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<body id="MyBody" onload="MyBegin()"> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript"> </SCRIPT> <script language="VBScript" src="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Scripts/mysounds.js">  </script> <script language="VBScript" src="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Scripts/mycolors.js">  </script> <u> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font size="6">It</font></u> <font size="6"> makes a difference</font>; <font size="4"> it makes </font> <u><font size="4">no difference</font></p> </u> <p ALIGN="CENTER">dao and the grey way of anthropologia</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p ALIGN="CENTER">to my turtle whose infinite patience shall win the human race, for all refugees from human history, and for John's family, may all lost souls find a home</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">No color or complexion</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">distinguishes the way,</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Still its message flares</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Up everywhere:</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Of the thousands of worlds,</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Numerous as grains of sand,</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Which is not home?</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">--Thuong Chieu</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">from the typewriters of</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">hugh and rosie</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">*INTRODUCTION*</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are all, forever, the children of History, playfully and seriously enacting its tragi-comical fate which is both its dialectical mandate and our karma-relation. To envision ourselves as separate from and beyond the law of irreversible historical process and as immune from the from the existential responsibilities of its many various human agencies is to perpetuate a crime against Humanity. It is to close the circle of our collective understanding as an ideology of the deception of our own immortality, of our own immortal divinity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The only genuine History is a human history--the story of humanity. Anything else is only an ideology in the past tense, a mythology in the sense of the eternal present moment. Time, however measured, takes its inexorable toll, and telling all, becomes the measure of all things great and small down the old, dusty road of Life.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Time quickly dispels the perverse illusions of petty human power. All human power remains always and only limited, temporary and ephemeral. The great wheel of turning in History moves with deceptive slowness but with incredible momentum. The anti-human ideology of Hitler lasted only a single breath in the long march of History. Hitler's false consciousness of unlimited power led to his own rapid self-immolation. The inequities of class and caste status are the only false illusions of petty, momentary power--the self enactment of the mythological perversity of human history, the trivialized differences of a perpetual present moment perpetuated unnaturally through time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To fail to recognize the delusions of power or to desist in the everyday acknowledgment of the limitations and weaknesses of human power to create and to control historical destiny is to commit a fateful error which only history itself will then correct--this is not our divine destiny but it is human karma relation. The great wheel of turning is irreversible in the many cycles of its rebirth.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The bottom line of existential human ethics, however egotized or relativized, is the historical mandate to willfully accept the existential responsibility for one's own fate, no matter how or if when consumed by the fires of the forge of history. To neglect this responsibility is to renege the responsibility for being fully human. It is to neglect and to forget one's own History.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are, all of us, still the children of History learning by our mistakes how to grow up. To forget this or to unlearn this lesson in adulthood, no matter how old, is to forget and unlearn how to become genuinely human. The mature human being is the genuine human being, in all the human strengths and weaknesses, vice and virtues. Human history is an existential enterprise in which we all share in the making.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the confluence of the historical streams of collective consciousness, in the mainstream convergence of different channels of Historical process, there occurs crucial moments of critical conjuncture of meaning and being as well as critical moments of sudden and radical disjuncture--an abrupt parting of the waters of consciousness revealing the bottomless depths beneath the shallow surfaces of the forces and currents which sweep all of us futureward toward our common destiny. There occurs reflective ad selective <u>interest</u> and conspicuous <u>disinterest</u>, the important immediate presence and absence of human willpower which determines the critical direction in the on-going flow of historical events. There occurs selective interest and disinterest in the ways that it makes a critical difference or not in a vitally important or in a trivial sense of relevance and meaning. This determines our criteria of historical validity--the acceptance or rejection of human truths and falsehoods. This difference of importance orients the way we choose to see and to relate to the larger streams of human history, determining the dialectical development of historical themes and these recurrence and periodic resurgence. Whatever may seem to be individually or personally relevant may prove to be quite trivially unimportant from the standpoint of historically vested or common <u>cultural </u>interests. What remains of critical importance for the sake of these collective, shared interests discriminates and predetermines the underlying dialectical structure and process of action in the development of historical patterning. In the deeper currents of collective History, the individual role of being human becomes trivialized and superficial, obscured beneath the weight of the turning wheel of events, except when an individual stands momentarily in the focal point of historical conjunction or disjunction as a representative symbol, or archetype of the collective consciousness of History.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Human beings regularly fashion, employ and refine shared models of mutual understanding in their karma-relation with human history. These models, or <u>collective representations</u> are always mythological in their structure and function in guiding the making of historical process. They embody and enact the collective consciousness of human history, providing the horizons for the way we think, speak and act both individual and as a group. In our deliberate, conscious realization of history, we actively seek to embody and emulate these mutually understood models for the ordering of our beliefs, our behaviors and our common sense of belonging in social interrelationships between one another. The use of these models has a history of its own, as some models are derived or developed from others which originated beforehand. These models become historically invested and structurally embedded with cultural importance as we become historically committed to the process of their fulfillment. This mythological history becomes the preconscious background from which we configure our models in the immediate presence, however perpetual seeming. In the enactment of these configurations, these models become interconnected and synergistically 'enlivened'--invested with a sense of concreteness, of matter of factness and taken for grantedness in a kind of historical necessity or inevitability or destiny as we call <u>Nature</u>. There is a kind of living on going meaningfulness, of an immediate sense of <u>historical present</u> and <u>moment</u> which is taken directly from our own sense of self or group importance, of historical <u>immediacy</u> and <u>emergency</u> which we project upon our environment. In our involvement with the mythological dialectics of our own histories in the making, the emerging flow of events catches us up and sweeps us off our feet, submerging us in our own <u>historical subjectivity</u> or <u>historicity</u>. Our center of balance lacks a solid footing, a secure place of ground from which to lift our heads above the surface of historical presence and emergence--we become free floating, to be carried away by the currents of time into the future. We must then either learn to swim across its forceful currents or else sink to the bottom and drown in the abyss of the murky past. Our mytho-historical models are landmarks along the shore which we pick out in our phenomenological movement downstream. We are rather moving away from, passing by or heading toward these markers of our identity. If they appear to be part of the surrounding landscape or prove to be deeply rooted to the shoreline as we reach out to hold on to them, then we want to refer to these models of collective representation as natural--as obeying the law of historical necessity and phenomenal sufficiency. Otherwise, they will be considered as merely contrived, man made, artificial, with the connotation of thus lacking in substance of natural necessity or phenomenal sufficiency, as deficit in historical permanency or stability of its groundedness in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">History is then to be seen as the common stream of converging and diverging collective consciousness of humanity, of shared models of collective representations embodying and enacting phenomenal experience of our movement through time, of our reflective and reflexive awareness of the encounter with time itself as the process of beingness and becoming, as the expression of change and difference. Collective representations become the charter of our historical identities and the license for social action. The ethereal medium of history is thus human consciousness itself, or a kind of 'collective conscientiousness' as it spreads itself like water along the channels of common, mutual human understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">History in the making is the process of textual inscription and reiteration of our collective consciousness and conscientiousness, striving towards the final ultimate realization of our mythological models. It is the flexing of collective human consciousness and conscience, the apperceptive recognition of the mind of humanity of its own historicity in the making, in the subjectivity of its own experience of becoming, through recurrent acts of believing, behaving and belonging. 'Conscience' here is used both in the sense of 'active' consciousness--'knowledge of our own actions or thoughts' and in a sense of 'joint knowledge' or feeling of right or wrong, truth or falsehood, 'the faculty, power or principle of a person which decided on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of his actions, with a compulsion to do right; moral judgment which prohibits or opposes the violation of a previously recognized ethical principle'. The kind of conscience here conceived of is a collective historical consciousness of the existential reality of humankind. This kind of conscientiousness is by definition religious, as the human being, the creature of mythology which places humankind and its own self conscious realization of history at odds in a struggle against nature's Humanity, then, in its collective self awareness and collective representations of its common historicity is by definition religious. There is no such thing as a non-religious human being, for the mythology of religious experience is what defines the meaning of the word of being human. People can always go against religious sanction, but must always ultimately define themselves vis-à-vis some kind of religious realization. Science, in its secular charter, places itself outside of the purview of any religious charter in history, but in the process creates for itself its own false ideology of secular truth as <u>Nature</u> and <u>natural law</u>. People can seek to escape the dictates of history via their religion, but they can never completely get away from the historical sanctioning of religion. Religion, by its historical definition, is the way in which humankind relates itself and realizes itself in historical process. Religion, in the form of mythology, and History, are the contraposed elements of the unfolding dialectic of the collective consciousness and conscience of Humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To neglect the consciousness of History is concomitantly to neglect the common collective conscience of the cultural heritage of humanity--<u>human religiosity</u>. Historical tradition is to religious heritage as human individuality is to social personality, as the probability of being is to the possibility of becoming. Tradition provides the sanctioning for the realization of being, heritage provides the legitimate forms, the received collective representations, for the potentiality of becoming human vis-à-vis a common collective conscientiousness of humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a critically important difference between speaking of living history in the sense of presence, of history in the making, and of 'History' in the dead sense of History--written in the past tense, just as there is an important, critical difference between the living religion of humankind in the everyday existential experience of being, behaving, belonging, in the sharing of collective representations, and the dead religion which may exist socially more as a lifeless corpse, a meaningless ritual reiterated mindlessly, as an empty symbol or slogan or vehicle of meaning which is untranslatable in any practical, functional way. The difference between these two forms of the living and the dead, the present and the past, are important to make clear, yet the boundaries of collective consciousness separating the two kinds of religious and historical phenomena are scarcely clear-cut or concisely delineated in human reality. As a result, there occurs a whole gray middle region, a twilight zone between the living and the dead, past and present, of the mindscape of humanity which results in a great deal of 'con-fusion' and conflation of understanding and of crisscrossing of consciousness between the two regions of critical difference. It is oftentimes difficult in the action or commingling of historical forces of the present moment of mythico-historical process to make the critical distinction between the two forms. There occurs in the gray fog of confusion a mistaken identity and the possibility of false consciousness, a central indeterminacy of meaning, of substituting the living for the dead, the past for present and vice versa. There is then no clear way of distinguishing between where the reality of the former begins and the unreality of the latter ends.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…for all distancing is…a self distancing, a distanciation of the self from itself. Thus the critique of ideology can be and must be assumed in a work of self understanding, a work which organically implies a critique of the illusions of the subject." (Paul Riccouer; <u>Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences</u>, 1981: 244)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the wisdom of the hermeneutic method to never allow our pre-understandings to predicate the knowledge of the object of our conscious understanding, to not allow popular preconceptions or unquestioned pre-judgments or unrecognized biases to influence the way we choose to believe in a thing, to suspend however temporarily and superficially, prior beliefs and the attachments of belonging, involvements and commitments, in order to learn how to see more clearly the 'thing in itself', to comprehend more undistractedly in terms of the 'thing' themselves outside of our own definitions and preconceived notions about these 'things' and then to attempt to acknowledge more fully via our immediate experience our own intimate phenomenal inter-relatedness with such 'things; as they preexist outside of and before our own conscious knowledge of them. In the process of our conscious concealment is a simultaneous revealing through the openness of the experience. In this human capacity for originative understanding exists the alternative possibility for positive dialectical distanciation, or what is referred to as the 'objectification' of science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The hermeneutic enterprise comes full circle at the critical moment of historical conjuncture between self understanding and knowledge about the other in which there occurs a brief interfusion of the horizons of the pre-understandings of the self and the after the fact experiential knowledge of the other. We cannot see beyond the encompassment of this subjective/objective horizon and therefore do not really know what may exist beyond in the realm of the unknown. The mythological other as projection of the self becomes the embodied expression of unknown. We can only imagine and intuitively guess by our capacity for question formulation into the unknown region--attempting to reveal its hidden dimensionally while inevitably covering it over with biased concealments of the already known--the trite and true. We attempt to discover a bit of the hidden unknown, thereby enlarging a little bit the total encompassment of out hermeneutic and historical horizon of consciousness and experience. At that moment of critical conjuncture there is confected a simultaneous opening and closing of the doors of comprehension of human reality, a brief instanciation of human understanding, a sudden awakening of sleeping, potential consciousness, a comprehension of the encompassment of the 'thing' before unknown. There is effected with this understanding an irreversible change of being human, of human beingness, a permanent transformation of experiential becoming more human than before. Then we have learned something historically important, apperceptively significant, about the 'before unapprehended' relations between 'things' in reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Our sense of belonging and believing and the wisdom of our life experiences informs our intuitions and daily decisions. Our sense of becoming and behaving and the conditions of our adjustments to life changes influences our premonitions and expectations for the future. These we must unavoidably and inexorably share together if we are to complete the hermeneutic circle and to enlarge its compass to include the total conscience of Humanity and consciousness of Humankind. It cannot be done alone or in the privilege of inner group security. Only together may we deliberately direct or redirect the unfolding of historical process and thus achieve a common destiny in human karma-relation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MISSING PAGE NO. 8</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">existence a sumptuary privilege of the elitist few 'haves' at the expense of the many 'have-nots'. Such freedom is licensed by the state and harnessed by the authoritarian stricture of the Academic structure. The 'pursuit of happiness' becomes socially translated into a utilitarian praxis of a 'war of all against all' in the pursuit of increased status and positional power and material consumption in substitution for real meaningfulness of existential human experience. The pursuit of the pleasure principle in quantitative terms leads to a relatively superficial, transient, vicarious, ephemeral, fleeting, ameaningful existence which merely disguises the unconsciousness of an extremely monothetic, monothematic way of human experiencing. There is a vicious cycle of self reinforcing ignorance and prejudicial projection in this process which creates a never ending circle of deception--the liar's dilemma of no longer being able to tell the difference between truth and falsehood. There becomes a narrowly socially sanctioned way of life and a relative intolerance for differences or alternative ways of life. The monopolarization of human consciousness along such a single, narrow continuum of meaning results in the failure for people to socially recognize and existentially acknowledge alternative dimensions of consciousness. The loss of freedom results from a failure to recognize or realize, to learn alternative ways of living which might be more conducive to a greater frequency intensity of alternative, heightened states of human consciousness. Poverty, defined as the relative lack of access to resources and the unfreedom of a lack of vital opportunity to acquire such freedom, hinders and prevents the realization of a qualitatively more meaningful life and the associated states of broadened consciousness. Wealth privileges the few by promoting the sumptuary possibility of access to such qualitatively superior modes of being and becoming. In a very real existential sense, money buys freedom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But the 'System' itself, being wholly human, can only usurp the privilege of human freedom at the expense of public coercion and personal denial, and only to a certain rather low ceiling of 'sanctioning mediocrity' of experience. The net effect of any Parkinsonian principle of the system is the overall leveling to a 'normal' level, the channeling and normal resistance of a status quo of consciousness which becomes antithetical and anti-intellectual to the achievement of human freedom. There is thus behind the deliberate promotion of the 'System' a kind of negative intelligence or 'non-consciousness' of its own commitment to the totalitarianism of human unfreedom, of the experiential totalization of the System itself. There is a conspiracy of the collective consciousness to usurp human freedom absolutely, totalistically, unconditionally for the sake of control by the System, for realization of greater power via the system, and by the false sense of total security afforded by confiliation and role membership status within the definitions of the 'System'. The false consciousness of any 'System' is to promote a monothetic, common sense of logical identity, a kind of centrality or logo-centrism, that there are, or can reasonably be, no alternative possibilities to believing, behaving or belonging outside of the System. The functioning of the system by some cooperative social principle fosters the ideological sense of presence and the presence of the will to power as a kind of critical, extended historical momentousness or momentum.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a tendency for any social system which achieves relative community closure upon some social principle, whether it is a system of familial obligation and a-moralism, of ethnocentrism of cultural ethnic groupings, of the hubris of nationalistic patriotic zeal, to separate itself as a subsystem over and against the larger, 'natural' system of humankind and the confluence of human history, and as against the principal agent of this largest system, the individual human actor upon the quest for spiritual freedom and historical responsibility for that freedom. When any system closes upon itself and sets itself at odds against the whole of the rest of humanity, in its special privileging and usurpation of whatever exclusive privileges for power, then this subsystem of humankind steps outside of history, taking a path divergent from the mainstream of the collective convergence of historical consciousness--eventually leading to an historical cul-de-sac.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a close connection then to be seen between the realization of personal, individual freedom and the realization of the collective consciousness and conscience of humanity--a pan human consciousness. Individual freedom can only be more fully realized vis-à-vis the increased realization of the consciousness of humankind, and vice versa, the pathway to the liberation of humanity from itself leads through the emancipation of the individual spirit upon its quest for greater human meaning. With freedom comes greater historical, existential responsibility--the responsibility of the individual quest for existential freedom becomes translated into the responsibility to a collective pan human conscience for the emancipation of humankind from the totalitarianism and unfreedom of the 'System' in all its manifestations. The problem in the design of any social system of humanity is not so much how to control the individual within it, but how to establish effective controls over the system by the individuals who compose it--'counter control' such that it protects freedom and does not allow the 'System' to become larger than life itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…the anthropologists should be interesting subjects for themselves to investigate, no harder no easier, I imagine, then any of the others." (Ben-Ami Scharfstein; <u>The Dilemma of Context</u>, 1989: 40)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is an ethnography of an anthropology department with which I have been associated as a student for over a year and a half. It is an ethnography based upon membership role participant observation as a student, an autobiography of a personal/professional odyssey, an historical account of a series of interviews conducted with the members of the department, several critical issues have been at stake in the process of finishing this work. How close to home can an ethnographer bring his/her craft while still maintaining some objective sense of distance? What happens when the traditional object of ethnography becomes the subject, when the other becomes the self and the self becomes the other? What are the ethical and existential consequences of pursuing such a study? How is the anthropologist within Academia different from the observer in the field? To my knowledge, an anthropological study and ethnography of an academic anthropology department has not been done before--what are the implications, repercussions, and results? But more than just an ethnography and ethnological study of an anthropology department, this work constitutes also a critique of anthropology as itself is practiced not out there in the field but at home. As such it is a sort of critical 'anti-anthropology' which has many important, 'post modern' theoretical implications for the limitations of the discipline as it is normally exercised within a depart-'mental' context. Furthermore, it constitutes also a critique of Academia, especially American Academia of the late 1980's, especially in how this has come to impact and influence upon how Anthropology realizes itself upon a day to day basis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This work has been an 'instant' ethnography, one originally stamped out in the course of a single unfinished semester, one initially typed out in the course of a few unfinished days, but one also subsequently revised in light of several critical events which followed its original production. This is the third edition, and for myself, the final version. It presents but one possible perspective from among many other alternatives, based upon only my own rather limited theoretical orientation and conceptual organization. Other people, without a doubt, would contest the representation of the reality contained within these pages--this viewpoint is no more or less legitimate than any other possible version. But this version is, I sincerely believe, a relevant, non-trivial, even critical account of modern, everyday anthropology as it exercises its privileged authority and flexes its academic muscles. It does not deserve to be ignored.