Anthropology News: surprise, it’s bleak!

thelastgreatpoolparty:

At the annual meeting of the [American Anthropological Association] in November 2010, the Association Operations Committee (AOC) and the Executive Board (EB) received the Final Report of the Commission on Race and Racism in Anthropology(PDF). Formed as an ad hoc commission in 2007, the 13-member CRRA co-chaired by Janis Hutchinson and Thomas C. Patterson was charged with examining diversity and academic climate in the discipline as well as efforts within the profession to address enduring racial inequalities.

via AAA Commission on Race and Racism

The quote I pulled is long (and damning) but worth the read, if only to show you just how much the field of anthropology has failed its participants and how far we still have to go:

[…] the CRRA conducted two focus groups at the 2008 annual meeting and surveyed members of the Association  of Black Anthropologists, Association of Latina/o Anthropologists, and the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists for their experiences and examples of “best practices”. Participants repeatedly and in different ways expressed their experiences as graduate students. These include but are not limited to:

(1) many departments give lip service to diversity, devalue the kinds of research questions that minority students want to pursue, and allow discrimination to go unchallenged; (2) at a more subtle level, they believe that many faculty assume that minority students are less capable than other  students, silence them  in courses, do not give them honest feedback on their work, are either uncomfortable in their presence or interact with them as patrons; (3) they occasionally feel put on the spot by faculty who require them to share personal experiences (have you every been arrested?) or to serve as the representative of  a group in discussions about race and racism; (4) they feel overt resentment or hostility from  faculty and peers who feel threatened by their standpoints and critiques; (5) they frequently feel that they must self-censor in discussions of racism or immigration, for example, in order to avoid retribution if their views do not conform to faculty thinking on the subject; (6) they perceive that everyday life in the departments are infused with subtle forms of racism that make them feel isolated, invisible, excluded, vulnerable, unworthy, unwanted, or treated as  research subjects, which leads some to seek mentors elsewhere (in different programs or even different universities) and others to drop out; and (7) they feel pressure to prove that they deserve any funding they have received, especially in a time when there is not sufficient support for graduate training.  Both graduate students and faculty pointed  out that (8) many faculties and graduate student bodies are not diverse. Some faculty members said (9) that they were in other departments (e.g., African-American Studies,  Latin American Studies, or Women’s Studies), because their work was not respected in anthropology, because of their research was viewed as falling outside  the scope of the discipline;  (10) they felt marginalized, used as a consequence of practices like cross-listed courses, or even locked out of the field. There was a feeling that (11) some departments want visual differences in their faculty and graduate students but not differences of opinion that emerge from the everyday experiences of minority anthropologists.

While overt racism is less acceptable than it was 35 years ago, the subtle forms of structural racism prevail and keep the numbers of minority students low.

Welp.

(Source: blog.aaanet.org)

Lack of Definition

johnrsullivan:

In college my major was Sociology. I have encountered many people since who have asked what, exactly, Sociology is. I have typically responded with the definition I learned in my first course — “Sociology is the study of groups of people.” 

This was a clear distinction from my understanding of Psychology, which is the study of individuals.

Lately I have been watching the television show Bones and enjoying it very much. The central character of the show is a forensic anthropologist. She has explained what it is she does and can do numerous times on the show. The more explaining she has done (regarding the non-forensic aspects of her field of study) the more confused I have become concerning the differences between Sociology and Anthropology. 

I decided today to try and find definitions of each discipline in order to have clarity on the subject. To my dismay I find myself more confused. Below are the definitions  I have come across. The formatting is not uniform and for that I apologize.

Sociology: 

• the study of society
• a social science involving the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies
• the study of our behavior as social beings, covering everything from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes
• the scientific study of social aggregations, the entities through which humans move throughout their lives’
• an overarching unification of all studies of humankind, including history, psychology, and economics

Taken from the website of the American Sociological Association — http://www.asanet.org/sociology.cfm

Anthropology:

Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present. To understand the full sweep and complexity of cultures across all of human history, Anthropology draws upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities and physical sciences. Historically, in the US, anthropologists usually have been trained in one of four areas, socio-cultural anthropology, biological/physical anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. Often, however, anthropologists integrate the perspectives of several of these areas into their work.

Taken from the American Anthropological Association website — http://www.aaanet.org/about/WhatisAnthropology.cfm

Psychology:

Psychology is a diverse discipline, grounded in science, but with nearly boundless applications in everyday life.  Some psychologists do basic research, developing theories and testing them through carefully honed research methods involving observation, experimentation and analysis. Other psychologists apply the discipline’s scientific knowledge to help people, organizations and communities function better.

Taken from the American Psychological Association website — http://www.apa.org/about/index.aspx

I find this last definition lacking a real definition so I went to another site — Merriam-Webster.

 

Main Entry: psy·chol·o·gy Pronunciation: -jē\Function: nounInflected Form(s): plural psy·chol·o·giesEtymology: New Latin psychologia, from psych- + -logia -logyDate: 1653

1 : the science of mind and behavior
2 a : the mental or behavioral characteristics of an individual or group b: the study of mind and behavior in relation to a particular field of knowledge or activity
3 : a theory or system of psychology <Freudian psychology> <the psychology of Jung>

http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/psychology

I like to keep track of the #Anthropology tag on Tumblr, and thought this was an interesting question.

The differences between these disciplines (as well as between all the disciplines within the social sciences, the disciplines with the humanities, and the disciplines within the natural sciences) are not always clear, and there is plenty of area where they overlap. They often study similar areas, events, and people, use many of the same bodies of theory, often collaborate, and even inhabit the same departments in many universities.

The primary way to distinguish between (cultural) Anthropology, Sociology and Psychology are the types of questions that the disciplines ask (which may be highly variable even when studying the same subject) and the orientation from which they approach their work.

As the AAA definition points out, the larger goal of (American) anthropological inquiry is the better understanding of humanity—in all places and all times—as well as other primates. Anthropology keeps this holistic focus even in work that is very limited to one sub-field, or focused on a very small spectrum of the human experience. It also tends to be interested in both what is universal about humanity, as well as what is particular to humanity in particular times and particular places. Psychology generally looks at the individual, and seeks to find what is universal about the individual. Sociology is generally interested in particular societies and the way that individuals interact with and within society.

Obviously, though, a sociologist or a psychologist would probably pick very different aspects of all of these to discuss what is not-the-same about all of these disciplines.