theoretical framework. This discourse was introduced by French post-structuralist, who rejected "totalitarian theories", and saw power as a "set of pressures lodged in institutional mechanisms which produce and maintain the privileged norms" (pomo ppt). In Foucouldian discourse terms, the word "discourse" is a culturally constructed concept of knowledge, in which 'knowledge' is dictated by those in power that create the texts and other manifestations of knowledge. The discourse defines the boundaries of possibilities and manipulates what eventually becomes known as "truth". 

In the following text, I will use Foucauldian Discourse to analyze the Hindu caste system in Nepal today.

The Hindu caste system first originated through the division of labor - the society was divided into priests, warriors, merchants, and lastly the laborers. As you can imagine, the laborers were considered lowest caste, merchants second lowest and so on. Although it started out as an egalitarian society where there was no hierarchy of occupations, there was a gradual segregation of the groups. The priests, or Brahmins, were the people whose job made it necessary to read and write, and the warriors, or Kshatriyas, whose job brought them valor and honor, and for this reason, their ranking in society progressively increased, while the subservient role of the merchant (Vaisyas), and the laborers (Sudras) decreased. Through time, this hierarchical caste system has become increasingly entrenched in society as the upper caste Brahmins and Kshatriyas take advantage of their positions in society. The Brahmins have the most power because they are the ones that interpret the words of the numerous deities, the middle men between the Gods and the common people. Additionally, they're the ones that are most literate while the Sudras don't require reading or writing for their job and therefore are illiterate. Therefore, the discourse in Hindu society is that of the Brahmins.

In today's Hindu society, the Sudras are otherwise known as untouchables, because they are "impure" and have the power to contaminate you by touch. This is the logic that people have grown up with all of their lives and to them, it's the truth, it's common knowledge, it's normal, and the majority of the people follow it without question, no matter what caste one may be from. The Sudras are literally not allowed to touch someone of the upper caste, and if there is accidental touching, the upper caste individual has to cleanse themselves with water. If their food is touched, they cannot eat the food. The Sudras are not allowed to enter the temples of the religious priests. The reasoning for this is given as the Sudras work involves dirt and impurities, things that noone else would choose to do, and for this reason, they are also impure. Additionally, their diet is also cited as a reason for their impurity. The Sudras eat water buffalo and drink alcohol, specifically rice wine. Instead of realizing that they eat water buffalo because it is cheap and more affordable than other meats, and that they drink the rice wine to give them energy for a hard day's of labor, these food items are simply pegged as impure because one, the animal's habitat is extremely dirty, and two, the alcohol makes them drunk, and therefore, these people are "impure".

By marginalizing the Sudras in such a way, the interests of the powerful Brahmin class is being mobilized. Because of the discourse constructed by the Brahmins, having a Brahmin identity is more desirable because it is not the demeaning, looked down upon, loathed, identity of a lower caste individual.

Although I simply touched upon the surface of the Hindu caste system, it is evident that Foucoult's ideas about the discourse of knowledge and power rings true in this society. 

Doctor Who and Cultural Evolution

This past week, I decided that I would undertake the herculean task of rewatching one of my favourite childhood and current shows, Doctor Who.  So where exactly does one begin when rewatching a fifty-year running television show with some seven hundred episodes?  At the beginning.  Classic Doctor Who (or Doctor Who prior to the 2005 reboot) is divided into seasons, and each season is divided into serials, or mini arcs that last for three or four episodes.

The first and second serials aired in 1963, and they are “And Unearthly Child” and “The Daleks,” respectively, the first focusing on the titular character and the second on a low-budget villain that would eventually become an icon of the franchise.  And it was as I was watching these two serials that I was struck by the incredible example they both provide of cultural (and basic human) evolution.

In the second episode of the first serial, the TARDIS (which is the blue time-machine-turned-police-box in which the Doctor travels the universe) lands in a barren waste inhabited by a tribe of “savages,” the tribe of Gum.  While the members of the tribe are named, they are presented with no capacity for speech, limited intelligence, an innate sense of violence, and a strong penchant for wearing loincloths made from animal skins.  While it is never stated that the tribe of Gum represents Neanderthals, their characterization (or lack thereof) does lend itself to the idea of early hominids popular in the early 1960’s.