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This has been an unfinished ethnography, completed in its consummation by being unfinished. It was meant originally to be unfinished. This ethnography has not been entirely successful, but then neither has it been completely unsuccessful. Like most real fieldwork, it has had mixed results and mixed reception and mixed reactions and mixed blessings. It has been an effort in learning how to work and live with existential limitations and human handicaps, most of which have been my own as a quite imperfect human being and as but a 'professional anthropologist to be'. Part of this ethnography is about learning methodologically how to become a 'professional' anthropologist. But this is not an 'authentic' ethnography because it has never allowed to be. Limitations of time, energy, resources, authority, status, and interest have prevented its full realization as an authentic article of anthropological wisdom and faith. As it has become instead, it is by forfeit an eclectic hodgepodge of accounts, a critique of a critique of a kind of ideology which has its own 'false consciousness' because it stands apart from its own existential, everyday Academic history, a critique of Academic Authority and Authoritarianism, a critique of Academic Anthropologia as 'spurious' culture, a critique of professional anthropology as an institutionally embedded corporate establishment embodying many prejudices and class differences and conflicts of its host society, a critique of a perspective of a now global 'political economy' and its related hidden agenda of the religious ideology of 'making money' which has historically conditional all this into being in the first place, and finally, it is a critique of an all top childish ego who has refused to let bygones be bygones and who has selfishly allowed this to come into being in the first place.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This then is not a typical ethnography. It is rather an exploratory 'ethno-phenomenological process' which both critically and creatively 'comprehends' and 'configures' the anthropological praxis of ethnographic methodologies as these happen within departmental Anthropologia. This writing of an unfinished ethnography is but one phase of the general process of my own becoming and being an anthropologist. Formal 'good boy' ethnography implies a contrived methodical distancing between self and other, a dichotomic distancing which also marks off the in-between spaces, the no-man's-land of conflict and arbitration, the distances, barriers and strategies of transaction between self as subject knower and self/other as object known, between being in the academic armchair and in the field of department, between 'doing ethnography' and 'thinking and writing anthropology'. I have reached the personal conclusion that from a phenomenological perspective this purposive self distanciation is an arbitrary illusion n the normal process of 'doing anthropology' disguising what are actually relations of power and dominance, determining and defining anthropological academically.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The entire process of becoming an anthropologist, of coming of age within anthropologia, of academic 'socialization' is one of only apparent discontinuity between the department and the field, between student and professional, but is one of actual continuity of self definition and selective experience and status recognition in a relatively uninterrupted, gradual historical stream of collective consciousness. It is a process which entails certain predictable critical moments or periods of conjuncture and disjuncture and of characteriological reorganization and replacement of anthropological consciousness which has been aptly referred to as 'consciousness awakening' and which entails certain unpredictable personal transformations which are intended to unfold according to design but rarely if ever really do except perhaps for the most 'normal' and mediocre of 'socialized' professional personalities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If seen from the perspective of overarching continuity rather than from the radical discontinuity, then the academic process of becoming a professional anthropologist becomes existentially ethno-phenomenological, involving a kind of theoretical hierarchization of consciousness, of concepts and precepts, and a methodological hierarchization of research values, of precepts in interests which is supposed to become consistent with an 'organization of research priorities' defines methodologically and theoretically. If this follows a normal academic route to successful completion, then a transformation of personality is 'con-fected'--the individual then becomes socially more 'professionally authentic'. This is seen as 'rite of passage'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is more important is to recognize the overall continuity in the process of becoming and anthropologist and the simultaneous discontinuity of still remaining a human being--rather than just focusing upon or over emphasizing exclusively the apparent structural discontinuities and differences of the transitory states of being or becoming different, successive stages in the process of becoming. The field experience becomes a kind of 'vision quest' in search of authenticating or valorizing 'power' of anthropological wisdom and understanding . the publications are the ritually prescribed acts of revealing the dreams achieved in the field, the historical inscription of these visions for the sake of humanity. Actually it is more of a process of accumulation rather than of transformative replacement of the ego--the actor remains essentially the same person as before, only the social persona of the anthropological ego, its psycho-social status-identity, its state of consciousness, becomes transformed. These transformed states of ego consciousness are externally reinforced by membership role positioning 'in the field'. There is 'confected' a net overall rewiring of the anthropological marionette--the overhauling of the anthropological minded collective representations of ego consciousness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I faced in the course of getting to know this department and the people within it the decision of having to choose between how I should write this ethnography. Three options seemed open to me. I realized that I could write a 'good boy' ethnography, attempting to please everyone and satisfying nobody, or else I could write a fairly standard, by the book 'neutral', hence 'objective' and therefore probably quite mediocre and boring ethnography, talking about a lot but actually saying nothing of any consequence--this would not have been so out of order within the paper shuffle one continuously engage in during the process of obtaining a higher education. Or else I could write a more radical ethnography, one which may risk being wrong but which is also a more honest about attempting to be right, if not completely realistic. I have come to the conclusion that it really doesn't matter what I would write, as it lacks in any case the necessary official 'valorization' or 'authentification' of the status of 'professional' which would somehow automatically render it more genuine and valid. I remain essentially a amateur anthropologist. A handful of professional anthropologists had the authority to accomplish in a couple of days what this 'anthropologist to be' student could not finish over a couple of years. This is the kind of critical social difference which in the final analysis makes no difference which this ethnography is ultimately all about. If a qualified (I mean certified) anthropologist wished to conduct a 'real' ethnography of this department, then its implications would have been much more powerful, of much greater ideological sense of truth and presence, of much greater 'dramatic moment' of 'higher, more honorable, hence less suspect and questionable status', then the enactment of an ethnography by a merely nameless anthropology student.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is more anthropologically important is not the ethnographic experience itself, or the information, wisdom or bit of factual datum derived directly from the experience, but the process of its authentification, its enactment, its communication, its inscription, its valorization and its publication as 'established' and 'received' authority. The process of academic communication within a select community relatively closed to the outside world, and the eventual 'empowerment' of its anthropological knowledge is what is of real critical significance, of paramount importance, of lasting historical value. This is the real power of the ethnographic encounter and the process of ethnological inscription which must be seen as structured within an academic context which is itself structured by an overarching political economic framework. Social relations of communication and commercial exchange value become translatable into academic relations of ethnographic production and anthropological interchange.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We cannot ever fully, finally escape the dictates of the self, however well stated, however much diminished or glorified, however seemingly insignificant or detached from corporeal belongings. Our souls can never attain the perfect freedom from the prison of our bodies, except perhaps in final death. No matter how high our spirit may seek to soar above the world, it must eventually fall back toward the earth, brought back down by the gravitational pull of a common destiny upon the ground, by the unbreakable bonds of nature. In the dialectic of being and becoming more human, great highs are inevitably followed by great lows, achievements by defeats, and yet, paradoxically, always must we seek our spiritual freedom in the skies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the historical and existential process of learning to be and become more fully human, more genuinely human, there occurs with increasing frequency and intensity qualitatively experienced 'heightened' states of consciousness which confer greater meaning to life. There are many mechanisms which may serve as catalysts for crossing the threshold of normal consciousness onto a higher plane of experience,, mechanisms to a large extent controlled, prohibited, capitalized or monopolized by the establishment, especially by Academia. Freedom or the facility of access to higher or alternative states of human consciousness defines ultimately the subjective dimensionally of human freedom and phenomenal experience. The concomitant normative freedom for an individual to choose the pathways to the extension of consciousness is a critical prerequisite to the enhancement of the quality of life of any and every human being. These dimensions of freedom may be obtained socially through religious prescription and proscription of certain forms of collective belief, behavior and belonging which channels consciousness into certain pre-selected dimensions of human experience and consciousness. There are also aesthetic and other avenues to the exercise of such freedom of consciousness of being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within the System of the establishment generally and within the Academic system particularly, there has occurred a kind of 'negative intellectual' conspiracy of the 'System' to routinely usurp subjective human freedom of access to alternative and heightened states of human consciousness, to sanction and legitimate as a sumptuary privilege of the few such freedom, to render the 'pursuit of happiness' in the form of a more meaningful spiritual</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MISSING PAGE NO. 17</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The sense of reality which I proffer to the anthropologist, young and old, amateur or professional, via this study, is ethnographic reality of the anthropological will to power, a form of intellectual imperialism based upon the realization and neutralization of difference. It is also an everyday existential reality which no amount of opportunity, privilege or status can confer--you have to be there. There is really no other way. So if you really want to understand better the anthropological experience of human reality, then just go put yourself there in the anthropological arena, body and soul. And if you survive, however transformed, then you're moderately successful.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For myself, as long as I must call myself an 'anthropologist', however much incompletely or euphemistically this title may really be, then this all too human science will remain basically an 'ethno-methodological' vehicle for creative understanding about human reality. However positivistically systematic or dogmatic we may choose to render it, this process will always remain irreducibly an <u>interpretative science</u> within the hermeneutic circle of the historical horizon of the collective consciousness of humankind and the conscience of humanity. It is a kind of paradoxical operational metaphor 'participant observation' intuitively suggests the dialectical combination of seemingly logically contradictory and irreconcilable opposites. It is basically interpretative because as a way of knowing and relating to human reality it remains an historically arbitrary project of language description of alternative possibilities of human reality. It remain 'scientific' because it embodies within its methodological praxis certain fundamentally empirical and inductive techniques of ethnographic description and ethnological explanation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The intrinsic embodiment of paradoxical, inimical self contradictions with in a single historical moment, is what I refer to as the 'grey' way of doing Anthropology--of making anthropology happen in an historical and religious sense. It involves the exploration of the in-between areas of living and the dead, the past and present, and the delineation of the definite differences between the two regions of human consciousness--between what are euphemistically referred to as true and false consciousness, open and closed consciousness, historical and ideological consciousness, narrow and broad consciousness, particular and general consciousness, sleeping and awakened consciousness, and genuine and spurious consciousness within an anthropological frame of mind, or perspective.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thus we may refer to a collective sort of common sense kind of anthropological consciousness and conscience about human reality which may either or both living or dead, historical or ideological, genuine or spurious, true or false, open or closed, concealed or revealed, asleep or awakened, narrow or broad, particularistic or generalistic, relativistic or rationalistic. The grey area is learning how to read in-between the black and white print of anthropological discourse, it is learning to live and within the grey in-between regions of the uncertain excluded middle-ground of black and white anthropological truth, theory and praxis. In this way there is no clear demarcation between saying and doing, methodology and theory, since one preconditions and in turn leads from the other, between doing and thinking anthropologically, between practicing, preaching and writing and reading anthropological reality and realism and between believing, behaving and belonging to an anthropological culture and history which has a common community with its own religiously sanctioned ways of living, its own unwritten ethos, nomos and pathos, and between becoming and being a professional anthropologist. It is to learn how to live with the critical difference which in the long run make no difference. It is learning to listen to the sound of 'one hand clapping' in the corridors of Academic Anthropologia and to listen to the silence of the 'System' beyond all the everyday noise and informational rhetoric, surrounding and framing all the critical dissonance and consonance of the 'field'. The 'field' within Academia or in its anthropological hinterlands channels by its own models and their geography in a common collective mindscape, the directionality and course of the historical consciousness of 'anthropological humankind'. It is the common channel or conduit for the historical development of anthropological consciousness and conscience about human reality, humankind and humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropologia must be construed 'tongue in cheek' as a kind of catch all metaphor for everything anthropological under the sun, for everything considered anthropological generalia, or 'anthropologia' for short. The 'Science of Humankind' then becomes a kind of pat definition which may refer to anything at all and nothing in particular. 'Anthropologia' then becomes merely euphemistic serving many diverse interests and individual human needs. It is a convenient turn of phrase disguising a great deal and revealing very little about genuine human reality. As a perspective and a way of framing understanding of human reality, all things anthropological becomes a stylistic way of thinking and talking about human reality, a way of speaking which is defined by privileged access to its systems of meaning and reiteration which is primarily 'academic.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I am concerned primarily with how anthropologia routinely flexes its muscles and reflexes its mind, as an anthropologia of regularized, routinized academic performance of power--one which has always been and will probably always remain as long as it exists within the academia a highly specialized 'mode of information production/consumption' within a predominantly academic milieu which is itself institutionally embedded within a larger political economic framework which has been predominantly colonial, imperialistic and capitalistic in orientation. This kind of totalistic existential performance of anthropologia--how it becomes enacted and 'embedded' upon an academic stage for mostly an academic audience, has its own particular style of life and distinctive kind of professional praxis which forms a 'habitus' of being academic--albeit anthropologically in style. It defines a specific kind of 'cultural ethos' of the anthropological community which has its own predominating orientation, models of success and ethics of performance and praxis. The paradigmatic nomos and norm of professional anthropologia is defined socially in regard to relative position of status identity within its community structure, in regard to its members rank role status in terms of ever widening circles and sub-circles of professional and semi-professional audiences--one's academic authority and professional sense of being 'anthropological' derives from this relative status positioning, even though such status and its consequences may not always be directly present or immediately obvious, but will always remain at least indirectly alluded to or conspicuously absent from the everyday existential exigencies of the departmental life on becoming and being an Academic Anthropologist.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This wider sense of anthropological status reality overshadows and pre-structures the immediate phenomenological sense of anthropological consciousness--it forms the hermeneutic horizon of the preconscious 'pre-understandings' of the collective representations of Anthropologia. We may refer to the 'Anthropological Mentality" as the characteristic 'mode of realization' of Anthropologia. The anthropological mentality is a closed form of consciousness in certain pre-determined ways which structurally demarcate its disciplinary boundaries and methods. It is unable to step outside of itself in order to look at itself in any other set of terms or frame of comprehension than its own. The boundaries of its consciousness are determined by and in turn determine the limitations of its human will to power or create or control versions and visions of human reality. The anthropological mentality is motivated by a particular kind of psychology of anthropological personality, and is reinforced by a characteristic process of anthropological 'socialization' and 'professionalization' which involves both 'enculturation', 'deculturation' and 'acculturation' or 'transculturation'. This in turn takes place within a larger sphere of influence of social structuration or a process of anthropological 'institutionalization' which becomes historically and culturally 'larger than life', extending beyond the purview and existential boundaries of control of the individual, and thus extending beyond the boundaries of historical consciousness and into the unconscious of the individual. As a member of a particular form of corporate organization institutionally embedded and empowered within a larger political economic context, the domain and realm of Anthropologia extends beyond the control and power of the individual 'as individual' who instead becomes 'predetermined' or 'controlled' and 'empowered' as a 'member' of the community. Individual identity of personality becomes usurped and sublimated in transaction for social identity defined primarily in terms of one's interpositional status within the anthropological community structure. Thus, as with any human community, implicitly defined and behaviorally sanctioned norms, connotatively significant, foster the unwritten ethos for professionally appropriate behavior in conformity to which there are certain rewards of power, privilege and responsibility and socio-economic status and reinforcement from the 'field'. Any behavior deemed anthropologically inappropriate becomes the basis for 'negative solidarity; for the definition, emphasis, identification and reinforcement of in-group/out-group boundary of the anthropological community.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In these regards, the community of Anthropologia is like any other human community. It is not, in view of its own historicity and religiosity, exceptional compared to any other grouping of humanity. But it is unique in certain characteristic and characteristically paradoxical ways which leads to its members to come to believe and behave as if they were indeed historically and ideologically exceptional. These particular ways need to be further explored in this work.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Anthropologia' stands for various and sundry anthropological 'generalia' or 'things anthropological'--a term representing that region of intellectual mindscape, social space and academic mentality which is part and parcel of Academic Anthropology and which is not the same kind of anthropology more formally defined as 'The Science of Humankind'. A critique of anthropologia is not directly a polemic against formal general anthropology as an intellectual discipline. The study of anthropologia is the reflexive critique of academic anthropology--how anthropologists define their special reality within their own space as a part of and contrasted with a larger reality of everyday humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">I</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL ART OF FISHING</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">or on the methodology of madness</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are like fish, swimming in a sea of sense, bounded above the superior element, but unable to breath it or penetrate it. We get our oxygen from it, however; we touch it incessantly, now in this part, now in that, and every time we touch it we turn back into the water with our course re-determined and re-energized. The abstract ideas of which the air consists are indispensable to life, but irrrespirable by themselves. (William James; <u>Pragmatism</u>, 1943: 128)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…It is computed that eleven thousand Persons have, at several times, suffered Death, rather than submit to break their Eggs at the smaller End. Many hundred large Volumes have been published upon this Controversy: but the Books of the <u>Big-Endians</u> have long been forbidden, and the whole Party rendered incapable by the law of holding Employments. During the Course of these Troubles, the Emperors of Elefuscu did frequently expostulate by their Embassadors, accusing us of Making a Schism in Religion, by offending against a fundamental Doctrine of our great Prophet Lustrog, in the fifty fourth Chapter of the Brundecral (which is their Alcoran). This , however, is thought to be a mere Strain upon the Text: "For the words are these: That all the true Believers Shall break their Eggs at the convenient End; and which is the convenient End, seems, in my humble Opinion, to be left to every Man's Conscience, or at least in the power of the Chief Magistrate to determine." (Swift; <u>Gulliver's Travels</u>, 1726: 74-76)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A survey was my hook into the reality of the department. What I did, I cannot be certain about, why I did it or exactly how it was done, I cannot honestly say--but I <u>did </u>do something,, however unimportant, and this 'something' must now be elucidated, however obscurely. In true inductive fashion, my survey can be said to have been a conclusion in search of a hypothesis. I went fishing and now get to tell a tale of my small adventure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I have chosen to do a 'fish bowl' ethnology precisely because it critically makes a disinterested difference while simultaneously making no difference in an interesting sense. In fish bowl ethnography we are either like fish swimming through an ethereal subjective medium within the bowl of consciousness, occasionally rising to the surface, or else we are observers looking in from the outside at other fish swimming about. Whether we choose to place ourselves within the bowl and view the world looking out, in a transparent structure that defines a self contained but limited universe, or whether we choose to place ourselves as objective observers outside of the bowl but no longer in the medium, makes a critical difference in the dimensionally of our perspective of human reality. At the glass interface of the bowl, there is a certain translucent reflectivity and refractiveness which distorts the light in strange and disproportionate ways. And, in true Buddhist fashion of remaining obscure, in the anthropological structure of the 'long run' which defines the dialectical circle which transcends both our subjective and objective horizons of understanding, it simultaneously makes no difference and every bit of difference which perspective we choose--our existence is defined by the presence and continued existence of that translucent structure of the bowl, whether we are swimmers or spectators. Both subjectively and objectivity are defined in relation to the structure of that bowl.