The Complexity and Deception of "Knowledge"

An Analysis of “A Crisis of Representation in the Human Sciences” by George E. Marcus and Michael M.J. Fischer

Marcus and Fischer bring to our attention the very epistemological issues that truly represent the mindset of postmodernism. It is that objective knowledge does not truly exist because various issues, such as contextuality, exist “that make problematic what were taken for granted as facts or certainties on which the validity of paradigms had rested” (444).  Here, they show how the internalization and production of information fabricates knowledge in a way that cannot be classified as objective. Thereby, the terms “facts” or “certainties” do not apply not necessarily for what the knowledge itself is but where such knowledge came from and how it was produced.

Such an argument is of large magnitude because it strikes at such a significant relationship between language and knowledge. The very presentation of knowledge through the use of language forms a problem that Marcus and Fischer term “a crisis of representation” (444). Even beyond the presentation of knowledge but the systems, institutions, and contexts that knowledge is placed in give knowledge non-neutral, non-objective attributes. Analysis of Marcus and Fischer’s work paints paradigms as incapable of producing objective knowledge because these paradigms themselves are produced and used with an agenda or purpose. When human purpose is attached to paradigms, they are placed in a system or environment of hierarchy, whereby one paradigms dominates over the other. A paradigm itself is a representation of how knowledge itself is shaped and a confining space for the interpretation of reality. Paradigms, therefore, as reflective of human purpose and specific interpretation of reality, clash, representing how differing perspectives challenge each other.

Marcus and Fischer describe tragedy, comedy, and romance as the three types of emplotments used as a strategy to find a proper representation of the historical process. Here, they bring about how each emplotment type represents a specific means of documenting and sharing history. For example, a tragedy is characterized by “the heightening of the sense of conflicting social forces” which results in a “gain in consciousness and understanding through experiencing the power of social conflicts” (447). Such a specific framework takes events and essentially filters out and modifies the aspects of history that are not relevant to this purpose. It is therefore that work and the knowledge produced by a specific individual at a specific time is a mere single interpretation in an expanse of endless number of interpretations. Thereby, reaching for such “accurate” knowledge can only exist through the compilation and consideration of as much to the full account of individual interpretations as possible.

Cracks in the bell curve

Public anthropology addresses important topics beyond the academia realm, applying an anthropological lens to real world circumstances.  Mark’s “Anthropology and The Bell Curve” is a piece of writing that showcases the application of anthropological view refuting the “scientific research” that was published as “The Bell Curve”.  The “Bell Curve” publication attempted to establish the knowledge of human’s IQ as genetic and shift the current social order.

Mark analyzes R. Herrnstein and C. Murray’s publication that took IQ scores of all individuals and formed a central argument that intelligence was something that was passed biologically and could be measured.  The two scientists determined that some groups of people have more intelligence than others, and a person’s social and economic statuses are correlated to their IQ score.  Thus, insinuating that a person from a wealthy, well-off family will score higher on the IQ test than say someone near the poverty line.  Their argument continues by stating that the differences between status and income are a result of the innate intellectual abilities of one group versus another.  The further implication of this statement is that the level of IQ was inherited and thus perpetuated the “natural hierarchy” of beings (a product of Social Darwinism).   Herrnstein and Murray concluded their argument by saying that social/welfare programs are useless and should be disbanded because a lower classes’ low IQ is genetic and cannot be prevented or changed. 

The two significant points that Marks criticizes The Bell Curve for is one, the use of using a written intelligence test on foreigners, especially non-Westerners.  Any test that questions how a person approaches questions involving “streets smart” will be culturally biased and accept answers that reflect that country’s view of “higher” intelligence.  The second important point is that “heritability is not a measure of the innateness of a trait.”  Heretability is understood to be the link between genetics and a trait (in this case IQ).  But the authors of “The Bell Curve” fail to acknowledge social influences and expectations that affect the results of an individual’s score.  Marks uses examples to demonstrate that the cultural context can have a significant impact on an individual’s score.  In Japan, Koreans are discriminated against and score poorly on the test, yet in America both Koreans and Japanese place in the “elite” for the IQ exam.  But most of important, Mark explicitly states that there is no possible way to measure cognitive ability.  An exam cannot fully measure the intelligence of a person, and whether levels of intelligence are an inherited trait.

“The Bell Curve” had a deliberate and clear political agenda that was refuted by many scholars, especially those in anthropology.  The research called into question what constituted as science because Herrnstein and Murray were attempting to establish an innate or natural order among people that was arbitrary and does not exist.   Mark does an excellent job for public anthropology by pointing out the many faults of “The Bell Curve”, disproving a popular research that had the ability to significantly alter our world.