In the next serial, the Doctor encounters what he calls a more “advanced” society, the humanoid Thals of the planet Skaro.  These people practice animal husbandry and farming, have developed an advanced language and religion, and seem in all respects to be the classic fit for the barbarian on the evolutionary ladder.  The Doctor does, however, openly admit that the Thals are not as “advanced” as a technologically-driven race that also inhabits the planet, the Daleks.

The Daleks thrive in the midst of great accomplishment and a complex social and political structure headed by a war leader and a council.  The system does not seem to be too different from that of England, the country from which Doctor Who hails.  The Daleks have, most importantly, developed a writing system, which the tribe of Gum and the Thals both lacked.  The Daleks are a prime example of a “civilization.”

The tribe of Gum, the Thals, and the Daleks all appear within the first two serials of Doctor Who, and they perfectly represent the perfect Morganian model of cultural evolution, showing how societies technically graduate from one rung of development through certain advances to the next.

By contrast, and as a fun fact, twenty-five years after the first serial exhibiting Neanderthals, the show aired a new serial (the last Classic Who serial filmed) with a Neanderthal named Nimrod.  Rather than one of the dumb, “primitive” creatures that had been portrayed years before, Nimrod was given a higher intelligence and higher capabilities associated with “advanced” homo sapiens.  This is, of course, very reflective of the popular view of human evolution at the time.

The Practice Theory of Celibacy

In the wake of scientific results indicating that the text fragment, known as the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, is authentically ancient and not a modern fake, I have decided to examine the impact that the previous mindset of a “Wifeless Christ” has had on past and present followers. More specifically I plan on examining celibacy with practice theory.

According to Dr. Karen King (Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School), this small fragment of ancient Christian text does not offer historical evidence that Jesus was married. She believes, however, that it does raise serious questions about how early Christians were debating the role of women, celibacy and marriage. The fragment also includes the phrase, “She can be my disciple,” which could be read as making an argument for leadership roles for women in the early church. I believe that there is too much information to debate the reasons why females do not have leadership roles in the church to include in this short blog entry. So instead, I will focus on the ideology of celibacy within the church.

            I assume that everyone that is reading this is aware that catholic priests are preferred to remain celibate throughout their lives, but as a young catholic I always wondered why. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (a published source of church doctrine), ordained ministers are “Called to consecrate themselves with undivided heart to the Lord and to ‘the affairs of the Lord,’ they give themselves entirely to God and to men. Celibacy is a sign of this new life to the service of which the Church’s minister is consecrated; accepted with a joyous heart celibacy radiantly proclaims the Reign of God.” (Catechism 1599)

            Celibacy can be anthropologically analyzed using practice theory because practice theory deals with the relationship between ideology, structure, and practice. Through examining this triangle, we can see how all of these three aspects affect each other as well as shape and change practices and culture itself. So first let us look at the ideology behind celibacy. The church encourages all of its followers to become more Christ-like and because the preconceived notion is that Christ was celibate, the ideology behind celibacy is that it is a sign of service that proclaims the reign of god.

            This ideology that Christ was celibate and that ordained ministers should follow his example implements a common practice of celibacy. In an effort to become role models for their parishes (as Christ is for humanity) priests are required to practice celibacy. This common practice thus becomes the accepted structure by which all priests must follow with little to no exceptions. However, this new piece of evidence presents a big “what if” to the culture of the church.

            What if this document is valid and Christ did in fact have a wife? This possible fact does not detract from the significance Christ has on the church, but the fact remains that Christ, the example ordained priests are supposed to model themselves after, was not celibate. If Christ was not celibate then we can assume that celibacy would not have been an accepted ideology for men of the cloth. Thus, priests would not practice it and there would be no sign of a celibate structure among the church.


RESOURCES:
Catholic Church. Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011.

Examining Earth Day through Practice Theory and Postmodernism

As some of you might know, Earth Day took place yesterday on April 22^nd. Worldwide, since its inception in 1970, the day has been about supporting the environment and creating awareness about the issues that plague and threaten our planet. On Wake’s campus, there was an Earth Day Fair which occurred out on the quad where different groups talked about their Earth-friendly goods and organizations. Some of these groups include the Sierra Club, Eco-Products, and other organic food and product makers. But why do we celebrate this event, and what is the theory behind it? Through the lens of both Practice theory and Postmodernism, we can help to reveal the hidden meaning of the holiday.