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I have chosen to do an account of 'fish soup' ethnography, because, no matter how systematic, measured, proportionate or methodically we wish to render the process, the integration of human reality in whichever form or way is kind of like making and then eating a bowl of fish soup--when we finally chop, mix and spoon up the ingredients of our concoction, it is all mixed up in a haphazard fashion, but what matters most is the final flavor and digestion. The important question is not so much why we choose to add in some ingredients and leave out others--always the final flavor, unless following the recipe exactly, will remain unpredictable. What really matters most is the fact that we would bother making and eating fish soup in the first place. Why? Because we like it, or because we might be hungry.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Doing ethnography is having to suspend beliefs, question reality, and rethink old problems. It forces a re-evaluation, or at least is supposed to. It forces a collision of realities. It entails really getting to know something, perhaps better than we may really like or that is to our own private interests to come to know. It also entails an extension of the responsibility which knowledge itself entails. But nobody, however methodical, has the bottom line of how or what ethnography is all about. No matter how carefully constructed, rationally justified, scientifically supported, no questionnaires, no survey, no series of observations, has a monopoly on validity. The bottom line is we do not really know what or why we are doing what we choose to do--if we did, there would be no point in feigning to do ethnography.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ethnography is a learning process, however structured. When and if we forget this, then we are no longer leaving anything but about our ignorance. All learning is in a crude sense didactic--making mistakes and paying the consequences, until we no longer make the same old mistake. The methods which we choose to apply are never foolproof, only possibly foolhardy. If we are not open to making mistakes in our judgment, daring to risk the embarrassment of being wrong or the consequences, then we will learn nothing but about our ignorance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Interpretation, irreducibly intuitive, must always enter into the process of science at some point of its methodological praxis, and however much one may try to systematically reduce its role or factor out its importance or function by research design, the final critical determination must always remain basically an intuitive choice, because we do not ever know for certain the bottom line. The scientific true believer remains existentially insecure in the face of fundamental uncertainty and ambiguity of the intuitive function in understanding human reality. There is an effort to design a 'foolproof' methodological system, which like a computer miracle, will correctly 'solve' the 'puzzle' when simply puts the right hypothetical questions and 'data bits' into the input slot. The most any computer can do, however advanced or sophisticated, is to manipulate in a very efficient manner a complex set of information which has been 'pre-programmed' in a specific computer language. The problematic of the hermeneutic horizon of 'language games' remains to be discussed. The human brain, still suffering from the problem of finding the 'correct language' in which to frame its questions and answers about human reality, seems on the surface to be much less efficient in the manipulation of information. The memory or mind 'can't be trusted' and so is inherently unreliable. But the brain is capable of performing another function which no computer can do adequately, and that is to think, to make decisions, to make mistakes and to learn from these mistakes, and understanding upon the basis of past experience, a function of wisdom and intuition and imagination, to adjust and adapt continuously to changing existential circumstances. The mind creates its reality. The mind remains the mysterious magic of the biological machine, a playful manipulation of and exaggeration of possible impossibilities. It forms the basis of human creativity, in which the impossible is rendered possible by being miraculously brought into existence. The basis of the scientific method is scientific imagination and creativity. Scientific 'truth' claimed man could never fly until some imaginative individuals created the possibility of human flight (now scientific positivists would argue that this was not a genuine scientific claim, but a statement of religious belief not in the purview of genuine science--one cannot escape the ideological circularity of this kind of after the face thinking. 'True science' has a marvelous way of appropriate history to its own purposes.) and now scientific technology has moved to swiftly capitalize upon the possibilities of this newly realized capability--flying to the moon and beyond. And so we are left to separate the problems of real science from scientific truth, without really finally knowing the basis for our separation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">No matter how sophisticated or long and involved our chain of methodological praxis, no matter how systematic we render our scientific methodology, at some crucial point in the process, at a certain 'critical moment' interpretive understanding, based upon existential intuitive decision making, must come into play, in order to achieve a sense of closure of understanding, a sense of conclusiveness to our hypothetical questioning and with this imagination and creative realization of alternative possibilities which did not before exists, enters the possibility of being wrong, of making a mistake, of becoming in truly scientific fashion, 'falsifiable'. The use of statistical measures within the social sciences is a perfect example of how interpretive intuition enters into the scientific methodology and how the design itself is presupposed and prearranged in order to 'control' or reduce the possibility of making a mistake by this kind of 'bias'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ethical security, versus the ethical responsibility of exercising existential freedom by making wrong decisions, is the freedom from choice, the positive guarantee of reward or punishment, the promise of poetic justice, of rational justice, the pledge of privilege affirmed or denied. Existential ethics is the choice of freedom, the declaration of independence from customary sanctioning of common sense, the acceptance of the responsibility for being uncertain, openness to possibility. It is the willingness to admit being wrong. The existential bottom line is facing the unknown. The existential ethics of being an anthropologist is the irremedial paranoia of being biased and learning to admit and live with it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The only rule of thumb bridging existential ethics and scientifically methodology is to remain honest about not really knowing, about facing the unknown. To enable oneself to see, is to risk being seen, to expose oneself, to become vulnerable to making a mistake, to being wrong. To see closely, one must look the unknown straight in the face, as it were, clearly in the eye. Methodology creates a contrived distance between self and other, subject as observer and object as observed. It superimposes a semi-transparent barrier between subject and object. The greater the distance the greater the barrier, the greater the difficulty of seeing clearly, but the paradox comes into being of the seeming possibility of greater 'objectivity'. The anthropological lens becomes in relation to the human eye, a way of catching and focusing vision to pinpoint accuracy--either from afar like a telescope or close up like a microscope--but it also, like the glass structure of the fish bowl, distorts the light, bending it from natural perspective, and it also circumscribes the margin of what is visible, eliminating, like the frog living in the hole, the context of the part in relationship to the whole. This is the hermeneutic horizon of scientific methodology. What it gains in analytical focus, it loses in synthetic comprehension. Widening the area of focus loses the analytical detail.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rise of anthropological methodology is learning to see human reality more clearly and concisely, more focusedly, but not without cost to 'natural vision'. It constitutes an artificial form of unnatural vision. The power of seeing, of learning to see more clearly, is the power for understanding experience and learning wisdom. It is not just unselfconscious looking, but apperceptive seeing. It is a vision, furthermore, of alternative possibilities of reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The process of science is self distancing objectification--a process which becomes defined through ethnography/ethnology and participant/observation not as the systematic substitution of methodology for 'truth' in the quest for reality, but of forcing a 'collision' of dialectical opposites in order to dispel the relative illusions of the self--to make possible a more disillusioned self in regard to or 'vis-à-vis' some significant other or set of others in order to better comprehend the shared inter-subjective human reality of both self and others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All science is basically description in terms of a language, no matter how systematically metered or how specific and detailed. All science is also irreducibly explanation, or abstract simplification, or 'modeling' no matter how concretely reified, abstracted or metaphorically analogical. Even the numbers game of statistics, the fundamental tool of positivistic science, remains essentially a descriptive/explanative language. The real problem is not the debate between quantifiability and quanlifiability. Description implies explanation and all explanation is a reduced form of description. An emphasis upon description begets an inductive strategy of the enumeration of details, while an alternative overemphasis upon explanation begets what has come to be known as 'hypothetico-deduction'. Both strategies are of themselves complementary and are not mutually exclusive. It is only by the overemphasis of one over the other that the methodical character of a systematic science becomes the methodology of ideology--'true science'. All description and explanation involves a necessary human choice, however existential, a decision, however rational, a commitment to history, no matter how implicit. The purpose of scientific methodology is to render the fact and act of this willful determination as explicit as possible, as objectively knowable, an inter-subjectively understandable, as communicable as possible, as we can reasonably make it, however arbitrary and evaluatively subjective it may really be. But this is not to deny the necessity of making an arbitrary choice in the determination of the success or failure of a research project (if by definition in the positivistic language of science, all research is inherently successful, if methodologically falsifiable, and nor research is unsuccessful, then we have again entered the ideological circle of 'true science' by not allowing the existential possibility of being wrong. Positivistic falsifiability does not eliminate the possibility of being wrong, of bias, but only obscures it, and by obscuring it, indirectly denies it). <u>Our methodologies</u>, however explicit or systematic, however rationalized in terms of whatever language, <u>do not serve as satisfactory substitutes for our irreducible human decision making process</u>, which remains subjective, evaluative, interpretive and didactic. The dichotomization between description and explanation is a false antinomy of 'descriptive/prescriptive' dichotomization of human reality. Description remains always implicitly normative, explanation remains explicitly prescriptive, a matter of choosing the <u>best</u> from among many possibilities. Our methodologies, no matter how rigorous or seemingly value free cannot be relied upon to render automatically the <u>correct</u> solution to the puzzle, as the only 'correct' answer implies a silent commitment to a false sense of reality, to an ideology of false consciousness, deception. History is the correct choice, because in its unfolding, it is the only answer. Denial of the normative basis of the decision making process in the methodologies of description and explanation results in a programmatic denial of one's own human commitment to history, of one's own ethical responsibility to the exercise of freedom in the process of understanding human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The denial of the irreducible subjectivity of the process leads to a fundamental denial of the responsibility of the self and its role in the functioning of History, which in turn leads to ideological commitment to a programmatic, pre-designed course of action, an exclusive reliance upon essentially 'dumb' methods and spurious systematicity in order to make a decision, to do the 'thinking', to diminish to the degree of noticeable elimination the possibility of <u>making a mistake</u>. It is a neurotic effort to eliminate the responsibility for being wrong. 'It must be so because our methods make it so.' It is like sitting and waiting for the computer to give one final answer--wishing it will do the final thinking for us.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <u><font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ameaningful</font></u><font SIZE="3"> thought or inquiry regards knowledge as the result of 'processing' rather than discovery. It presumes that knowledge is an almost automatic result of a gimmickry, an assembly line, a 'methodology'. It assumes that inquiring action is so rigidly and fully regulated by rule that in its conception of inquiry it often allows the rules totally to displace their human users. Presuming as it does that knowledge is generated by processing, its conception of knowledge is fictionalistic, conventionalistic. So strongly does it see knowledge under such aspects that sometimes seems to suppose the object of inquiry to be an ungainly and annoying irrelevance. The terms and relations of the object of inquiry or the problem are seen, as it were, through an inverted telescope: Detail, structure, quiddity are obliterated. Objects of knowledge become caricatures, if not faceless, and thus they lose reality. The world, or any given part of it, is not felt fully or passionately and is perceived as devoid of objective value. Ameaningful thinking tends to rely on crutches: rules, codes, prescriptions, rigid methods. In extreme forms it becomes obsessive and magical.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The tendency of ameaningful thought to register its objects as faceless, physically distant--to be, so to say, cognitively aesthetic vis-à-vis its object--I call 'a-ontologism' (if the term may be forgiven). Its tendency to subordinate authentic and contextually governed analysis, discovery or invention to blind application of an extrinsic method, I call 'method fetishism'. <u>A-ontologism</u> and <u>method fetishism</u> may, in fact, be regarded as the definitive marks of ameaningful thinking.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">On the other hand, <u>meaningful </u>thinking involves a direct perception of unveiled, vivid relations that seem to spring from the quiddities, particularities, of the objects of thought, the problem situations that form the occasions of thought. There is an organic determination of the form and substance of thought by the properties of the object and the terms of the problem. In <u>meaningful</u> thinking, the mind caresses, flows joyously into, over, around, the relational matrix defined by the problem, the object. There is a merging of person and object or problem. Only the problem or object, its terms and relations, exist. And <u>these</u> are real in the fullest, most vivid, electric, undeniable way. It is a fair descriptive generalization to say that meaningful thinking is ontologistic in some primitive, accepting, artless, unselfconscious sense. (Sigmund Koch; "The Nature and Limits of Psychological Knowledge" in <u>American Psychologist</u>, March 1981: 259-260)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The purpose of scientific objectivity is not methodological systematicity per se, not to avoid the inevitable possibility of being unpredictable, of making a mistake, but it is to simply narrow the margins for the possibility for such error. No methodology is foolproof, only foolhardy, and no computer can actually think--computers only describe--and its only explanations are only prefabricated descriptions of a fallible human program, but it entirely lacks a genuine human understanding, the imaginative understanding of the possibility of being wrong, of making a mistake, of becoming unpredictable. Scientific objectivity creates a distance between our understandings and the implicit understanding of our values, it clarifies our subjectivity, making explicit what would otherwise remain only implicit--it involves an intentional alienation of our subjectivity in order to become objectively self aware, more self apperceptive, more reflectively self critical--it leads toward, not away from an enlightened human understanding of the possibility of being wrong. The correct strategy of any scientific methodology is not to directly answer the problem in any definitive manner, but to indirectly minimize (not entirely eliminate) the possibility of making mistakes, such that our direct decisive approaches then have a greater likelihood of appearing correct, of really being better.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Commitment to the methodical systematicity of a scientific ideology in order to provide oneself with the 'correct answers' involves an existential commitment to a belief that there really is one correct truth, or set of truths, a reification of ideals, which can be said positively 'to be out there'. While this may be held as nominally true in the physical sciences (and this is only more or less provisionally so) it is much less definitively certain that this is possibly true in the human sciences. It hardly needs reiteration that it is precisely the inherent ambiguity of the fundamental uncertainty, or 'relativity' of the understanding of the human science, the very likely possibility that we may never really know 'once and for all' any final, complete, total truths, which so many individuals find so difficult to tolerate and deal with without committing themselves to the 'anxiety reducing' self distancing of the 'methodological fallacy'. The purpose of genuine scientific methodology is not to directly alienate the self by denying its role in the normative decision making process intrinsic to human description and explanation, rather it is just the reverse, to positively affirm the role of the self in this process in order to then indirectly 'control' for it. Methodology must affirm the existential role of human creativity in description/explanation and not deny it, or minimize it. Objectivity is not license to stand outside of the circle of our own history, it is not divinity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a close connection between the notions of subjectivity and objectivity in delineating human reality, and the related 'epistemological' problem of moving from subjectively based 'qualitative' criterion for evaluation and description to an 'objectively quantitative' basis for evaluation, or, as Manners and Kaplan might say, the fine point at which Anthropology moves from being a 'humanity' to becoming a true 'science'. It seems that much of our 'fallacy' of misplaced concreteness' or reification' of rational ideals ('norms, averages, intelligence quotient, etc.') is simply a confusion between essentially qualitative and quantitative domains of knowing. I believe it can be adequately demonstrated that objectivity is a special case of subjectivity, in general. In a 'scientistic' sense, subjectivity is the independent variable; objectivity the dependent; or in other words, qualitative subjectivity is the cause, quantitative objectivity the effect. This sets in motion the nature of the relationship between 'qualitative' and 'quantitative' in that 'quantitative' criteria is a restrictive subset of a larger domain of qualitative criteria. The problem becomes, then, exactly how and what to specify numerically in a quantitative fashion, what will be the absolute zero point and the unit extremes (upper/lower real limits). It seems that the goal of this fundamental process of making scientific otherwise undifferentiated data is increased precision and regularization of standard intervals imposed upon real events in order to make these events seem more orderly and thus more easily understandable (not to mention the other goals of science, prediction and control). Here we may note an important difference in direction and emphasis between the two approaches, in that the former, qualitative approach is primarily concerned with complicating reality, while the latter quantitative approach is concerned with the simplification of reality. This is a rather minor dilemma in the 'hard' sciences whose data seem at least to readily, inherently, lend itself to simplification through quantification. But there is never any way of being 'absolutely certain' of the accuracy, even in the 'physical sciences' but especially in the 'softer' human sciences of human reality. The main point is that no mater whatever standards for quantification we may arbitrarily select, these must always be premised upon some, at least tacit, if not qualitatively well defined (operationalized) criteria of descriptive evaluation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another closely related set of problems is differentiating between 'finite' facts and descriptive/evaluative statements (i.e. the philosophical 'analytic/synthetic' dichotomy). A science in the tradition of Western nationalism at least, depends upon such a strict dichotomization of human reality in order to conceptually organize its theory. Any science not readily admitting such a dichotomy would destroy the foundation for rational coherence underlying Western science, and would have to be declassified as 'a-scientific' or rather as part of the domain of 'religion', towards which sciences is supposedly neutral. I also believe that it can be adequately demonstrated that in truth no such sharp dichotomy between fact and evaluation can be made or proven, but far from undermining the validity of scientific theory, such a primary, a priori non-differentiation allows for a more expanded basis for scientific validity than reliability of quantified objectivity allows for. The final 'Truth' is less absolute seeming in appearance, more qualitatively ambiguous and open to reinterpretation, but nonetheless more valuable towards a broader, and deeper understanding of human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Another closely related dilemma is that in scientific theory we are always working with hypothetically open ended systems being applied to 'finite' sets, only 'hypothetically' open ended data. Thus we essentially have no final means of proving, through falsification, the true value of our hypothesis. On the other hand, we are always attempting to apply what in essence are closed systems or conceptioning, in terms of set theories and laws, to what are in virtue, if not actuality, open systems of reality. The whole problem seems to be one of commensurability in applying limits to infinity and infinity to limits. It is, in the last word, a problem of final, unequivocal proof.