Educational Injustice as a model of Post Modernism

As many of you know, my research is located in rural Nepal. I work with the lowest caste or Dalit community in many rural areas almost 6 hours outside of Kathmandu. The difficulties here circumvent one large obstacle which is access. The rural location in a nation with one of the most difficult terrains in the world provides a challenge that is almost expected. However upon deeper investigation there are historical and cultural implications that have facilitated the settlement of the low caste community in the rural and harshest areas of the nation.

These cultural determinants contribute to the underlying problems in many of the structural systems in place in Nepal; namely the Education system. The most interesting thing about the cultural determinants of Nepal is that they are multi-faceted. The caste system, for example, has not only endless amount of levels to its intricacies but a host of opinions and perspectives. Taking the education system as a structure in place for this argument one can look at the caste system in effect within the classroom.

Just to preface the disparity in the educational system in Nepal lies between the public and private schooling, much as it does here. This disparity is much deeper than simply the difference between socio economic classes but how each socio economic class came to be made up of the individuals it is. The lowest caste takes up, per capita, the greatest majority of the lowest socio economic class. This places low caste children in the poorest, lowest quality educational settings. This perpetuates low educational achievement and literacy rates in the low caste communities. This makes an interesting point in the case of post-modernism. After my time in Nepal, I learned that from either side of the classroom there is a cultural division. The high caste individuals have their own separate culture that highlights the achievement of their ancestors. The low caste individuals tell a very different story that details a history of their oppression in many facets, especially education.

The presence of cultures within one assumed culture is important in post-modernism because it is indicative of no universal truths. Culture is meant to be dynamic but there is room for application here because all assume one cultural identity but within that identity they tell different versions. This applies to a Foucoultian take on post modernism in which there is one assumed provisional knowledge but it is entirely situational from caste to caste. The provisional knowledge exists as the system of education and the situational knowledge exists as a manifestation of each sub culture within the caste system. Everything is supposed to be objective from within the system and together it is, however from the individual it is almost solely subjective.

Finally, there is one major tenet of post-modernism being that there is power implicated through knowledge. This is evidenced in different aspects of Nepalese culture but mostly in the education system. As stated previously, there is plenty of correlation in how apply post modernism to the Nepalese education system, specifically caste within education. Power is directly implied through the relationships within the classroom. There are embedded in the dynamics between not only the administration and the student body but within the student body but between the public and private schools. The caste divide that has a high determination to which socio economic class the student belongs to also determines whether they have the opportunity to attend public or private school. One way to understand these relationships is not as a solution to a historic problem of caste vs. caste but as a way to apply post modernism to structural systems that exist.

Are the Linguists to Blame?

Bourdieu is an influential practice theorist who is known for his ideas of fields and symbolic domination. In the article we read for class, “The Production and Reproduction of Legitimate Language,” Bourdieu deals with the idea of symbolic domination through legitimate language. Bourdieu generally explains that Saussure’s idea of Langue is adopted by a particular few within a language community, which ends up producing the dominant language and dictating social values. Patios, or other vernaculars which are not the standard form, are then considered lesser. Not only are the languages themselves considered lesser but also those who speak these patios and they therefore are given less social power in society.

When reading for my Sociolinguistics and Dialectology class, I found an extension of Bourdieu’s ideas in an article titled “On the Construction of Vernacular Dialect Norms” by Walt Wolfram. In this article, Wolfram discusses the particulars of two vernaculars: African American Vernacular English and Lumbee Vernacular English. Wolfram uses these case studies to demonstrate how vernaculars are complex and made up of various dimensions and components, for example sociohistorical or ideological. Within this article, Wolfram argues that sociolinguistics should consider vernaculars in their entirety when conducting studies on these varieties of language, and that the study of vernaculars should be a valid area of study within the field of linguistics. Wolfram states that vernaculars are typically just compared to the standard form of a language, and that is all that the study does with the vernacular. But after reading Bourdieu, I realized that Wolfram’s argue overlaps with Bourdieu’s article substantially.

Bourdieu argues that power is related to a population’s ability to control and dictate the “correct” form of language, and then these types of language are assigned a social value. Those who speak a variation of the standard form are put at a disadvantage as the standard form is institutionalized within the culture. Bourdieu brings up the idea that all types of language are measured against legitimate practices, which is exactly what Wolfram attempts to fight against within the research methods of linguistics itself. I see Wolfram’s argument as an extension of Bourdieu’s ideas of power through language. Wolfram argues that linguistics should pay attention to vernaculars as their own entity, and not only compare them to the standard form; by only comparing vernaculars to the standard language we are acknowledging the variety as lesser. When using Bourdieu to interpret Wolfram’s article, Wolfram seems to suggest that through linguistic research, the linguists themselves are perpetuating Bourdieu’s idea of the production of power by ONLY understanding them relative to the legitimate language.