Practice theory seeks to expand the previous anthropological approaches and theories into something more dynamic. It also seeks to address the weaknesses of other theories through its method of examining different aspects of culture and seeing how everyday practices affect culture. More specifically, Practice theory deals with the relationship between ideology, structure, and practice. Through examining this triangle, we can see how all of these three aspects affect each other as well as shape and change practices and culture itself. 

When applying this relationship triangle to Earth Day, we can immediately see how the event affects ideology. The goal of the event is to raise awareness of environmental issues, and by having special events to commemorate the day, the holiday seeks to shift people’s system of beliefs concerning the environment and make people more conscious of taking care of our world. This is a shift away from the ideology of consumerism and the wastefulness that capitalism promotes, as well as a shift from the effects of industrialism and pollution. Having this day once a year serves as a continual reminder and push towards this more earth-friendly ideology involving the planet and humanity's effects on it.

By trying to change the ideology that involves our care of the planet, Earth Day attempts to then use this shift to affect another area of the triangle, which is practice. When an ideology is shifted, daily practice also shifts in order to accommodate this new ideology. In the case of Earth Day, this shift in practice is to use more environmentally friendly products, and to live a more sustainable lifestyle. This shift in practice will then change the structure of the countries and world in which we live, because when people are more concerned with environmental issues and living in a more environmentally conscious way and push for these changes, governments respond. Their response entails changes in policies and the creation of new laws that are in accordance with their citizens' shift in ideology and practice. 

One example of a shift like this that we have seen in the past was through the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, which brought to light the terrible effects of DDT use in agriculture on animals. This popular book affected the ideology of American citizens, and in turn, this concern affected the government and ended with a ban on DDT in agriculture as well as the onset of the Environmental movement.

Applying the Postmodernist lens, however, can create a different evaluation of Earth Day. One of the major ideas of Postmodernism is that there is no such thing as unbiased knowledge. Applying this to Earth Day and its celebrations, we can see that even though each group seeks to promote their own environmentally friendly and organic products, we can conclude that we do not know if what say is actually true. Some products that claim they are organic could have taken advantage of the many loopholes that exist for food labelling, and oftentimes consumers are unaware of this. In this way, it is important to be critical of the organizations that take part in Earth Day, to make sure they are actually following through on what they are promoting.

Another principle of Postmodernism is that of culture being a performance. Earth Day, in a way, is a performance. It is an act that shows how involved and invested in the environment one is, and by taking part in the celebrations, you do not necessarily have to live your own life in a sustainable way. Another aspect of this is that the organizations that promote themselves at events, like the fair here at Wake, could also be performing in a way that highlights or exaggerates how environmentally conscious they actually are in an attempt to promote themselves and ultimately sell their products. In Dr. Thacker’s Culture and Nature class, we examined this phenomenon through looking at the ways in which groups and companies endorse themselves as being more "green" than they actually are in advertisements. By doing this, companies take advantage of the environmental movement and the people trying to be more environmentally conscious. By looking at this tenet of performance within Postmodernism, we are able to look at the Earth Day with a more critical eye and examine the biases that could be hidden underneath the surface.

A (positive) Critique on Appadurai

In his work, "Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy," Arjun Appadurai sets forth several comments about culture and its evolution as the world becomes more and more connected through globalization. I particularly liked how Appadurai framed his article, by addressing how cultures and their accompanying systems had existed before the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Historically, various cultures had interacted mainly through events involving warfare and religious missionaries seeking conversion. This frame illuminates how the world had previously been fragmented, and interactions remained relatively disjointed, save during intense cultural interactions. 

Appadurai, in his transition into discussing modern globalization, illustrates the kick that pushes cultural interactions to modern ones. This kick, according to Appadurai is called "print capitalism" (labeled by Benedict Anderson). The ability to share ideas and information through "mass literature" produced interactions that did not require physical contact between groups of people. Before reading Appadurai's work I had never considered mass print production to be the first major unifier, but it seems very clear now. Perhaps this is a testimony to Appadurai's ability to argue effectively.

Appadurai smoothly transitions into his central discussion of his “scapes” by defining globalization and the tensions that accompany them. He presents the argument that “the central problem of today’s global interactions is the tension between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization.” I both understand and appreciate the argument here and I fully believe that through globalization tensions between the “purity” (for lack of a better word), or diversity of cultures. However, I believe that major tensions in globalization could be attributed to varying power structures create inequalities between different cultures, and how these power inequalities influence the flow of resources, which Appadurai describes in his five “scapes.”