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is really no way of escaping this set of related dilemmas, in our understanding of human reality, unless, like God, we magically opt to step outside of the human arena, outside of ourselves, in order to get a 'really objective' point of view. But in lieu of this imaginable impossibility, our 'science' will be forever upset by the lack of clarity, the remnant unresolvable paradoxicality of apparent contradictions, by residual uncertainty and ambiguity. And no matter how hard we may try to operationally systematize our 'science' it will forever remain an 'imperfect' by-product of 'human' understanding. These are the ultimate limits of human reality. I prefer to call this variable of remnant subjectivity, itself difficult to define, the general phenomena of self reflectivity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This subjective reality of self unreflectivity makes of the meat-physical understanding of human reality an irreducibly <u>relative </u>affair. Reality, human reality, is irreducibly relative, a relativity rooted to the socio-historical context of the space/time continuum of change. in dealing with the irreducible relativity for self reflectivity, there are three general directions we can choose to take. The first is the 'scientific' direction of the attempt to minimize (proportionately) the influence of this form of subjectivity upon our 'objective' systems of conceptually modeling human reality, through operational systemization, standardization, routinization, through regularization of 'controls' aimed to neutralize subjective 'bias' through self definition or self conscious delimitation, increased self knowledge, incorporation of distancing mechanism which put a lot of 'space' between self and object. The second direction is the opposite 'humanistic' direction of maximization of the relative factor of self reflectivity by exclusive overemphasis of differences, purposive complication of data, the denial of all causality, correlationality, regularity as mere analogical similarity, metaphorical emphasis. The third, least attractive alternative perhaps to most people is the middle way of attempting to strike a compromise between two extremes, to 'optimize' the subjective influence. This is the most realistic of the three alternatives and potentially at least, the most fruitful for a mature science of human reality. It is, I think inherently wholistic and synthetic in approach, recognizing both the healthy usefulness and limitations of theoretical generalization. The first alternative, the scientistic approach, risks spurious superficiality and empirical over dependence and over complication. The second alternative, the humanistic, risks empirical consistency for the sake of parsimony, rational coherence and tends to sacrifice empirical consistency. Of course going to extremes is never a safe policy in life. In part, recognition of the role of self reflectivity, and tautologically 'eliminating' the problem it poses for objectification, through systematic incorporation, for making reality coherent, this is the role of general Anthropology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the ongoing debate between so called interpretivists and positivists, (a debate, incidentally, which is almost completely academic) it is not so much that they have engaged in a common dialogue in which both are really talking and listening to one another, rather both parties of the affair are busily engaged in talking through and past one another, purely for the sake of argument. It is not so much a question of being right or wrong as it is a matter of emphasis and frequently, overemphasis. The interpretivists are 'soft headed'--down playing the place of positivistic systematization in the routines of their methodologies. They give a larger role to the 'freedom' of interpretation and the role of 'intuition' in the creative processes of description/explanation. For the interpretivists emphasis the descriptive, inductive side of their science, playing up the intuitive normative role of the decision making process, while the positivists are equally engaged in emphasizing the factual, the facticity and the hypothetico-deductive side of science, playing down the paradoxical intuitiveness of human things and playing up the systematicity of correct, 'puzzle solving' scientific methodologies. It might even be argued that both camps come from fundamentally different versions of understanding human reality which are inimical--hence both are correct in their own way, if given the validity of the primary philosophical premises about human reality. But if both really listened to the other side, I think there would be a dawning of a common realization that both sides are really talking about the same thing, but in basically opposite ways. Neither side would deny the basic importance of scientific objectivity, however understood, in the pursuit of human understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But the continuation of this academic debate within the human sciences, (anthropology included) is but the manifestation of more important matters which are not so frequently broached. First, the debate is symptomatic of a continuing fundamental schism in the oxymoronic metaphor the 'human sciences' between those who are firmly situated within the more 'natural' sciences via mostly biological and behavioral approaches and those committed to more 'cultural' humanities through the critical elucidation of human symbol systems and the 'structures' and 'functions' of their 'patterning' and 'processes'. The former orientation sees knowledge as progressive, developmentally directive, immanent process, the latter orientation 'comprehends' understanding as accumulative, dialectical and transcendental. This dualism leads us to reconsider the positions of 'two cultures' vis-à-vis one another within a fundamentally Western philosophical-religious dichotomization between nature/culture or mind and body. There can be no going outside of or beyond the parameters of this ongoing dialectic as long as we accept unquestionably the a priori necessity of this fundamental dichotomy of human reality. Indeed, it becomes doubly difficult not to accept, however unwittingly in our shared 'pre-understandings' such a duality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Second, the debate, through primarily philosophical and western, has very definite existential consequences in terms of academic professional orientation which becomes 'paradigmatic in both the formal legal-jual and Kuhnian senses of historicity of science'. There is a deliberate and conscientious effort to promote within an academic institutional framework of one orientation on the other, which becomes existentially paradigmatic in the scientific sense of non-paradigmatic in the sense of humanities. This concerted, programmatic effort is undeniable and inexorable, even though its denial is frequent. It results in the institutionalization of methodical ideology, of a circle of deception which renders the whole enterprise hypocritical and deceitful.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The nature of this schism may even lead to two different kinds of academic orientations--the difference between a behavioristic program and a 'humanistic' one.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…It makes a great deal of difference for policy and practice whether or not the child is regarded as a creature possessed of an inner, indeterminate freedom which permits her/him to engage creatively in adapting to or changing the environment. Bidney's anthropological philosophy clearly embraces this notion of student freedom; the functionalistic position advocated by those in the Skinnerian camp just as clearly deny it. (Arthur J. Newman; "The Affinity Between David Bidney's Concept of Culture and that Implied by Humanistic Psychology" in <u>Essays in Humanistic Anthropology</u>, 1979: 77)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The indirection of scientific method is the pursuit of the hunch, the sneaking suspicion, the bringing into being the seeming impossible by way of direction our attention at the seemingly possible--by keeping our conscious attention preoccupied, but not completely so, it enables the semi-consciousness to bring from the unconscious hitherto unexplored, unknown mindscape. Science creates reality, brings it possibility into being, human being. This is the power of science. Exactly how creative intuition happens nobody knows, though we have vague ideas and probably we will never want to really know, because the it will be corrupted by computer like intelligence.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Statistics is based upon two criteria, two interrelated presuppositions which are mostly taken for granted and rarely questioned in and of themselves. The first is the apparent quantitative facticity of the datum--discretely recognizable bits of information which are accepted as being relatively identical, hence comparable. This acceptance of the facticity of our ability to quantify meaning, setting up a one to one correspondence between the name and the thing, leads to a sometime artificial, spurious spacious comparability between non-identical 'things'. The second is the inherent two value dichotomic logic of the null hypothesis designed to reduce the possibility of error--it leads to a spurious sense of understanding of interrelationships between things which is only superficial. It systematically excludes a third value range of alternative relationships which may in actuality exist between apparent things. The net result is a superficial understanding, an understanding which does not penetrate the surface relationships between things, resulting in a kind of obscurity of the real nature of things, and an obfuscation of the actual relationships which might co-occur between things. We are lead to believe that statistics creates understanding, that it scientifically 'explains' something without the human weakness of interpretation, when all that statistics really accomplishes is an non-arbitrary precision, however illusory, of description--a quantitative language or coding, which is supposed, if done correctly, to render the always problematic task of making a wrong decision, less problematic. As a purely descriptive device, statistics can be extremely effective and therefore quite valuable, but it should always be taken, accepted with skeptical caution. It can render quite clearly patterns of interrelationships between things in reality, things which are not readily discernible to the 'naked eye' of the mind--it can neither reinforce or negate the common sense of our basically intuitive understanding of reality, but it is not a substitute for this understanding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Statistics has become the main weapons or technology of the positivist paradigm of the social sciences. It carries the weight and the authority of a belief in numbers, a preoccupation with procedural routines and a concern with 'validity' and 'replicability'. Repeatability of experimental evidence is considered direct inductive 'proof'--an openness to falsifiability. Repeatability is based upon measurement, the application of some kind of quantitative scale, which serves as a 'control' for comparison. This direct proof is a demonstration of the strength of science--its power to enlighten the unknown, teach the ignorant, question the certitude of belief. Real science, in its realized way, versus the idealized, abstract positiveness, is actually an intuitive creative process of methodical indirection--approaching truth indirectly, as a spin-off of the focus of attention, as a debitage of objectification, rather than a frontal attack. Whichever direction we focus our attention, the truth is always evasive, resting just upon the periphery of our understanding, vague only in outline. To misunderstand this, to neglect it, is to deny the function of science while affirming its form.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Said the old natives of the young anthropological fieldworker--"He doesn't seem to really know what he's doing, but there does seem to be some sort of method to his madness"…"well of course, he's only an amateur yet."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">II.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ALICE LOST IN ANTHROPOLOGIA</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">on gracefully becoming a professional Anthropologist</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">O wad some power the giftie gie us The Gateless Gate</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To see oursel's as itehrs see us!</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An instant realization sees endless time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And foolish notion: Endless time is an one moment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What airs in dress an'gait wad lea'v us When one comprehends the endless</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And en'n devotion! moment</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(<u>To a Louse: On Seeing One On A Lady's </u>He realizes the person who is seeing</p> <u> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Bonnet At Church</u> by Robert Burns it.</p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The raison d'être for this unfinished ethnography is the forcing into being the aegis of a course structure the entire ethnographic project, abbreviated, truncated, adumbrated. It was my intention to 'accelerate' the ethnographic process, to combine an 'annual cycle of seasons' into a complete academic cycle of a single episode. The result has been piece meal, erratic, sketchy--forced. The methodology does not begin or end with the 'field' experience--it continues within academia and does not reach culmination until the final 'waiting up' and 'publication' and there are from beginning of deciding to become an anthropologist until finally actually becoming one in any official sense, many different kinds of obstacles to hinder or prevent this process from reaching completion, not the least of which is the eventual writing up of one's field experience, which is not discontinuous from the phenomenological process of ethnographic methodology, but is a very important part of that process and praxis. It represents the completion of a transformation experience of 'ego personality' and its valorization in the form of achieved status. Until this status is acquired a sense of closure over the process is not reached--this is part of the academic structuration of becoming a professional anthropologist--running the gamut from amateur ethnographer to pro ethnologist. The formation and development of the professionalism, of the status and habitus, of a sense of being professional, is part of an academic structuration for becoming a designated expert in a specialized area of knowledge and understanding. There goes along with this structuration a mythology of the lone fieldworker, successfully suffering the arduous deprivations and problems of the field, bearing an onerous burden to find the small bit of truth about humanity, passing through a self inflicted rite of passage and remaining scientific in the process, becoming purified after being passed through the forge, suffering many ego destroying, ego resurrecting episodes which the achiever views as a trial by fire, a test of authentic anthropological character. Without suffering it would not be genuine. Without being difficult and serious, it would not be realistic, without being methodical it would not be science. It is a task to be dutifully, ritually performed. It is a task for which one prepares and is prepared by the properly rigorous and routine exercises within academia--the demonstration of one's strength of character and intellect to endure in the field. This ethnography is not just a critique of an mythological image, of a very modern form of mythological consciousness which passes in the name of science, but it is an effort to provided, via this incomplete ethnography, an alternative vision of ethnographic process, and the ethnographic participant who voluntarily engages in this process, the student of anthropology bent upon a lifetime career of becoming an authentic anthropologist. It is a vision based not so much upon the individual egocentric actor--and his/her trials and tribulations upon the vision quest, or 'status quest' but it is focused more upon the membership role of a socio-centric status seeker who is always circumstantially, situationally defined vis-à-vis significant others, whether in the academic field or 'out in the field' of humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology forms a way of life, one based upon the status of professional prestige, based upon what Weber might refer to as the 'usurpation' of a special kind of privilege which forms the criteria for a particular kind of authority--in this case it is the authority derived from the exclusive appropriation of 'What is human reality?' or variously What is it? or What does it really mean? or What is the reality of humanity?, which is the objective basis of anthropology defining itself as a 'science of humankind'. Now there are many ways to break the egg but depending upon which end one chooses will determine one's general orientation with respect to this question. With a world of five billion people, no individual or exclusive club of professionals has a monopoly or even a corner in the market of the problem 'What is human reality?' To listen to a casual conversation among different anthropologists at different phases of their careers or prospective careers is to see the 'pango pango' principle set in motion, each person throwing in their two bits worth of exotic experiences 'in the field' of special techniques for explaining these experiences and of one demonstration of one's 'expertise' with which to polish one's professional badges. Claiming some kind of privileged knowledge about human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have the contest of ego involvement in the effort to edify a reality which apparently needs reinforcement of a particular kind. In the course of their careers, which if successful, serve to existentially reinforce one's sense of ego involvement, we have the building of ego empires in which the individual is busily engaged in policing its boundaries and asserting one's highly personalized professional authority. To play up one's equality with significant reference on counter reference others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Existential ethnography extends from the thesis that all human must somehow face and learn to cope with an inexorable fate of existential loneliness. Certain environments and certain existential predicaments exaggerate or pronounce this loneliness--the alienation of the crowded city, the isolation of the middle class suburb, status marginality on the edge of the group, and other conditions serve to ameliorate this condition a party, being enmeshed in a web of familial or community obligations. Nevertheless, it is a bottomless feeling which always returns to haunt and remind the soul of its eventual fate, of being essentially alone in a lonely world. The existential ego has a number of options which is to try to break out of this prison of the soul--always attempting either to escape or to resign oneself to one's fate.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The purpose of this ethnography has been to find the existential bottom line of this department and those who are members of it. This bottom line is that no matter how little they may realize it, or act to deny it, or how much status or reward or how little, they are mostly alone in their world, and they must learn to live with being alone. Most people are caught up in doing their own thing--it’s the 'American Way'--and few are really paying too much attention to what anyone else is doing except in passing interest--via meetings, casual associations, classrooms, etc. this is in marked contrast to the hypothetical fieldwork orientation in which the anthropological ego is primarily, or is at least supposed to be, primarily other involved rather than self involved. In both instances though, we are inclined to refer to it as 'conducting research'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem of power must be faced within the department. No matter what an individual may rank it in relation to other schools, this ranking is most likely a reflection of that individual's personal standing within the department. The baseline I am taking for this department is that it is average. There are very few really brilliant, exceptional human beings running about the place, no matter how most of us would like to see ourselves and others to see us. It is average, run of the mill and mediocre. Most of the people, myself included are pretty mediocre. But what does this kind of ranking really mean. Of course the department is not a clustering of Great Geniuses at the pinnacle of high civilization. Very few places are.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The bottom line is editorial anthropology, the red line that streams through all the library books that looks like so much graffiti--we are all engaged in seeing exactly what we want to see, in making it the way we exactly want to make it, if only we really could. At every turn of the page, history creeps in to remind us that we are indeed not infallible, immortal or even exceptional. The academic anthropologist's primary concern is the control of history, of keeping historical agency out of his closed circle of interests. We are involved everyday in editing anthropology, selecting out the interesting from the uninteresting, the important from the trivial, the factual from the fictional. We edit without admitting it, then we are doing something unethical, quite unprofessional--a collusion of conspiracy of private interests, when primarily interested. Climbing the chain of commands, the ladder of success. It is OK to be editors in the anthropology section of the academic newspaper, the travel and information section on other people in other place, this is the job--but it is not OK to make this into something different or other than or more than what is. To say that there is not something inherently biased about the process. Folks I am not talking just biological anthropology--it has its own mythological history it must face and live down. I am talking the sacredness and sanctity of modern science, as the end all and be all of humanities problem. Behind science rests this enlightened ideology of progress, behind progress are all these private interests and motivations--'getting ahead' ethnocentrism--ego-centrism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The parody of biological science is to see human race as an evolutionary mistakes, a dead end, a cancer upon the body of nature, headed for extermination. Civilization and progress, in its destruction of ecology and life, and its substitution of synthetic forms, is in its anti-entropy anti-life, thereby inevitably self destructive. History learns this out. Our future is not in the stars but six feet under. It is anti-life precisely because it is anti-death. Not being able to look death in the face, to square off with the fate of life, it is the mythology of immortality, eternity, 'learning to live forever'. No need to grow pessimistic about it all. Behind the existential mask of loneliness, is the face of death. And death, thanatos, is what we must learn to live with, to deal with, to cope with. And we can learn to live with it, longer with it than without it, and life is not automatically rendered meaningless or purposeless with it, as it becomes more meaningful because of it and inspite of it, but not in denial of it. And what we deny in ourselves, we inevitably foist upon others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Man may not have been the bio-cultural miracle, but the bionic mistake, the evolutionary oddity, the unnatural cancer. The synthetic cyborg.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We do not murder the turtle just because it will probably outlive us all--we respect it, pay homage to it. We do not pull up weeds because they flourish. One man's weed is another person's flower, just as one scientist's fact is another humanist's fiction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"In essence, this is a challenge of anthropology. A certain loss of innocence occurs as one learns to see other societies (and one's own) from an anthropological perspective. However, as Herman Hesse wrote 'the way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but even further into sin, ever deeper into life' (cited in Matthiessen; 1965, prefatory quote). To this statement may be added Dante's demand at the entrance to hell (from the <u>Divine Comedy</u>): 'Here you must abandon all division of spirit, and here all cowardice must perish.' (Prawer, 1978: 301)" (Wessmen; <u>Anthropology and Marxism</u>: 11)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are resonant phrases and grand ambitions and they are proper to what is ideally a fundamental intellectual discipline. But the reader should keep skeptically in mind this express caution: that the entire circuit of our thought depends on the directions indicated by criteria which are not given by social facts. The very notion of a fact is tautologically and by definition factitious, a collective representation may be far from collective; the idea of a representation, if taken strictly, begs most epistemological questions. In the use of similitudes everything hands on concepts of identity and difference which are not <u>a-priori </u>but are more or less defensible abstractions: Bolzano asserted that identity is not only a special case of difference; Wittgenstein is said to have remarked that what is or is not the same thing is the hardest of questions. The sketch of analogical classification proffered below shows that even the simplest of semantic structures subsumes numerous complexities and that even the most elementary relational terms are gradually disputable. At every step, therefore, a critical apprehension could, if nervously acted upon, bring an advance to a halt: but if we are to go anywhere at all we have to press on, despite our reliance on suspect instruments and rough bearings. (Rodney Needham: 14-15)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Involvement itself, ego involvement itself is not wrong--commitment is the process of History and is unavoidable--existentially we become committed whether we choose to or not, whether it becomes active or remains passive, progressive or regressive. What is important is 'involvement with a difference'--reflexive involvement which creates the anthropological split personality between knowing and being, which eventuates in anthropological schizophrenia of no longer being able to tell the difference--a 'con-flating' or 'con-fusing' of interests. It is Nargajuna who can remain unattached while remaining involved. It is being a millionaire without being a pig about it. It is not an easy feat--it is much more difficult than simply making a million. Apperceptive recognition of one's involvement in historical process means that one can monitor one's actions, achieve some measure of control over outcomes, and learn from past mistakes. It means transcending paradigmatic progress, the dialectics, while maintaining one's balance within it. Not an easy feat. To see the forest for the trees is not an easy feat, as we can never get out of and above the forest--the most is the diminution of perspective on the partial whole upon the edge. It entails living upon the edge, keeping one's distance from the centers of power, always resisting the pushing and the pulling. It means a self induced marginality anthropologists are famous for. A concentric, self centering system does not really foster such marginality which is so important because this condition of marginalism, so necessary in effective fieldwork, becomes anathema of success in one's own field--it is a threat to the sense of anthropological order, the norms and sanctions of anthropological ethos, which reigns supreme.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The thesis of existential ethnography is that underlying 'ethnocentrism'--the enemy of anthropological science, there is a motivational structure of 'ego-centrism'. Ego-centrism and ethno-centrism reinforce one another in a complementary interdependence. Ego-centrism leads to ethno-centrism. Determination of an characteriological baseline for anthropological ego, a kind of academic stereotype, turns upon this existential thesis. Where one finds ego-centrism, there too shall ethno-centrism be. Ethno-centrism defines a kind of social horizons of our pre-understandings. Ego-centrism defines a personal horizon of pre-understanding the self in relation to the other, primarily upon the basis of difference and superiority. Ego, the Latin 'I' is defined as the self, or as the 'individual as aware of himself' with the connotation of narcissistic conceit, egotism. Philosophically, it is in a sense an absolute spirituality which is the substrate for phenomenological experience, or 'the series of acts and mental states introspectively recognized, etc.' in psychoanalysis it stands for that part of the psyche which consciously experiences the external world and consciously controls the impulses of the id. Ego-centric refers to 'dwelling upon one's self or upon one's own personal interests almost to the exclusion of everything else; viewing everything in relation to oneself; self centered.' It means also exhibiting an interest in oneself rather than in the group. Egoism is the tendency 'to be self centered or to consider only oneself and one's own interests; selfishness. In ethical philosophy egoism maintains the doctrine that self interest is the proper basis for all human actions, in contrast to a genuine altruism. Egoism synonymous with self conceit, stressing its expression of self conceit in words or deeds, whereas self conceit is more of an 'over weaning opinion of oneself.