Bourdieu’s article has given me a new framework through which I can understand and interpret Wolfram’s suggestions for conducting research concerning vernaculars. I would not have originally considered Wolfram’s suggestions as a way to fight the hegemonic demonstration of power through the reinforcement of valued language varieties, but now I can see Wolfram as an equalizing force relative to language varieties. Wolfram offers components and stages for linguists to conduct research about vernaculars because he is tired of a simplistic comparative study which does not acknowledge any complexity within these types. Through the practice of giving vernaculars less attention in linguistic research, we are continuing the power struggle and showing others that these vernaculars are of less importance and hold less social value.

 These articles seem very different at first, Bourdieu working with practice theory to interpret power through language variation, while Wolfram is discussing how linguists should conduct research surrounding vernaculars. However, I think that Wolfram is fighting against the power dynamic which Bourdieu presents. By holistically studying vernaculars, we are fighting against the social value which is assigned to a language variety which is not considered the legitimate, institutionalized, standardized, Langue.  Wolfram is, in a way, offering a way for linguists to avoid getting stuck in this whirlpool of social value by changing their practices when conducting research. 

Bias, Bias Everywhere. When does it end?

Sally Slocum was a feminist anthropologist who is known for her work “Women the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology” in which she reinterprets human development with an emphasis on the contribution of females rather than males. According to Slocum, “… questions always determine and limit answers… we choose to ask certain questions and not others” (Slocum, 307). With this in mind, she focused on the question, “What were the females doing while the males were out hunting?”  

With her question, Sally Slocum brought to light the fact that throughout the course of history, men’s roles were prioritized while women’s roles were ignored and downplayed. Historically, there has always been an emphasis on the importance of Man the Hunter and the contributions that resulted from this practice of hunting while the contributions of Women the Gatherer have been downplayed or ignored. In the excerpt from “Women the Gatherer: Male Bias in Anthropology” Slocum reinterprets the idea of Man the Hunter and claims that all of aspects of the human development, such as the invention of art, language, tools, weapons, and various other skills such as cooperation, coordination, and communication, have simply been attributed to males hunters. The other half of the human species, the women gatherers, were credited with staying at home, popping out babies, and gathering food in areas that had no potential threats. Slocum points to these claims about the contributions of the hunter as evidence of male bias. In her reinterpretation, she concludes that hunting wasn’t the primary factor that forged the way for the development of the distinguishing traits that makes us human. According to Slocum, gathering and taking care of the young required just as much skill, if not more, as hunting. Additionally, the women’s role as gatherer, along with her role in reproduction, including difficult births, infant dependency, and longer gestation, helped create the selection pressures that led to larger brain size.

While I agree with Sally that there has been male bias not only the field of anthropology, but all fields of study, I also think that with this piece, Sally may be exhibiting female bias a little more than necessary. It is very well known that each individual, whether male or female, holds a certain bias that is impossible to completely eradicate. The closest way of lessening the impact of the bias may simply be to acknowledge in whatever piece that the bias exists. However, in my opinion, Slocum used the argument of their having been a Male bias for Man the Hunter throughout history in order to herself introduce an especially strong female bias against man the hunter and for women the gatherer. She literally takes all the skills and contributions that have previously been attributed to the male hunters and counters them by explaining how these skills were more developed by female gatherers, and there is no mention that maybe it was a combination of both sexes that attributed to human development.

So then does that mean if one reads Slocum’s piece about Women the Gatherer and then reads a piece about Man the Hunter, it cancels out the bias on both ends? Or does it not really work that way? 

Peak Beard

                                     http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27023992 

I was on Twitter the other day, and this story from BBC News was at the top of my Twitter Feed. In addition to being drawn to it because of Ben and George’s jovial faces, I was intrigued by the description in the tweet, which referenced Darwin. Oh Darwin- everyone’s favorite theorist/ scientist to throw around when naming evolution as the cause of every phenomenon. After reading the story that was linked (feel free to read it to get more context for my blog entry!) I thought- “This will make a perfect blog post!” So here is my analysis, aided by some theorists, of the research on the popularity of beards and some researchers’ conclusion that there exists such a thing as “peak beard.”

Some scientists in Australia have done research on the attractiveness of beards. From their analysis of their research (where people rank the attractiveness of faces with varying beard lengths), the scientists concluded that beards are more attractive when they are a rare find in the sample. Similarly, being clean shaven is more attractive when it is rarer among a sample. This research led the scientists to coin the word, “peak beard,” meaning the time when beards are at the highest frequency in a population and therefore the clean-shaven men have the best advantage. The scientists proclaimed that we are currently at peak beard because of “the climax of the trend for beards in professions not naturally associated with a bristly chin - bankers, film stars, and even footballers began sporting facial hair” (see picture above to find Ben Affleck and George Clooney- film stars- sporting full beards). The scientists conclude by proposing that the beard trend started to rise because of the financial crisis of 2008, because men need to find competitive advantages to attract mates because they cannot find work that would provide for a family.