Appadurai’s first “scape,” of globalization is the ethnoscape can be defined as the movement of people to other places, which forces us to ask ourselves what happens to culture when the movement of people is constantly fluid. Appadurai assures us that the fluidity is not related to instability, but it is inherent in human nature to move. Appadurai also defines the Technoscape as technology moving from central to peripheral nations (to use the World-Systems Theory). This is where I believe power dynamics come into play and reveal their underlying tensions. In the mediascape information is shared around the world through large news broadcasting systems. In my opinion, this mediascape can be seen as a direct evolution from the “print capitalism” he discusses earlier. The third scape, ideoscape, is more difficult for me to understand, but it is essentially words that represent larger cultural ideologies (such as freedom, honor, democracy), and how those specific ideologies help to shape the cultures with which they are tied. Finally, financescapes describe the flow of capital from various countries, and can be exemplified through large scale establishments such as world banks.

Overall, I though Appadurai’s article was extremely accessible and quite interesting to read. His points were thoroughly explained with diction that was particularly easy to follow, but also explained complex ideas. I thought this article greatly enhanced my overall understanding of globalization and the affects it has upon our society.

Boston Marathon Bombing Via Anthropology

One week ago marked a very special anniversary. It was not the kind of anniversary that we celebrate with smiles, laughter, and our drinks held high. Rather, it marks a somber and dark day in the history of the United States that will never be forgotten.

On  April 15^th 2013, there was a loud blast. Then, another one shook the streets. Five people were murdered in cold blood, close to 300 people were injured, and a city was knocked off its feet. The Boston Marathon was disrupted by two detonated bombs, which were thought to have been planted by the Tsarnaev brothers. The two brothers were Islamic fundamentalists that did not proclaim any connection with terrorist cells in Chechnya, their site of birth. Rather, the motive pointed towards individual disgust with the American government and its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such a case begs for anthropological attention.

While such an event can be linked to a cohort of anthropological theories concerning the underlying societal cause of the bombings, few sectors of the academic discipline relate more closely with the bombings as public anthropology.

As noted by anthropologist David Edwards in “Counterinsurgency as a Cultural System,” the American government has employed Human Terrain System, where academic anthropology (through ethnographic methods) is implemented to help the American government in their counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts in Afghanistan. Ethnography is used to understand local people and their customs with the intention of “winning over the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.” Anthropology had rarely been in such an influential spotlight, yet anthropologists quivered at the idea.

Despite its rather unproven success, if employed effectively, the HTS system could render important information from Chechnya to understand why cultured individuals would bomb a marathon. Moreover, it could help save future lives by preventing further violence from occurring on American soil. However, does the American military really want to get involved in Chechnya as well, especially after little action was taken with Syria?

Despite the questioned effectiveness of the aforementioned topic, it also important to understand how such violence originated, this time through a different lens. Globalization theory and its connection with anthropology has the premise of generating crucial information in association with the bombing.

Through “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” by Arjuan Appadurai, some valuable insight may be rendered in figuring out how such an occurrence took place in Boston and how to prevent future attacks. Appadurai argues that there are five new domains for cultural flow around the world: ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes, and ideoscapes. The majority of these “scapes” yield valuable insight in explaining how our world helped facilitate the bombing.

Through ethnoscape, which examines moving groups of people and their effects on new locations, the two brothers were able move from Chechnya and attend college in Boston. With the feasibility of international travel, more people are moving, and cultural ideas (such as Islamic extremism) are manifesting themselves in new locations, such as the United States.

Through technoscape, which shows the fast movement of technology around the globe, it is possible to explain how the brothers learned how to construct a bomb, which undeniably was composed of different materials constructed in different countries.

While there was not a large corelation in financescape in this piece (because capital was not a central tenant of the bombings), mediascapes brought this bombing to an international stage. Reports of the emergency appeared in newspapers around the world, and international security was heightened once more due to the feasibility of the dissemination of the news.

Finally, ideoscapes are emphasized through the massive pride resulting in Boston after the bombing. The “Boston Strong” campaign was a central part of the identity of the city, and it was transmitted via social media, the internet as well as other technologies.

“Boston Strong” surely caught on in the city, and it made everyone feel assured by fulfilling Malinowski’s basic need of safety.

While, hopefully no other terrorist incident occurs on American soil, by tracing ideas and events through public anthropology as well as globalization theory, new and unique methods of thinking will surface. From those, effective solutions may surface to prevent further attacks.