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are hooked here on the horns of an interesting anthropological dilemma. The egocentrically oriented individual sees the world primarily in self reference, in one's own terms and therefore relates to it with personal interests first. The inevitable egotistical rationalization reinforcing this orientation is the world view that everyone is egotistical and selfish, naturally so, therefore it is right to behave so. If existential ethnography is correct in its thesis of the egocentrically oriented anthropological sense of self as the primary reference for the world of the other, a thesis which is perhaps reinforced by the very American value orientation of the cult of the individual, then it is to be suspected that the anthropological ego, to the extent that it remains self centered, also has difficulty escaping the bias and prejudice of existential ethnocentrism--a belief in the superiority of one's own cultural life ways. If this central thesis is valid, then anthropology can be seen to embody an inherent dialectical contradiction of embracing ethnocentrism upon the world of the other. This contradiction is expressed by and mediated by the focus of anthropological attention upon the object-subject relations between self and other. It is to be suspected that there remains more than a little of the individual cults of ego-teheism and ego mania among ambitious anthropologists.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The problem therefore seems not to be so much one of dealing theoretically or hypothetically or methodologically with ethnocentrism, not that anthropology has yet mastered this problem nor ever will. It is the problem of anthropocentrism and ego-centrism primarily in academia. This problem expresses itself in many ways, not the least of which is an apparent structural make bias--anthropology being defined as 'the science of fun'. The anthropological ego faces the existential problems of loneliness, in the field and in academia, of limitations, of having to learn to live with one's self and one's own weaknesses and imperfections and of having to learn to live with different others, and of having different others learn to live with oneself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology has a kind of spurious power, a kind of perverse authority. Like psychologists who psychologize everything and everyone as a form of power--getting into their heads to figure out what makes them tick violating the private sanctity of the soul. It is actually an elaborate ego defense mechanisms to protect the weakness of the self, repressing and projecting oneself, one's weaknesses, one's insecure relationship with a shared humanity. The same thing happens with anthropologization of human reality--the blanket generalization disguising more than it reveals. Anthropology is the power of being an 'expert' about human reality, of being a knowledgeable bottom line about human affairs--jumping both literally and figuratively into other people's lives and to figure it all out. Anthropocentrism is seeing things from the exclusive framework of human reality based on the thesis that mankind is at the center of importance of the universe. Reality is a science of mankind. Of seeing human reality as something exceptional, privileged, important, interesting in an exclusive sense. Anthropocentrism and anthropologization operates from the framework that anything not anthropologically related is therefore irrelevant and disregarded. Aesthetics is not aesthetics in and of itself but becomes 'anthropological aesthetics'. Philosophy has nothing relevant to contribute to anthropology unless it is philosophical anthropology or anthropological philosophy. The list is endless. The fallacy of anthropomorphism emphasizes and imputes human like qualities in non-human entities and non-human qualities in human entities. The fossilized other, the wild other, the aboriginal primitive other, is the edge of humanity--the important perspective of marginality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ego-centrism and its cult leads into and functionally reinforces academic authoritarian power structures. The perversity of its power is that an individual will prevent or control or direct another human being from fulfilling life possibilities, primarily out of an ego-centric selfishness of personal frustrations at not having made it as much as one was able. It is murdering the turtle. This is mostly consigned to the unknown realm of the 'unconscious' even though motivations for compulsions may not be well understood, the deliberate decisions are fully conscious and arbitrary, the consequences are very real.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Genuine culture and spurious culture. The cult of ego-centrism is spurious, not genuine anthropology. Though it may be genuineness within its closed sphere, in the wider context it becomes very much ingenuine. It is the cultivation of haute culture to maintain a conspicuous visibility of superiority of upper class status--the Bach And Beethoven within a cultural stream of jazz and rock. It is middle class people, foreign or domestic striving or looking to the upper class--a part of the wish fulfillment of national bourgeoisie culture appropriating genuine symbols of status to reinforce one's inherently insecure status. We, by being anthropologists, are not immune from or separate from the implications of this process of strong ego identification. If we share in a greater privilege in relation to understanding human reality, then we also share in greater responsibility not to allow this privilege 'go to our heads' and infect out over inflated egos. Indeed we are more susceptible and therefore suspect to this process, because we make it the primary basis for our privileged authority.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In his seminal essay, Culture, Genuine and Spurious, Edward Sapir (1924) spoke of the possibility of studying and evaluating cultures with respect to how well they provide suitable environments for human existence. Along a general continuum, he saw the genuine culture as one which begins from the needs of the individual while at the same time functions as an integrated part and meaningful whole. It is able to strike a harmonious relationship between the vital strivings of human beings and the cultural soil in which they are nurtured. According to Sapir, a genuine culture expresses 'a richly varied and yet somehow unified and consistent attitude toward life in which nothing is spiritually meaningless in which no part of the general functioning brings with it a sense of frustration, or misdirected or unsympathetic effort'.(page 410) The spurious culture, on the other hand, is external to the individual producing a feeling of subservience to arbitrary demands and fostering an attitude of non-participation and alienation. While the genuine culture serves to nurture the creative potential of human beings, the spurious culture is inherently frustrating, fragmentary and wasting of human endeavor and sentiment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Reflecting upon Sapir, the author strongly believes that he was on to something that the subsequent course of scholastic anthropology has largely neglected. Or at issue is the whole question of human value and the possible emergence of an anthropology capable of addressing this question both scientifically and ethically, with an emphasis on the measure of cultural satisfaction. In other words, cannot anthropology blend its scientific perspective with some general definition of human value and begin pursuing research and thought which would be in service to this value? (Bruce T. Grindal; <u>Essays in Humanistic Anthropology</u>, 1979: 13-14)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Deception occurs when it becomes so important to maintain the veneer of superiority of authority, of untouchability, at any cost. What are the stakes in playing this game--of 'making it' as somebody exceptionally important as 'outstanding' in the classroom, in the corridor, in the field, in the world. It is what happens to mediocre human beings who try to be what they aren't, and in the process deny who they really are. The real human cost of this, is that any potential brilliance is soon frustrated or squashed by the routine operational demands of maintaining the veneer. There is a net leveling effect which creates a ceiling to anyone's participation, cultivation of talent, or ability. We are behaviorally molding 'anthropologists' along a certain model of 'socialized professionalism' which is the white jacketed social scientists or the 'scholarly researchers'--stamping them out in a cookie cutter that fits a pre-designed package.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The crudity of suggesting that a student can earn his/her degree simply by plugging into a computer program or 'taking care of a pile of papers on behavioral observations' goes unrecognized and uncriticized in its discouragement of creativity and encouragement of mediocre conformity. The unoriginality of merely 'getting involved' wherever 'there's money' goes without notice. There is an obsessive compulsive need to present an image 'that one knows what one is doing, or at least appears to, at all costs'. Part of becoming more professional is becoming so good in this command performance, so seemingly subtle and opaque in one's scholarly presentation of school authority, that one fools even the foolish. The result is a bunch of proud Anthro youth marching to the same beat.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This kind of value orientation is very much a part of the ethos of Amerikana of the 80's--stemming from the American success ethics of 'making it', of 'getting ahead at any cost'. No one would be in education if they were not at least a little interested in getting there. This is the yuppie and yippie hypocrisy of the children of the 60's. it is the hypocrisy of the Marxist's minded liberal who complains of being captive in her $40,000 year job, or the man into global political economy worried about real estate transactions. What is seen as a dangerous animal in a zoo, for public spectacle is really the hypocrisy of an egotistical fool who thinks too highly of himself, and feels cheated by the system because he can't get any further ahead. The job of a professor is very comfortable indeed.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Academic achievement motivation is a driving ambition to increase one's power and one's position of authority within the academic framework of power and status, whether by role status or rank status. We all share concern with this form of social mobility--with professional change and transformation. This process becomes valorized by academic access to power and resources which are always restricted and limited. The real audience is a larger milieu of academia--those significant but distant others of the same field who we must entertain and fool, or convince, sometimes fooling or convincing ourselves in the process. The immediate colleagues are a direct symbolic reflection of this indirect orientation--our placement within the department seems to reflect our overall standing as anthropologists. The objects of our desires, angers, needs, motivations, devotions, form the basis of the subjects of our academic interests, serving as models for the structuring of our ego consciousness which is referenced against a wider, but immediately absent, and significantly mythological, audience. These are the means and materials for our own symbolic acting out--of the relationship between self and other that tends not to be an intimate inter-subjective I-thou, but a 'distant', 'objectified' 'I-it' relationship--as the significant other is the objective basis of the information used as power in one's own ego-identification process. Feelings of interpersonal intimacy develop not inspite of the academic milieu, but because of it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The point of reference of what has become known as the life of dialogue is that it presents us with alternative stands: relations and irrelation. I can, that is to say, either take up my place alongside whatever confronts me and in Buber's language address it as 'you'; or I can hold myself apart from it and view it as an object, an 'it'. Furthermore, with each of these two attitudes I deploy a different <u>I</u> , the <u>I</u> of <u>I-you</u> being quite different from that of <u>I-it</u>. The first is an <u>I</u> caught up in an exclusive relation, for a <u>you</u> can never be one 'something' among others; it must always be this kind of comes between an <u>I</u> and its <u>you</u>; no anticipations, no preconceptions, no purposes, no aims, no desires. I cannot say <u>you</u> until these intermediate thoughts and feelings have disappeared. At the same time, nothing derogatory attaches to the stand of irrelation. On the contrary, without it I should not survive: it is from the <u>it</u>-world that I draw whatever knowledge, judgment and progress that I possess and enjoy--as long, that is to say, as the <u>I-you</u> of relation is the stronger of the two. It is essential that I have the ability to enter easily and frequently into relation, even to the extent that my life may be described as one of <u>I-you</u> rather than <u>I-it</u>. (Pamela Vermes; <u>Martin Buber</u>)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To play up one's inequality from a position of privilege or authority with significant reference to or counter reference others amounts to a kind of snobbery, an indirect way but not too subtle way of pointing out one's own privileged position vis-à-vis that immediate other, even though this status is derived ultimate from existential inequalities of life opportunities or screens of opportunity which may not be available to the other. Exaggerated or pronounced ego equality and ego identification with some significant other becomes thereby conditional and arbitrary--contrived, set by one's own standards and set of playing rules, in the denial or self deception of the inherent existential inequality. It is a way of demonstrating one's authority in defining the situation of interrelation and in specifying the name of the game. Its status under emphasis or over emphasis, its emphasis at all, is an indirect way of reinforcing one's own privileged position. It becomes a means of reasserting and reaffirming one's privileged authority vis-à-vis some significantly defined other in situations of perceived threat or insecurity to the ego. It is the kind of structural relationship which we extend to others in the field as well as to other colleagues in the field. It is a way of nomothetically defining one's self in comparison, implicitly normative with others. It thereby becomes a way of nomothetically relating to significantly defined others--specifying and asserting a kind of 'privileged' relationship based upon power differentials in the ability to control the relationships, largely a privilege which is one way, in which the other becomes implicitly a 'thing' involved in a complex anthropological 'I-it' irrelationship. It thus frames a way of knowing and of methodologically relating to others in human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of course very few of us were born to be great anthropologists, or even necessarily good ones. We must all learn slowly from our mistakes. As I was well informed--'you must learn to crawl first before you can walk'. We must all learn how imperfect we are at the process of relating to drastically different others. Only a very few anthropologists were ever 'meant' to be--maybe only a Margaret Mead or a Radcliffe-Brown, and this perhaps only mythologically. Most of us have to learn the hard way, no matter what our egos may think or want, that we are fairly average, not too exceptionally special anthropologists. The basis of differences between people, beyond plain personality and culture, are primarily due to differences of life experiences, backgrounds, opportunities, interests, values, priorities, status and authority. If some people are unable to see through the aura of authority which surrounds some exceptionally 'strong' personalities, then they are only playing the fool in a foolish game. But people rely upon authority to manipulate and bias the system in favor of themselves and their own kind. They use power to create opportunities for others, to foster privileges, to smooth the way for some, while making it difficult, denying opportunities for others. Because nobody within the system dares to call the bluff, to admit to the Emperor's new clothes, such individuals are able to consistently get away with it. It is the silent assertion of authority to cow people into conformity in the anxiety of falling into disfavor. This is reinforced by the social pressures to conformity which is always apparent in the thick atmosphere of strange looks and quiet whispers. The bias of human subjectivity and fallacy is hidden beneath the veneer of cold authority, the mask of shallow smiles, the projection of a presence of scientific objectivity and scholarly professionalism which seems somehow confected. The name of the game becomes information control--critical information is not freely or broadly disseminated, but only general trivial or officially necessary information is broadly, openly disseminated. It is this way with all bureaucratized systems. Bias results in discrimination behaviorally. Communication is what the system is all about--the exchange of important information, and bias in the communication channels, of who hears what, is apparent. The net result of this bias is that some individuals consistently receive opportunities, advantages, and privileges, while others consistently are denied these things. Characteriological differences, carrying the implicit connotation of nature, hence racial, differences, are imputed as rationalization for this discrimination and bias, which proceed originally from an ego-centric value orientation. Some individuals perennially receive funding in order to advance up the academic ladder of success, while others don't. there can be no denying or rationalizing or justifying this 'fact' of History.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But there is an implicit and intentional denial of reality in which routine operationally efficiency must be maintained at all costs in the presentation of ego to the review of significant others, even if the cost is one of purposeful reality manipulation, falsification, deception. Dissonance must be great indeed to turn deceit into delusion, on everyone's part. An individual is not actually going to study what his/her examinations are for because the examiners have already removed the possibility of funding, and inspite of this fact of history, that person must be evaluated as if he/she really were to conduct this research. There is a kind of circle of implicit deceit, of inner conspiracy, of internal collusion, which is reminiscent of Vietnam Era double-speak news-speak. A great deal of the ritual formality and the cold informality, of the authoritarian structure reminds me of the USMC. And people get away with it because everyone respects this kind of ego trip with authority, because that’s what they're really all about anyway. The problem with this overall failure to face reality honestly or squarely, is whether such individuals can really be relied upon to do honest research, or might they sweep results which conflict with their narrow minded paradigms under the carpet, fudge here and there with a few 'facts and figures' in order to maintain their tight veneer of authority. This fact of history must be faced as well, because it will otherwise undermine the system's efficacy--what goes around will eventually come around, with rebounding retribution. This is human karma, because the larger concourse of history is always two way. If nothing else, who will call the bluff?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The corridors of anthropologia are streams of humanity, the avenues of academic civilization. They are communication channels through which thread networks, historical patterns, of communication, of information, and its control. People whisper in hallways, or whistle loudly to be heard by all. There prevails an overarching atmosphere of repressive, paranoid control. Someone might be listening . Or is it only just me. But these channels are two way channels and open upon broader streams of humanity. Secrets can only be kept behind petty power mongering, can be allowed to happen without hurting too many people, but it must answer to history by creating conditions of silence, conformity, mediocrity and hypocrisy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To step outside of one's own ego involvement requires a surrender to the existential horizon of one's own historicity of pre-understandings, embracing the weaknesses of one's own humanness. It is to temporarily stand outside of one's own involvement within one's own ego-centric circle of private, personal interests and values in order to genuinely share the interests and values of others, however seemingly insignificant. It is the refrain from the double edged word that one can't help saying, from the slight and slighting gesture. It is to shed the sheath of one's own ego defenses, the symbolic vestments of one's own privileged authority of knowledge and understanding, in order to embrace one's own ignorance, it entails stepping outside the hermeneutic circle of one's own involvement and the recognition however relative of one's own history. This becomes much more difficult when the track of one's success, one's career trajectory, and the positive, tangible rewards of one's involvement, reinforces one's own ego-involvement and negatively reinforces, discourages, becoming 'uninvolved'. This kind of value orientation is clearly 'reinforce' by the reward structures inherent within academia--students are encouraged and rewarded for their competitiveness and aggressiveness for outspoken assertive and appearing authoritative. Successful students make professors feel successful, mutual encouragement which validates both individual's ego involvement. A kind of 'opportunism' or 'opportunistic spirit' is cultivated. The system, paradoxically enough, becomes the big breast of endless gratification which rewards the people. But what happens when the milk runs dry--anthropological anomies--the external reward structure breaks down and hierarchy asserts it authority and inequality. Whether one has enough money to invest in a tape recorder especially after one's had all of this and then lost it, makes one wary of 'whole hearted' commitment when the promise is false, the rewards mostly tangible. It fosters an orientation that 'learning to play the system' is the end all to being successful. Need petty funding for research, the system can provide it. Need money for a plane ticket and meal tickets, the system will provide it, if one knows the right strings to pull. The idea of forking it out of one's own pocket, of paying one's own way, goes unquestioned. Even the privilege of having a job, so much the boon and bane of graduate competition, becomes the expectation of structure. The fact of a job in and of itself becomes unquestioned. <u>But</u> what happens when those external reward structures are no longer available, when their existence is more a matter of mythological 'false consciousness' than anything existentially tangible, and the individual must lapse back upon one's own resources, one's own internal meanings of coping. One is left to existentially redefine one's status and role, no longer primarily in terms of the structure of the system in relation to significant others, but primarily in terms of one's own historicity--commitment to one's own meaning in life--be it scientific, aesthetic, or humanistic or anthropological or in whatever combination. The metalogicality of one's apperceptive recognition. In the surrender to history, in the embrace of the self consciousness of one's existential historicity, one realizes another kind of ego strength not defined exclusively in terms of involvement with the social system, but independent of it, not contra-distinction to it and this is the strength of one's common humanity shared with other human beings, and the strength and power, however 'spiritual' of one's understanding of human reality. One then learns how to relate to human reality, to accept the hidden self in the exposed other and the exposed self in the hidden other. One acquires 'soul' that cannot be purchased with money, that cannot be authorized by 'status'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Money creates its own reality, so does status and privilege, and too, so does history. Knowing is not necessarily being. Experience is not necessarily wisdom. History must be embraced to discover its Humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Field experiences, whether a couple, a few, several or many, no longer are in and of themselves sufficient to account for one's anthropological reality--it is rather the existential understanding gained from one's life experiences which counts for 'power'--the power to not need to 'prove' to oneself or others, to stand by one's own words come what may. The field experience, then, no longer becomes a 'trial by fire' by which one earns notches upon one's anthropological character, demonstrating the validity of one's authority which is seen primarily in ego-centric terms of 'paying one's dues'--earning one's credits for heaven. It is no longer such a lonely experience, because it becomes a shared experience and an experience of sharing oneself with others--what is learned is simply not data, knowledge, tricks of the trade, techniques, skills, methodologies, theories, etc. But one learns a kind of wisdom--a sagaciousness of human integrity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These experience of I-it irrrelation becomes consummated in written discourse, in 'publication' which is the 'anthropological mode of production'--the causal efficacy of the 'anthropological way of life'. Anthropologia is a cultural reality all of its own. Suspend the anthropological imagination for the time being, and while engaged in relating to others, let go of one's grip upon specious anthropological authority to admit, "I really don't know what it is really about."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What we choose to remove or put into our bag of collective wisdom creates the existential reality becoming an anthropologist--conditioned by what we have had, or haven't, in the bag before. In general there is a tendency to select on the basis of what was there before, of prior experience, of previous understandings--our selectivity to be conditioned by prior selections and our existential histories, or remembrances of these selections, forms the basis for our pre-understandings in guiding our further choices. This creates our existential horizon for being and becoming an anthropologist. There is an accumulative growth of the bag to capacity, gradually over the years--but there is also gradually diminishing degrees of freedom as our choice become played out and opportunity costs accumulate, while we leave behind a trail of mistakes. Whatever existential choices we make, there is a point of no return and a point of departure and each choice brings in a world of unintended and unanticipated consequences which in turn will precondition our future choices.