As mentioned, the scientists use Darwin and the general theory of evolution to support their conclusions. They acknowledge that beards are not totally genetic, so cannot totally be evolutionary in nature. Rather, they are referencing the idea that humans want to reproduce and must compete with one another to find mates to reproduce with. But I was not interested in what a Darwinian would say about these beard trends, but rather how some of our other theorists would take on the case of peak beard.

1. What Would a Symbolic Anthropologist Think?

Focusing on meaning, interpretation, and symbols, I hardly think that a symbolic anthropologist would agree with the researchers’ conclusions that the reason men are growing or not growing beards is to be more competitive in reproduction. I think that a symbolic anthropologist would look at some other aspects of who in the society are growing beards- young, old, married, unmarried, working, jobless, prominent, non-dominant, etc. I think that they would propose perhaps even beard-growth as a relation to a rite of passage- perhaps when larger generations are entering manhood, and therefore growing beards to symbolize this step into a new stage of life, there is a greater trend of beards. Or, maybe beards represent power and so once men in prominent positions (i.e. film stars) decide to grow beards to represent their power, other men emulate that to symbolize their own desire for power. Overall, these theorists would not stop at evolution as a causal explanation for peak and non-peak beard.

2. What Would a Feminist Anthropologist Think?

Butler researched the performativity of gender, stating that there are certain behaviors that individuals choose that reconstruct their own gender expression and therefore the definition of a gender in the society. Therefore, she would probably attribute beard trends to different definitions of “masculinity.” When a society believes beards to be definitive of being more masculine, then men grow beards to affirm this gender trait. When a society believes that being clean-shaven is more masculine, men may choose this instead, to affirm their masculinity. They would also assert that these trends are culturally relative, and so cannot be generalized across the world or across time periods.

3. What Would a Post-Modernist Think?

POMO’s biggest critique of the scientists’ analysis would be that they are not culturally or historically situating their conclusions. The scientists reference the cyclical nature of beard trends across history, without truly analyzing each situation in itself. They also generalize across disciplines, grouping all men into one category and not considering the differences. Similarly to the symbolic anthropologist’s view, a post-modernist would be more interested in the symbolic nature of beard growth, not so much the biologic/evolutionary view. A post-modernist might propose that beards somehow relate to power in a specific culture, but that the rest of the symbolism in that specific context must be taken into consideration, as should the biases of the researchers.

4. What Would Olivia Whitener Think?

I think no matter the reason behind the growth in beards (evolutionary competition, symbolic power, defining masculinity, etc.), it is a trend that I will be happy to see go downhill from peak beard. 

White's Law and the Technoscape - A Neo-evolutionist Look at Appadurai's Globalization

While reading Appadurai’s article, Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy, I began to think about Leslie White and his evolutionist theory of negative entropy. More specifically I noticed what Appadurai stated in regards to the technoscape. Appadurai defined the technoscape as the ever-fluid stream of technology and how it now moves at high speeds across various kinds of previously impervious boundaries. How would Leslie White and neo-evolutionists explain Appadurai’s technoscape and its contribution to globalization?

White considered culture to be its own system. The second law of thermodynamics (which states that the universe is running down structurally and dynamically and this results in increased entropy or disorder) particularly fascinated him. White related this law of physics to the biological and cultural evolution of our species and stated that it worked in the opposite direction to form “negative entropy” or order. So White’s law states that culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency or economy of the means of controlling energy is increased, or both.

Therefore if we are to believe in this evolutionist theory we must believe that cultural systems operate only by harnessing energy in one form or another. Then the system must transform the energy into the production of human need-serving goods and services. These goods and services are not limited to those produced in any specific matter. Hunters can catch fish, hunt game, and construct hunting tools that can improve their production. Others can sculpt pottery, cut hair, weave cloth, or gather materials needed for establishing a camp. All of these actions and other cultural processes are examples of the control of energy by instrumental means to serve humanity. By controlling the energy and advancing it with technology, culture was allowed to evolve.

            So White explains humankind’s evolution in regards to its ability to harness energy and how we have used that energy to produce goods, or for argument’s sake tools. What about the flow of technology across nations? I believe that White would argue that the flow of this technology is the next step in his evolutionary scheme. He would also argue that the fact that technological information is flowing from more “modern” areas to “primitive areas” proves the evolutionary scheme he argued earlier. So in terms of globalization I believe that White would argue that it is humankind’s next step in cultural evolution. This is because the free flow of information is allowing cultural systems to expand by developing higher forms or organization and greater concentrations of energy.