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">So haute culture, whether anthropological or otherwise, is spurious, hypocritical, when it happens outside the broader streams of history, appropriated as symbolic false consciousness by bourgeoisie people. They are the corrupt citizens of a modern middle class of a global market political economy. Race, nationality, counts for little--money makes everything, as a colleague who went out the back door of anthropologia with me later confided to me.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are left with the problem of identifying what remains genuine about anthropological culture, what is central and most valuable about it, distinguishing it from what has been rendered spurious by the futile escape from the march of history. The core of anthropology which renders it worthwhile is not its critical lens, not its skepticism of the taken for granted everyday realities of everyone--it is its marginalism and its reinforced marginality, its possibility for combining opposites, contradictions, its unparadigmatic paradigm, its paradigm of remaining unparadigmatic.. it is its possibility for creating alternative human realities, rather than the one we are not inscribing for history. It is the anthropological imagination--its genuine human power. When this finally dies, so will anthropology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is to learn that anthropology is not a substitute for human reality, merely one of many means for relating to that reality and not necessarily the best way either. It is relearning how to be unanthropologically open minded and how to unlearn being anthropologically closed minded. There exist many other dimensionalities for comprehending human reality. In the bottom line, anthropology remains but a single subset of pieces of a much grander jigsaw puzzle. When the authority of anthropology becomes tempered by the human experience of history, by the realization of its limitations of power, it can then be rendered more efficacious in the service of humanity. But anthropology must learn to stand on its own--not to need to 'prove' itself so it can tap into the political economic mainline. Then it will no longer be the marionette of authoritarian power structures--the academic pawn of power, the priesthood of a socialized, encapsulated Academia.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">III</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">FATHER KNOWS BEST</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">On academic authoritarianism: the tradition carries on</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Lets hear it," said Humpty Dumpty. "I can explain all the poems that ever was invented--and a good many that haven't been invented just yet." This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:--</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">All minsy were the borogroves,</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">And the mome raths outgrabe."</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"That's enough to begin with," Humpty Dumpty interrupted: "there are plenty of hard words here." "<u>Brillig</u> means four o'clock in the afternoon--the time when you begin <u>broiling </u>things for dinner." "That'll do very well," said Alice: "and <u>slithy</u> means lithe and slimy." "Lithe is the same as active. You see its like a portmanteau--there are two meanings packed up into one word."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"I don't know what you mean by glory!" Alice said.</p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously, "Of course, you don't--till I tell you. I meant there's a nice knockdown argument for you!"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"But glory doesn't mean a knockdown argument!" Alice objected.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"When <u>I</u> se a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The question is," said Alice, "Whether you <u>can</u> make words so many different things."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "Which is to be master--that's all."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Alice was much too puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again, "they've have a temper, some of them--particularly verbs: they're the proudest--adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs--however I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </blockquote> </blockquote> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The power of problem in Anthropologia must be faced and understood, for it influences the way anthropology relates to history--who gets accepted, what and where one studies, why one studies, who makes the grades, who gets the job, etc. Not all power is in and of itself necessarily perverse, although it mostly seems to be. Not all positions of authority are necessarily filled by authoritarian power structures, though when encapsulated by a greater power this usually happens. And this problem of power has a very American character, for it usually takes the form of a Father figure who in his paternalism knows what is best--he is the bottom line of the ideal, well managed, successful American family. Father has his routine, his comfortable armchair, his place at the head of the dinner table, he drives the family to church on Sundays and says grace at the supper, or else appoints someone else to do so. He, if democratically spirited may want to hold elections and be the director of the vote, or else the decisions are too trivial to be bothered with. But he is the bottom line and no one disturbs his well managed ship. He makes all the important decisions, and likes to watch the games with the boys on the weekends. If he is the living fulfillment of the American Success Symbol, like all the folk myths, then his wife, the mother of his children, becomes the embodiment of the American sex symbol, the Domestic Goddess. Like all stereotypes of humankind, wherever there is always lurking in the background a complementary counterpart of the opposite sex. In the age of modern American affluence she has made a name for herself--after bearing his children she honorably goes off and gets a career and shares in more of the decisions to be made. Scratch a King Tut and you will find a Lady MacBeth, look behind Mr. Machismo and there is the Lady Machismo, where there is one Oriental Dragon, there is a eastern Phoenix or flower not far away. And like most myths there is an inherent ambiguity of sacredness and profaneness--the figure either stands upon a moral pedestal or else as fallen from grace, into disgrace. Behind the Domestic Goddess is the office secretary, the myth of the Femme Fatale, the Bitch in Britches of the office, the Dragon Lady of the office. Behind the Man of the House, the irresponsible drifter, behind the TV Jock Star is the Fag Rock Star, behind the Sports Hero is the Nerd Pansy, the whipping boy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The question is not whether we live in a male dominated society. It is more of a question of exactly how it is male dominated and exactly how his historical fact results in a perversity of power. It is as one preeminent Father Figure of the department tried to patiently explain to me that the principal problem of becoming a professional anthropologist was to learn how to be more professional. Because I did not define the terms of friendship in any precise way in the survey, he did not bother defining exactly his terms of what professionalism really meant--though he left me with a long lasting impression. I think the problem is that he did not understand that we apparently do not share the same models of what being professional is all about. My model is more subtle and sophisticated, more so than the apparently subtle and sophisticated, and so more difficult to find and to understand. It is not concerned with badges, medals, stripes, ties or ribbons hanging about one's chest, or even how these hang from the shoulders. Rather it is more concerned with the person, the human being beneath the garish and polish and hence looks for an absence rather than the presence of such externalized markers. My concern is more whether the person keeps his/her appointment on time, whether or not he/she offhandedly behaves like a pompous fool, is willing to have their authority questioned and with what that person really sees before his/her eyes, another human being or just a mere child. It is a question of who counts for what, and who's doing the counting. So far I have been mostly disappointed with Authority Figures, as their human personalities, well hidden by the guise of authority have not lived up to their titles and reputations, but then of course I have rarely lived up to the standards I have set for myself as well.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">My father was never around, and my mother was a real working woman, and so I never managed to embody that American Character or to internalize that authority complex. Unfortunately, I had it, under psycho-socio conditions of extreme deindividuation, almost completely externalized--so that now I have a kind of socio-pathic distrust of all authority figures, a deep seated paranoia about bureaucratic personalities, 'Systems' and 'Processes'--and it seems that my paranoia is not necessarily ill founded. It is not necessarily unhealthy to be paranoid in a paranoid System.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It really strikes me how military like this Academic system really run. Most people don’t seem to realize it because most people do not really know what the military is like. Offhand, the best examples, though exaggerated, that I can think of, are MASH and Catch 22, though where these are comical in a farcical sense, and satirical sense, the reality is comical in a tragic sense. People not only accept the traditional order of things, and fail to question authority--but they actually emulate this unquestioned authority. And when they do protest and question authority, it seems to be for all the wrong reasons--the issues that should turn on a dime don’t, while molehills are made into mountains. Students grub for grades they don't earn, very aggressively, or take plight mid-semester with their computerized grade options. Attendance rates tend to only 50% and students make a big deal about getting a B grade. Meanwhile they don't stop to consider they may really be getting short changed in their educational dollar because of a professional's or a graduate assistance's poor lecture style--the tradition carries on. Many students are here not because they really want to be, but because their suburban bourgeoisie parents want them to be--they don't know really what they want. And professors treat them like children, call them 'kids', 'people', the 'children'. Not only does content and poor lecture style go unquestioned in the classroom, but students would rather run riot over alcohol privileges than protest to protest the loss of their right to choose what gets injected into their bodies and the threat of structural coercion which removed this right to respond like responsible citizens. The appeal was made to fear--if you don't, you won't get dessert--than to responsibility and freedom to decide--we have a disease control problem, we would like your assistance in verifying your shot records…etc. It is that the appeal was not made to individual integrity--the freedom to choose, to act responsibly was not granted at all. There is a built in structural prejudice, people do not have the responsibility to decide what is best for them, it must be decided by the 'system'. People are not adult human beings, they are the children of the 'system'--mere marionettes and sycophants of power. This is only a symptom of the moral disease of the 1980's--the Reagan mentality--in which the right and freedom of abortion is still a major issue. What is involved is a kind of distortion of reality, and a kind of corruption of human values. Academia is no longer an institution of higher learning, but merely a marketplace where immature students get to shop around to get the best deal for their parent's educational investments. Its sort of like buying a new car or a new home. And Marriott-Johnson is allowed to make a killing on campus--VIP's would rather have a Chenango Room to wine and dine themselves and their guests during the day while there're at school, then have more space for working in. just imagine that if everyone consistently boycotted the place, brown bagging it, then Marriott-Johnson Inc. would not be making a profit from it. Just imagine.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One thing I really learned to despise about being in the military, besides the games of petty power, the head-trips of petty egos, besides the dehumanization of mindless men marching to a single beat, were Officers. By the time I was through I really hated Officers, young and old, full birds or butter bars, and all the hypocrisy that they stood for. I do not have to explain it. I only mention it because it notice an unusually high correlation between how many people within the department actually were or had come from families whose parents were officers. I can name five or six offhand, and there are probably more. There are also a few whose parents come from the halls of Academia themselves, or who were managerial level as engineers, businessmen, etc. There are only a few people in the department who come from a lower class background. We all know who we are. The point is that life expectations and motivations and interests have been categorically conditioned because of these backgrounds, or inspite of them. But they do make a <u>difference. </u>What many take for granted as 'given'--deserved--others may see as an unusual privilege. But the real point is that there is implicit in the kind of value and behavioral models of this kind of staff managerial background--a kind of respect for authority that borders on egotistical pride, and ethnocentric hubris, a preoccupied class consciousness, which though downplayed or denied, serve as a kind of reference set of standards against which all behaviors are judged and evaluated. This is a kind of love for routine operational efficiency, for making and meeting deadlines, a respect for and reinforcement of a kind of command presence, a kind of taking charge and becoming a director of the performance. Officiality, and offices, are highly valued prizes for one's performance. When I first got to this campus I was standing in line to complete my enrollment form, and a very official looking anthropology graduate student came up and barked out an order to disseminate some information in line, to police the line, to keep it straight. I just looked at this person and smiled. Now that we have gotten to know one another there is more respect mutually. Another professional person told me when I first came that I would have to prove myself by my performance to see if I were worthy. Now that I have seemed to proven myself I think back on what a pity it was that people can't learn to draw their horns back rather than project them forward when meeting new faces and encountering new situations. What are the implications of all this for field research? Little horned R2D2's running around Africa collecting important details and nosing into other peoples' business. I presented my thesis to be read by another professional 'colleague' who had the nerve to ask whether or not it was a real thesis--whether I really 'earned' my degree or not. I think the person must have been expecting a book report or at best a term paper. Fortunately and unfortunately though, the signatures are very real, though really only copied, as so is my degree 'really' a degree, though it is also only a worthless scrap of paper. This kind of behaviouristic mentality of people who take pride in routine operational efficiency and middle level management all leaves something to be desired on the creative and imaginative side of life. Behind that dour seriousness and those shallow smiles lurks really frustrated little children who never really learned how to express themselves well emotionally. And here we have the makings, the rudiments for Academic Authoritarianism. Unfortunately, I collect and save all little straws that have been spitefully cast at me, though I hide it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If what we are really dealing with is a kind of class consciousness, which when set into the framework of broader historical realities, amounts to a kind of false consciousness, a kind of dissonance of snobbery, a kind of pseudo hypocrisy, one which tends to cut across cultural and political economy, people who tend to seek their own level in whichever cultural milieu they may find themselves in, then we must see how this kind of class consciousness plays itself out within the framework of a Department as it is a kind of marketplace. We must see how achievement motivation become class tied and how authoritarian character and values are linked to positions of authority and access to important resources, to preoccupation with particular forms and functions of power and authority and authority positions and positioning. Achievement motivation whether academic or otherwise, is conditioned by and realized through social class. Class created market conditions, critical moments, through which power can be realized. Authoritarianism is also conditioned by class consciousness--positions of authority are realized via class channels. Upward social mobility or high achievement motivation which goes rewarded, leads to the realization of class tied status. It is erroneous I believe to see authoritarianism as simply a repression of personality--that the so called egalitarian personality so resembles the profile of the middle class Jewish college professor. This is a fallacy that fails to authoritarianism and its many manifestations, as being essentially a form of class consciousness conditioned primarily by the exigencies of class status. The Jewish American Middle Class College Professor can call himself/herself egalitarian simply because he/she can afford to--it is a privilege of their class. On the other hand the lower working class WASP male can call himself a bigot because he knows he probably isn't really going anywhere very fast, because of his class status. I have met Chinese Vikings, Mexican Macho Men, Tokyo Tyrants, Black Brothers and Jewish and Moslem Defenders of the Faith who are every bit as bigoted as any WASP. F-scales are like IQ scores or GRE percentages--they really only measure the achievement of class consciousness against an implicit set of ideal standards. They are the reification, the hypostatization, of the Mythology of the American Middle Class--indices of the achievement of the Absolute American Dream. On the other hand, I have met more than a few closed minded middle class Jewish College Professors who preach their egalitarian false consciousness. When crossing cultural boundaries and national borders, people seek out and find their own lever, their own kind--whether it is in a university setting or in a slum. And when people climb the academic ladder of success, they change their class tied status and class consciousness, no matter what their background or where they came from. This isn’t bureaucratic, post-colonial co-option or encapsulation, it is authoritarianism in the making. Power increases with achievement, ego grows with authority. It is not what people say in this regard, as words create the possibility for deception, for false consciousness, for ideology. People will most likely tell you what they think you want to hear and what they think they want you to know. It is what people do, and even more important, fail to do, in human interaction and human interrelationship, which makes for the decisive moment, the criticality of class consciousness. Whether they have the time of day, or are willing to share themselves or assets, or insist on their privileged status. These actions, the factuality of History, are what makes the critical difference. It is not so much who will talk to whom, though frequencies of transaction, quality and nature are important. It is a matter of who does business with whom, who confides in whom, who eats with whom, who sleeps with whom. It is a matter of relative symmetry or asymmetry of reciprocity of inter-human relationships--who talks to, rather than at or through whom, who relates with, rather than for whom, who borrows what, who visits who, etc. It is a matter of an hour of senior professor's time being worth more, qualitatively and quantitatively than a junior's professor. A graduate student may be worth US$16-00 an hour, while a TA may be worth only US$11-00 an hour. And if no one has taken the time to figure out who is who in the department, there is a very real socio-economic reasons some people's words carry more weight, have more import, carry more status, than others. Prestige and privilege are reinforced by class ranking. There is a whole rank hierarchy of who is worth what--a young Malaysian female factory worker for General Electric is worth .25c an hour of handwork, a trishaw puller even less, while an American doctor may be worth 50dollars an hour. A Van Gogh painting one day old was not worth the canvas and pigments it was made from, now, 100years later, the same painting may be worth millions. This is achievement motivation. A Van Gogh is a Van Gogh is a Van Gogh. This makes the important <u>difference</u>. The bottom line question is how can one human being's hour of lifetime be intrinsically less valuable or less important than another human being, even though intrinsically there are vast differences in the marketplace of global class. Where American citizens are virtually untouchable and sacred in their individuality, a citizen of Vietnam was worthless cannon fodder.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The external world structures and conditions the internal world, but in the existential bottom line, does not decisively determine it. There is I believe, a direct positive correlation this fact of human history, academic authoritarianism and achievement motivation and the willingness or emphasis of stress in seeing the world primarily<font SIZE="3"> </font>etically, as externality of material reality, as exogenous causality, which fits within a positivistic paradigm of science, and a willingness and emphasis to view the world internally, emically and the result of endogenous, primarily existential, choices and decisions tends towards an humanistic orientation. The external structuration of class relations conditions and fosters and reinforces internal structuration of values, priorities, interests, world views, pre-occupations with authority, the drive to achieve, etc. differences in class will almost inevitably undermine human relationships--determining the overall directionality of the flow of events, the asymmetry of reciprocity. No matter how downplayed, the fact of class difference will undermine or work to erode human interrelationships. On the other hand, those who use class difference to reinforce their self esteem, to inflate their egos, often work in a short sighted way. The people they shit upon one day, will be there to shit back upon them next. It conditions internality of feeling of being, but not does not decisively determine it. However poor and anonymous, Van Gogh was still Van Gogh, inspite of class, perhaps because of class. Class difference is the tidal undercurrents, the substratum of social relations. It is the accumulative 'structure of the long run' which eventually makes a difference by not making an immediate difference. Human internality, the subjectivity of ego identity, is the 'structure of the short run' which are like tide-pools or small eddies, in a large historical stream of humankind. Class is always a synchronic structure without real historical consciousness--it appropriates the diachronicity of history by the institutional preservation of social relations which are hierarchically organized into authoritarian power structures. False consciousness or ideology, is the vehicle of class which carries it, perpetuates it, through time. Ideology, with its supporting mythologies and traditions, is the time machine of class consciousness. Ego identity, status symbols, are the tip of the iceberg of class frozen in the streams of time. To see better the authoritarian structure of class consciousness, and how this influence human interrelationships one must look beneath the surface to explore the making of class itself. There is no such thing as pure economy which is not polluted by the perversity of power--there is no such historical thing of human economy which is not by structure, also a political economy. A pure human economy would be on in a social structure without the important <u>difference</u>--it would be the ideal social utopia but not in the socialist dream of realized social equality, of pure socialist, classless economy, but it would be in a sense a kind of political socialism based upon a relative equality of social status. Communist nations work upon economic socialism but ignore political socialism. It becomes important therefore to see how power structures are functionally motivated by authoritarian values and achievement motivations, and how these articulate with the ideology of class consciousness and the differences of class structures. Though they may be strongly correlated, in the structures of the long run, one does not automatically cause or create the other, and there are many notable exceptions of socio economic class advantages without equivalent power, and of power structures without the socio economic class advantages.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Theoretically, we are concerned with the notion of positional consistency of status honor or prestige/privilege as it is class tied. Positional consistency results in class stratification, the formation of crystallization of authoritarian power structures and the rise of a hierarchy of economic networks. People occupy simultaneously several relative positions within several overlapping power hierarchies--economic, political, social, and religious. Inter-positional identity within multiple hierarchies begets characteristically organic forms of solidarity, a kind of compartmentalization of values, a kind of encapsulation of power and status, a kind of situational 'modularization' of one's material life and organization. It begets inter-human social relationships which tend to be 'multiplex' and complicated--identity is defined by one's specialized function in the service of the marketplace--the shoe saleswoman may be black, brown red, yellow white or even green, as long as she remains a good shoe saleswoman. Living takes on a fragmented quality of moving from situation to situation, event to event, of code switching very adeptly and swiftly, as one ranges from day to day over a whole plethora of only seemingly unrelated activities. The basis for the integration of these hodgepodge activities in the personal ego identity of the individual actor--his functional membership role status. It comes together in the person, rather than outside of the person. There is an increased sense of alienation, fragmentation, of inconsistency, of disintegration of everyday routines and habits. There is not any single way or style of life which is not highly individuated or personalized. There is a contrast in the multiplicity of routine functions performed by the high status doctor manager and the monotonous function of the factory worker, one is machine like, the other computer like.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Status inconsistency creates a kind of structural 'marginality'--inter-positional ambiguity or discontinuity between different social structures may result in discontent, dissatisfaction, resentment, frustration, as well as 'disintegration' of personality--feelings of liminality, ambivalence, alienation, loneliness, lack of identity, ego insecurity which is derived from a pronounced, exaggerated form of existential uncertainty and everyday inconsistencies--multiplex unexpected thing happen everyday--ethical and professional decisions must be made as things happen, without secure knowledge that one is doing the correct thing. There is than a greater pulling incentive power, a greater pushing attractiveness, to routine operational consistency, to prerogatives of authority, to normalcy of operation--a need to keep the boat steady and a desire to not have the boat get rocked. Uniformity, conformity, status quo, and conservative 'traditional' vales are upheld--'respected', believed in, for the sense, the feeling or order, consistency they bring.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Law exists when there is a probability that an order will be upheld by a specific staff of men who will use physical or physical compulsion with the intention of obtaining conformity with the order, or inflicting sanctions for the infringement of it. The structure of every legal order directly influences the distribution of power, economic, or otherwise, within its respective community. This is true of all legal orders and not only that of the state. In general, we understand by 'power' the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Economically conditioned' power is not, of course, identical with 'power' as such. On the contrary, the emergence of economic power may be the consequence of power existing on other grounds…Nor is power the only basis of social honor. Indeed, social honor, or prestige, may even be the basis of political or economic power, and very frequently has been. Power, as well as honor, may be guaranteed by the legal order, but, at least normally, it is not their primary source. The legal order is rather an additional factor that enhances the chance to hold power or honor; but it cannot always secure them.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The way in which social honor is distributed in a community between typical groups participating in this distribution we may call the 'social order'. The social order and the economic order are not identical. The economic order is for us merely the way in which economic goods and services are distributed and used. The social order is of course conditioned by the economic order to a high degree and in turn reacts upon it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From the point of view of a larger social structure based upon the hierarchy of authority, class difference, status honor, and economic privilege, the department, as a nexus of a larger structural network of Anthropologia, must be seen as bureaucratically encapsulated marketplace organize corporately upon academic principles of education. Members of the department form multiple groupings of multiple hierarchies in the distribution of anthropological power, social power, along the lines of 'class', 'status groupings' and 'parties'. Anthropologia form a kind of culture with its own distinctive way of life. Its members, those who call themselves and one another, and who are referred to by outsiders, are anthropologists of a single community made up of many disparate sub-groupings. There is very little overall consensus or 'community closure' of anthropological status honor because it is interdependently tied into larger social structures within and beyond Academia and the state. There is a negatively reinforced community status honor among the anthropological community--its 'anthropologicalness' is more externally reinforced and defined from without than from within, vis-à-vis significant others. The net effect of this anthropologia remains forever and always 'semi-paradigmatic' as a unified Academic discipline--it does not become completely paradigmatic in the Kuhnian sense and thus evinces little in the way of 'progressive' development. It remains upon a 'pre-paradigmatic' level of apparent disunity and disharmony--internally divisive. Anthropologists and anthropology must be characterized as suffering an identity complex derived from inter-positional status inconsistency within a local larger socio-structural political economic framework. They suffer a chronic marginalism of identity which influences their orientation and directionality towards history. The divisiveness inherent to the anthropological community was an organissmically integrated unity, is exogenously to competing class interests and differences and endogenously to competing status-group and party interests. External class differences are for this analysis the more important--if anthropologia were truly able to affect relative community separation and isolation and independence, within its academic castle, then class differences would lose their power to influence and then endogenous differences would become less exaggerated and community consensus more easily achieved--internal differences would remain, but would become less significant when no longer class tied to a larger political economic framework. Community closure could be achieved easily and anthropology, as a 'puzzle solving' science, would become 'paradigmatic' and progressive. As it is, anthropology remains too tethered to the larger, real world of humanity. Its major strength is also its greatest weakness--its Achilles heel. But it is tethered to humanity and to history, in ways that few anthropologists themselves will readily admit. They want to see anthropology as the unconcerned ivory tower discipline whose only interest is the pursuit of scientific truth. This elitist attitude is more easily feigned on the more biological side of things than on the cultural--the ideological dangers of its false consciousness have been historically demonstrated.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Classes cross cut communities, anthropologia included. Classes represent possible and frequent bases for communal action, but they are not in and of themselves communities. As long as anthropology remained the rich person's prerogative within a colonial framework, the realm of anthropologia could achieve the necessary monopolar and nomocular class consciousness to achieve 'community closure'. It could even be seen to be paternalistically patronizing and condescendingly cavorting with the native and primitive others. Then Mankind was Man, and women were privileged males or underprivileged people. But as soon as anthropology started to be democratized, to open its ranks, to allow the membership of other classes, it could no longer maintain its mythos and ethos of the 'white man's burden'. Inferior types have long begun stalking its corridors of power, privileged 'white men' in white lab coats. When anthropology became forced by history to let humanity into its privileged domain, then it could no longer keep the real world out of its privileged world view--the anthropological mind became electic, 'poly-paradigmatic' and 'poly-ocular' and became internally divided as a community. Now we are in the framework of the 'ethno self' and the 'ethnic other'--the walls of the culture gardens of the colonial mentality have crumbled under the mechanical forces of modern development. Anthropologist now come in all sizes, shapes, colors and the good old days are gone with the wind. But now we face a greater danger and a greater peril to our historical consciousness as ego-centrism and ethnocentrism form horizons of prejudice and pre-understanding which we fail to see over. In the marketplace of modern humankind, ego and ethnic status become class tied to a new order, a 'Brave New World' order in which genuineness of being human is lost to the spuriousness ego identification and ethnic classification. The soul-loss, the human anomie, is overwhelming.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">According to Weber, a 'class' is made up of a grouping of people having in common 'a specific causal component of their life chances' which is represented exclusively by in 'economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income' and is represented under 'the conditions of the commodity or labor market'. Distribution of resources and property among a plurality of people 'meeting competitively in the market for the purpose of exchange' creates specific life changes, which translates into forms of power. This 'mode of distribution' favors property owners who have a monopoly over the distribution of resources, which is protected by the legal order. Opportunities of the critical moment of the marketplace become monopolized, forming the basis of powerful interest groups. Class situation, the generation of similar mass reactions, creates the basis for communal action in the direction of interests. The degree of this linkage is especially determined by 'general cultural conditions, especially those of an intellectual sort'. It is also linked to prior historical developments of class contrasts, and to the degree of 'transparency' of the connections between the causes and the consequences of the class situation'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…for however different life chances may be, this fact in itself, according to all experience, by no means gives birth to 'class action' (communal action by the members of a class). The fact of being conditioned and the results of the class situation must be distinctly recognizable. For only then the contrast of life chances can be felt no as an absolutely given fact to be accepted, but as a resultant from either (1) the given distribution of property, or (2) the structure of the concrete economic power. It is only then that people may react against the class structures and only through acts of an intermittent and irrational protest, but in the form of rational association…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Those who have no property but who offer services are differentiated just as much according to their kinds of services as according to the way in which they make use of these services, or a continuous or discontinuous relation to a recipient. But always this is the generic connotation of the concept of class: that the kind of chance in the <u>market</u> is the decisive moment which presents a common condition for the individual's fate. 'Class situation' only in those cities where a 'credit market', however primitive, with rates of interest increasing according to the extent of dearth and a factual monopolization of credits, is developed by a plutocracy. Therewith 'class struggles' begin.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Those men whose fate is not determined by the chance of using goods or services for themselves on the market, e.g. slaves, are not, however, a 'class' in the technical sense of the term. They are, rather, a 'status group'. (Max Weber; <u>From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology</u>, 1946)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is the relative worth of a human hour of labor, whether it is a beggar in a third world city or a professor of anthropology? This is the labor theory of truth. Graduate anthropology students are busily engaged in trying to accumulate credits, academic credits, and when they frequently fail to meet academic deadlines, incur academic debits which become real bones of psycho-social contention. Anthropologists in an effort to define and assert their professional status, are busy with their 'mode of publication' working under the survival of the fittest law of 'publish or perish'--they are monopolizing property ownership of anthropologically defined power, in the process creating privilege from themselves within the scheme of themselves. The fact and act of publication is the decisive moment of the anthropological marketplace. Graduate students are earning credits so that one day they can gain the privilege of power, property ownership and monopolization--copyrights. They seek to convert their credits into status of class so that they will improve the exchange value of their labor--they will become worth $30-00 an hour instead of just $15-00 an hour.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the political economy of anthropologia and of becoming an anthropologist, authoritarian power structure confer status group identity which is guaranteed regardless of the exchange value of the marketplace. It defines a master/slave status relationship between professors and graduate students and graduate students and undergrads. But this status is linked to honor and privilege and power in only severely limited and circumscribed ways, defined mostly within the routine ritual contexts of classroom, course outlines and program structure. Within the department, status honor is 'knit' to class situation. 'Property as such is not always recognized as a status qualification, but in the long run it is, and with extraordinary regularity'. This status honor, conferred by the legal structure of power within the political economy of the anthropological marketplace, is linked to a particular 'style of life' which is 'expected' from all those who wish to belong to the circle. Linked with this expectation are restrictions on 'social' intercourse (that is, intercourse which is not subservient to economic or any other of business's functional purposes). These restrictions may confine normal marriages to within the status circle and may lead to complete endogamous closure. As soon as there is not a mere individual and socially irrelevant imitation of another style of life, but an agreed upon communal action of this closing character, the 'status' development is underway. So much for becoming a 'professional' anthropologist. It is to be expected that Faculty, Graduate Students and Undergraduates have distinctive 'styles of life' and patterns of between group interaction and restrictions on interaction within a legal framework. Graduate students go to bed with and marry other graduate students, so do undergraduates. Faculty marry other faculty, and go to bed with each other. While faculty may condescend to break bread with graduate students, on ritually prescribed occasions, ceremonies, dinners, teas, parties, they do not do so on a regular basis. Few faculty go to bed with and eventually marry students--this is sanctioned behavior.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In its characteristic form, stratification by 'status groups' on the basis of conventional styles of life evolves…above all this differentiation evolves in such a way as to make for strict submission to the fashion that is dominant at a given time in society…Such submissions considered to be an indication of the fact that a given man <u>pretends</u> to qualify as a gentleman. This submission decides, at least <u>prima facie</u> that he will be treated as such. And this recognition becomes just as important for his employment chances in 'swank' establishments, and above all, for social intercourse and marriage with 'esteemed' families…the members of almost inaccessible sects and all sorts of circles setting themselves apart by means of any other characteristics and badges…all these elements usurp 'status' honor. The development of status is essentially a question of stratification resting upon usurpation. Such usurpation is the normal origin of almost all status honor. But the road from this purely conventional situation to legal privilege, positive or negative, is easily traveled as soon as a certain stratification of the social order has in fact been 'lived in' and has achieved stability by virtue of a stable distribution of economic power.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Where the consequences have been realized to their full extent, the status group evolves into a closed 'caste'. Status distinctions are then guaranteed not merely by conventions and laws, but also by <u>rituals</u>. This occurs in such a way that every physical contact with a member of any caste that is considered to be 'lower' by the members of a 'higher' caste is considered as making for a ritualistic impurity and to be a stigma which must be expiated by a religious act…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Only with the negatively privileged status group does the 'sense of dignity' takes a specific deviation. A sense of dignity is the precipitation in individuals of social honor and of conventional demands which a positively privileged status group raises for the deportment of its members. The sense of dignity that characterizes positively privileged status group is naturally related to their 'being' which does not transcend itself, that is, it is to their 'beauty and excellence'…Their kingdom is 'if this world'. They live for the present and by exploiting their great past. The sense of dignity of the negatively privileged strata naturally refers to a future lying beyond the present, whether it is of this life or of another. In other words, it must be nurtured by the belief either that in the beyond 'the last will be the first'…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For all practical purposes, stratification by status goes hand in hand with a monopolization of ideal and material goods or opportunities, in a manner we have come to know as typical. Besides the specific status honor, which always rests upon distance and exclusiveness, we find all sorts of material monopolies…Of course, material monopolies provide the most effective motives for the exclusiveness of a status group; although, in themselves, they are rarely sufficient, almost always they come into play to some extent. Within a status circle, there is the question of intermarriage: the interest of the families in the monopolization of potential bridegrooms is at least of equal importance and its parallel to the interest in the monopolization of daughters. The daughters of the circle must be provided for. With an increased in-closure of the status group, the conventional preferential opportunities for special employment grow into a legal monopoly of special offices for the members. Certain goods become objects for monopolization by status groups. In the typical fashion these include 'entailed estates' and frequently also the possessions of serfs and bondsmen and finally, special trades. This monopolization occurs positively when the status group is exclusively entitled to own and manage them; and negatively when, in order to maintain its specific way of life, the status group must not own and manage them.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The decisive role of a 'style of life' in status 'honor' means that status groups are the specific bearers of all 'conventions'. In whatever way it may manifest, all 'stylization' of life either originates in status groups or is at least conserved by them. Even if the principles of status conventions differ greatly, they reveal certain typical traits, especially among those strata which are most privileged. Quite generally, among privileged status groups, there is a status disqualification that operated against the performance of common physical labor…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The frequent disqualification of the gainfully employed as such is a direct result of the principle of status stratification peculiar to the social order and of course, of this principle's opposition to a distribution of power which is regulated exclusively through the market. These two factors operate along with various individual ones…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As to the general <u>effect</u> of the status order, only one consequence can be stated, but it is a very important one: the hindrance of the free development of the market occurs first for those goods which status groups directly withheld from free exchange by monopolization. This monopolization may be effected either legally or conventionally…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">With some over simplification, one might thus say that 'classes' are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas 'status groups' are stratified according to the principles of their <u>consumption </u>of goods as represented by special 'styles of life'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whereas the genuine place of 'classes' is within the economic order, the place of 'status groups' is within the social order, that it, within the sphere of the distribution of 'honor'. From within these spheres, classes and status groups influence one another and they influence the legal order and are in turn influenced by it. But 'parties' live in a house of 'power'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Their action is oriented towards the acquisition of social 'power', that is to say, toward influencing a communal action…the communal actions of 'parties' always means a societalization. For party actions are always directed toward a goal which is striven for in planned manner. This goal may be a 'cause' (the party may aim at realizing a program for ideal or material purposes), or the goal may be 'personal' (sinecures, power and from these honor for the leader and the followers of the party). Usually the party action aims at all these simultaneously. Parties are, therefore, only possible within communities that are societalized, that is, which have some rational order and a staff of persons available who are ready to enforce it. For parties aim precisely at influencing this staff, and if possible, to recruit it from party followers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…in most cases they are partly class parties and partly status parties, but sometimes they are neither.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The sociological structure of parties differ in a basic way according to the kind of communal action which they struggle to influence. Parties also differ according to whether or not the community is stratified by status or by classes. Above all else, they vary according to the structure of domination within the community, for their leaders normally deal with the conquest of a community…it is impossible to say anything about the structure of parties without discussing the structural forms of social domination <u>per se</u>. Parties, which are always structures struggling for domination, are very frequently organized in a very strict 'authoritarian' fashion…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Concerning 'classes', 'status groups' and 'parties' it must be said in general that they necessarily presuppose a comprehensive societalization and especially a political framework of communal action, within which they operate…(Max Weber, 1946)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropologia can be seen to constitute historically an open community of the political-economic marketplace of which any single department is but a nodal point--the immediate concrete representation, of a much vaster network of interrelations. It is a community made up of a divisive and cross cutting, overlapping hierarchies of class, status groupings and sub-disciplinary parties. It is structured exogenously from without by bureaucratic encapsulation and socio-economic class relations or 'irrelations' based upon class differences. It is reinforced from within by authoritarian power structures and status groupings whose power is legitimized via such structures. It is interesting, as one informant suggested, to see anthropologia as a complex overlapping networks, of concentric circles radiating from focal points, clustering about 'core' areas. Status grades are the lines, the gateways of power. Inner circles represent higher levels of status power. Outer grades are more open to outside connections, composed of newcomers into the field. The core areas are more stable pinnacles upon a kind of 'epi-genetic landscapes'. Positional consistency is greater in these areas. Each successive inner circle is harder, more difficult to pass into, from outside. Individuals occupying similar positions in the same grade are involved in a kind of structurally ambivalent relationship of cooperation and competition, hierarchy of bureaucracy and the equality of democracy are in continual dialectical opposition upon every level. Members of different pinnacles may share more in common when of the same grade than members of other grades. Structural models defining anthropological power are more stable in the core areas, more conservative and uniform--while upon the periphery more alternative eclecticism of a kind of anthropological cultural continuum will occasion more room for individual expression and creativity. This model can be applied in a paradigmatic sense in order to understand the social structure and historical dialectic of the anthropological paradigm.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is time to reconsider the problem of the perversity of power. Power is perverse when it results in a form of structural or social bias which is inherently unfair. Perversity of power presupposes the ideal of human freedom, in the existential sense, and human equality in the moral sense. Power is by this thesis inherently perverse because it implies hierarchy, inequality and unfreedom, or control. There is no a-priori meat-ethical reason that dictates humankind must be free and equal, and the thesis coming from human nature would contradict this claim--human beings are not by nature equal and free. On the other hand, an argument can be made for the necessity and a-priori givenness for Human Hierarchy, but this argument alone is not enough to serve as the basis for its rational justification. The humankind should be free and equal in a real and relativistic sense, even though cannot be an ideal and absolutistic sense, is one of the principles of historical process. History is the basis of the ethical argument for human freedom and equality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The nature and structure of the perversity of human power resides in the facts of human ignorance, prejudice, discrimination and bias. Hierarchy is the substitute for human frailty and imperfection. It is part of the effort to make control or minimize the unpredictableness of human agency in the unintended consequences of historical change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The preoccupation of the cult of power within the culture of anthropologia represents a kind of spuriousness of culture--one inhibiting paradigmatic progress, creative synergism and the potential historical development of anthropological culture, the realization of human creativity which is always the historical high watermark of all human civilizations. It arises out of an orientation of ego-centrism and a culture of ego-centrism which stresses status grade achievement at all costs. It arises out of a bureaucratization of the academic process of socialization or 'societalization' in which authoritarian power structures take root 'in the name of order and efficiency'. A kind of conformist routine operational character orientation is cultivated, the rational ideal of the 'professional' anthropologist, in which efficiency of routine behavioral praxis, expressed methodologically and methodically, takes precedence over creative realization. Values of 'precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, strict subordination, reduction of friction, and of material and personal costs' are prized and preferred by the bureaucratic mentality. But the principles of the ideal rational bureaucracy break down under the Parkinsonian law at precisely the point at which the name, the method, the routine, the enterprise, the 'corporation' becomes justified in its own terms of efficiency, becomes a rational ideal end in itself rather than just a means to other ends. At this point it no longer human purposes, but humans begin serving inhuman purposes, in the name of 'order'. The computer is no longer a tool for the human operator, but the human operator becomes the servant of the computer program. It is a slight and subtle shift in emphasis but it has dramatic long term consequences for the 'banalization' of the whole social process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Spurious culture no longer serves human needs, but serves the needs of the system. It is like a neurosis or a social pathology in which individuals are too caught up, too 'involved' in enacting its routine performance may vaguely or intuitively sense something is wrong, but will not be able to understand it clearly. There will be selective editing of outside 'threats' who disturb the sense of order, however disturbed. This understanding of the sickness and dis-ease of the system will be beyond the personal horizons and social horizon of pre-understanding, the system and its members exist outside the stream of historical consciousness. Being unable to face it, the actor is control by it, not in control of his own existential fate. They are unable to do anything to affect a change.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The alternative to synergetic growth is born in an environment of frustration and mistrust. Instead of the smooth flow or cathexis of energy between inner and outer worlds, this energy is frustrated resulting in repression or 'intrinsic counter cathexis' (Maslow, 1968). Instead of promoting a feeling of well being, the individual comes to distrust self and to project upon the outer world similar fear and hostility. To survive, such a person erects defensive barriers to understanding, denying those parts of self which he or she fears or does not wish to surface to consciousness and much of his or her behavior is self defeating and a waste of energy, energy which otherwise may have been utilized toward a more rational and charitable ends.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This schism between self and outer existence is well illustrated by the idea of neurosis. As Maslow (1968) views it, neurosis consists of the defenses which the individual erects, distorts or evade experience. Its motive force is fear (<u>angst</u>) causing the individual to impose barriers between self and outer experience, impeding the flow of communication. Repression, projective distortion, rationalization and regression are all forms of counter communication which prevent the adequate translation of experience and human meaning. Neurosis is thus a disease of human interacting; for the barriers imposed upon self are largely derived from others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the context of society, these schisms and barriers are the myriad forms of human alienation and their pathological consequences. With alienation the individual is divided from himself and other people. The sense of active participation and creative involvement with the outer world is stifled, and the component of self and other are polarized. Thus in any society, conditions which impose barriers between sexes, generations, races and socio-economic classes create unsynergetic conditions for human life. For by opposing groups that they not only erect barriers of mutual ignorance but also quicken the potential for antagonism and aggression. The sadomasochism of everyday life is but a microcosm of the institutions of warfare and socio-economic oppression. In both cases, the mutual transactions of love and cooperation have failed; and in response, individuals create rigid boundaries between themselves and others. The institutional expressions of egotism, sexism, racism and the other varied form of ethnocentrism polarize the 'we-they' distinction and create human relations which are both fearful and angry. (Bruce T. Grindal; <u>Essays in Humanistic Anthropology</u>, 1979: 34-36)</p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The character type serving as a stereotypical baseline for the academic authoritarian is not too difficult to discern. It is in all of us and it is a matter of whether we recognize and learn to deal with it. It is part of the egocentric personality and leads to a sophisticated kind of academic ethnocentrism which cannot but bias our human 'sciences'. Besides fitting Weber's description of the ideal rational bureaucrat who is a professionally specialized expert, an authority in an area of expertise, there are several other important dimensions. First there is a basic repression of a part of the self--emotional, unstable, uncertain, intuitive, subjective, weak, empathetic. What is repressed in the self, becomes projected negatively as a stereotype upon 'counter reference' significant others. With repression/projection there occurs a need to dichotomize the universe of phenomenological human reality and there occurs what I have termed symbolic boundary-identification, which is a kind of obsessive-compulsive form of symbolic fixation or dependency which must be maintained and reinforced. This fixation results in the reification of abstract meanings in concrete form, and the rationalization of concrete things and action in abstract form. With this simple fundamental process, I have by experience with interacting with professional anthropologists identified two basic forms of academic authoritarianism. Both forms are linked to a basic sense of existential status grade insecurity. The weaker form is related to feelings of low self esteem and status inconsistency, the failure to 'contextualize' oneself vis-à-vis a significant other. The stronger form is related to the need for achievement that becomes overriding in importance, domineering. Coincidentally and paradoxically, the strong form is liked to what I would refer to as simple form of prejudice while the weaker form is linked to a more sophisticated kind of prejudice. Both result in forms of professional discrimination and bias, an emphasis upon authority, hierarchy and a preoccupation with power. It is interesting in this regard that this form of authoritarianism only occurs and evinces itself in reference to professionally defined spheres of activity--when the anthropological ego is turned on and in tune. Human social relationships may co-occur and be carried on around and inspite of this authoritarianism, but not in reference to it. Professionally an individual may be obstinately difficult to deal with, socially and humanly this individual may be a very nice person. I believe that this indicates that academic authoritarianism is the result of the socialization process entailed in the characteriological deprivations and severities of the process of becoming a professional anthropologist. It is linked to one's status grade and difficulties in its acquisition within the academic milieu, in which a professional image must be maintained, and human weaknesses must be covered over or repressed. It is part of the authoritarian structuration of becoming an 'authority'. In this regard I believe the strong form is linked to high achievement motivation, while the weak form is linked to deficiency motivation--to feelings of ego insecurity, low self esteem, etc. the first form derives from the drive to succeed, the second from the fear of failure. But both forms are interrelated in another important way--they both take stereotypical forms of expression in regard to academic value orientation, world view and methodological approach to anthropology, an approach I will refer to as a kind of positivistic fundamentalism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The first, 'simple strong' form is, I believe, founded upon a simple 'factual' ignorance, which is linked to strong repressions of the self. In this form there is an unquestioned taken for grantedness about the factual efficacy of words and numbers, which is a symbolic expression of the factual efficacy of the rewards of the system. There is a willingness to see only what one wants to see, which results in an extreme form of fanatical intensity of interest. There is an extreme unwillingness to see what one doesn't want to see, a kind of denial of difference which results in a kind of boredom and extreme disinterestedness. A fact is a fact is a fact. A rose is a rose is a rose…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The second, 'weak sophisticated' form is still based upon fundamental but one which is self consciousness which results in a denial of this ignorance and its projection in sophisticated forms upon other people. It results in a sophistry of prejudice. While not unwilling to look at conflictual data which may remind one of ignorance and weakness, to consider alternatives, indeed there can be an almost pre-understandings, ones unquestioned, implicitly presuppositions, about the hypothetical, the theoretical, rather than a matter of being honest about the way one relates to the things one sees. One may be open to facts, but closed to the truth they reveal or conceal. Truth is not inherent in factuality--truth comes from the existential leap of faith, from the will to belief, from the groundless ground of being. Factuality as a form of truth is not given in human reality--one person's truth is another lie, one person's fact is another fiction. There are not absolute measures or standards for determining, or predetermining the 'truth' of how one relates to 'facts'. There are no statistically absolute standards of facticity in human reality. Fact is an historical document taken on honest faith--a recorded instance of a phenomenological experience or event measured by numbers or defined by names. The historicity of factuality is its hermeneutic horizon, its circle of meaning. What is a fact?--a person is a fact, an act is a fact, an event or situation is a fact, an institution is a fact, but what is a 'fact' in and of itself, if not a metaphorical symbol that stands for the 'truth' or the 'will to believe' in something else--but can a fact really stand for itself as 'truth' without becoming an ideological fiction, a denial of its reality. A fact is an ascription of limited importance, of delimited significance, of measured value, of explicit interest, against an implicit framework of such values, orientation of such general interests. A fact becomes important by its analogical identity with something else. It is not the factuality of the time of the clock, and not the clock itself, the distance of a ruler or mile, and not the ruler or mile itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Positivistic fundamentalism is the 'literal mindedness' of the word which is reinforced by the bureaucratic importance attached to the form, the document, the 'proof'. It is the reliance upon the authority of the text, whether a dictionary or a textbook or a 'bible'. It becomes the delimitation of the denotative definition of terms--a way of seeming to think concisely, clearly. It provides something 'clearly self evident' to believe in. there is a lack of being metaphorical, of being 'figurative' of the appreciation of the subtlety and sublimity of language and meaning. This kind of positivistic fundamentalism is characterized by several features--one is concrete thinking and restrictive imagination, or 'constricted improvisation'. People become acts and acts become things and things have definite names and names if grouped by identity can be transformed into numbers and thereby there is a kind of 'logic of concreteness' which is not too (THERE IS A MISSING SENTENCE HERE: PAGE 68)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(PAGE 69 BEGINS THUS):-</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">the sole possessors of the rules of the game or of some equivalent basis for unequivocal judgments. To doubt that they shared some such basis for evaluations would be to admit the existence of incompatible standards of scientific achievement. That submission would inevitably raise the question of whether truth in the sciences can be one. (Kuhn:168)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"A scientific community consists, on this view, of the practitioners of a scientific specialty. To an extent unparalleled in most other fields, they have undergone similar educations and professional initiations; in the process they have absorbed the same technical literature and drawn many of the same lessons from it. Usually the boundaries of that standard literature mark the limits of a scientific subject matter and each community ordinarily has a subject matter of its own. There are schools in the sciences, communities, that is, which approach the same subject from their incompatible viewpoints. But they are far rarer there than in other fields; they are always in competition and their competition is usually quickly ended. As a result, the members of a scientific community see themselves and are seen by others as men uniquely responsible for the pursuit of a set of shared goals, including the training of their successors. Within such group communication is relatively full and professional judgments relatively unanimous. Because the attention of different, scientific communities is on the other hand, focused on different matters, professional communication across lines is sometimes arduous, often results in misunderstandings and may, if pursued, evoke significant and previously unsuspected disagreement." (Kuhn: 177)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though highly regarded, notions of scientific objectivity, empirical commensurability and observer neutrality tend to inform anthropology as science as much as any other science, though these are highly tenable notions in the hard sciences, their clear delineation in anthropological praxis is that much more indeterminant when viewed against a background of human reality and the complexity of the interrelationships and multifaceted meaning structures, the clear, clean concise edges of scientific methodology and instrumentality dull and blur, and objectivity itself becomes rather nondescript.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The question of anthropology as science, is it really is or can be a science in the sense of its praxis, is rarely directly addressed by anthropologists. It is subsumed away as given, it is left as an unfit question for a good scientist, leftovers for the philosophers to fight over. Being conveniently discarded as irrelevant, the question of the substantiality of human reality itself is consequent left unaddressed as well.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But this question is crucial to the scienticity--or scientific authenticity and authority of anthropological praxis. Anthropology continually confronts a vast unknown and the scientific tools it has are assumed to be enough to <u>solve</u> the unknown, as if the unknown were a puzzle awaiting a final, finite in form and function from 'primitive analogic' in which 'correlations denote causation'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I believe that the statement 'man is not a thing' is the central topic of the ethical problem of modern man. Man is not a thing, and if you try to transform him into a thing, you damage him. "Power is the capacity for transforming a man into a thing because you transform a living thing into a corpse." A corpse is a thing. Man cannot be taken apart and put together again; a thing can be. A thing is predictable; Man is not. A thing cannot create, Man can. A thing has no self, Man has. Man has the capacity to say the most peculiar and difficult words in our language, the word 'I'…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I want to mention one more point here which refers to the difference between knowing things and knowing man. I can study a corpse or an organ, and it is a thing…but if I want to know a man, I cannot study him this way…The problem the psychiatrist and the psychoanalyst are concerned with, however, the problem we should all be concerned with--to understand our neighbor and ourselves--is to understand a human being who is not a thing. And the process of this understanding cannot be accomplished by the same method in which knowledge in the natural sciences can be accomplished. The knowledge of man is possible <u>only in the process of relating ourselves to him</u>; …Ultimate knowledge cannot be expressed in thought or words…And you can never exhaust the description of a personality, of a human being, in his full individuality; but you can know him in the act of empathy, in an act of full experience, in an act of love…(Erich Fromm; <u>The Dogma of Christ and Other Essays on Religion, Psychology and Culture</u>)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is also a kind of 'data boundedness' of allowing the 'data base' determine the range and limitations of one's paradigmatic horizons--of failure to see the data as examples of metaphors of meaning, but rather as evidence of factuality of truth. It is a search for truth in the concreteness of number.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Proof by falsification becomes a fundamentalist doctrine of the act of faith, the demonstration of the reality of one's beliefs, to make an apparently falsifiable statement--'the sky is the blue' or 'this is a rose' which opens one's faith in the truth of one's scientific language to 'proof'. There is a need to prove.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This kind of positivistic fundamentalism is characterized by a kind of naïve, sometimes blind, but never innocent faith in the apparent factuality of names and numbers--the strength of correspondence, the power of the connection.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is characterized by a closed minded orientation which is unwilling to face alternative systems of conceptioning, to entertain the free-play of words and meanings, to be critical of one's own presuppositions. If it is skepticism it is the severe skepticism of the fundamentalist true believers who adamantly doubts all differences and deviations from one's own creed. 'Skepticism means Cynicism.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This leads to a 'closed minded' system of conceptioning which forms its own hermeneutic horizon. It is the closed mindedness of the computer mentality, which fails to see the human behind the machine. This is opposed to a relatively open minded system of conceptioning of human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <u><font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Knowledge is power</font></u><font SIZE="3">. That commonplace applies to anthropology as much as to any other field of knowledge. But commonplaces usually cover up for not so common truths…Anthropologists claim to power originated at its roots. It belongs to its essence and is not a matter of accidental misuses…there is no knowledge of the Other which is not also a temporal, historical, a political act.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Perhaps this covers too much ground: <u>political</u> can mean anything from systematic oppression to anarchic mutual recognition…Anthropology's alliance with the forces of oppression is neither a simple or recent one, as some moralizing critics would have it, nor is it unequivocal…Anthropology may…have succeeded in establishing itself as an academic discipline: it failed to come to a rest vis-à-vis a clearly defined other. (Johannes Fabian: 1-2)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…How has anthropology been defining or construing its object--the other? Search for an answer has been guided by a thesis: Anthropology emerged and established itself as an allochronic discourse; it is the science of other men in another Time. If it is a discourse whose referent has been removed from the present of the speaking/writing subject. This 'petrified relation' is a scandal. Anthropology's Other is, ultimately, other people who are out contemporaries. No matter whether its intent is historical (<u>ideographic</u>) or generalizing (<u>nomothetic</u>) anthropology cannot do without anchoring its knowledge through research in specific groups or societies; otherwise it would no longer be anthropology but metaphysical speculation disguised as an empirical science. As relationships between peoples and societies that study and those that are studied, relationships between anthropology and its object are inevitably political; production of knowledge occurs in a public forum of inter-group, interclass and differentiation were the rise of capitalism and its colonialist-imperialist expansion into the very societies which became the target of our inquiries…(143-144)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…In order to claim that primitive societies (or whatever replaces them now as the object of anthropology) are the reality and our conceptualizations the theory, one must keep anthropology standing on its head. If we can show that our theories of their societies are <u>our </u>praxis--the way in which we produce and reproduce knowledge of the Other for our societies--we may (paraphrasing Marx and Hegel) put Anthropology back on its feet. (Johannes Fabian; <u>Time and Other,</u>???? :165)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not so much what anthropologists say or write except where this is what they really mostly do, but in what they do, and in what they might do but don't, that the character of their behavior is to be judged in terms of praxis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Sometimes it is not only enough to 'see oursel's a ither see us' but to try as well to see others as we see ourselves, and to even go beyond to attempt to see ourselves as we see others. 'Seeing' in such terms between self and others is the 'self reflexive' starting point for a critique of Anthropology, but not the end of such a critique.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Seeing' thus begets knowledge of our social realities, and such knowledge begets responsibility, or at least some sense of it, in our inter-relatedness with others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…not to have tried to see through the whole apparatus of mystification--was already criminal…for being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences--from the very beginning." (Albert Speer; <u>Memoires</u>)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"The development of science and of the creative activities in general requires still another kind of freedom. It is this freedom of the spirit which consists in the independence of though from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This inward freedom is the infrequent gift of nature and worthy objective for the individual. Yet the community can do much to further this achievement, too, by not interfering in its development. Thus schools may interfere with the development of inward freedom through authoritarian influences and through imposing on young people an excessive spiritual burden: on the other hand, schools may favor such freedom by encouraging independent thought. Only if outward and inner freedom are constantly and consciously pursued is there a possibility of spiritual development and perfection and thus of improving man's outward and inner life." ("On Freedom", Albert Einstein)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">IV.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS DARKLY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">on learning to see through the department: the view from without</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The Buddha-body is omnipresent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Each sentient being beholds it</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Through aspiration and Karma relation</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As it dwells eternally on this seat of meditation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is the inherent nature of the Buddha-body that it individualizes itself in myriad manifestations in the phenomenal world. It does not stand alone outside particular existences but abides in them, animates them, and makes them move freely. In this form, it is subjected to certain conditions such as time, space and causation. Its essence is infinite, but its manifestations are finite and limited. It is for this reason that the Buddha-body has to wait until conditions are matured before expressing itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Suppose that there is a mirror--the mirror of the Buddha-body. Anything that comes in front of it is reflected without any premeditation on the part of the mirror. Beautiful of ugly, high or low, rich or poor, good or evil, everything is reflected impartially. Wherever and whenever conditions are correct, all particular things will be reflected in the mirror or Mind-Essence of the Buddha-body without hesitation, without reasoning, without demonstration. It is thus that the principle of Karma works. (Nyogen Senzaki and Ruth Strout McCandless; <u>Buddhism and Zen</u>, 1953: 1)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I approached the department ethnographically from two directions--etic and emic. The etic side of my study consisted of a survey among graduate students and a few of the faculty. It was designed on the thesis that people are generally complex entities with complex realities which tens to defy spurious analysis. As personalities, they represent complicated 'bundles of things' and 'interrelations between things'. Everybody is composed of different kinds of things in different of interrelationships. These things are token from their past experiences, their present predicaments and future aspirations. Existential ethnography presupposes that people will see their present situations and their future expectations upon the basis of a complicated personal history. I as a supposed ethnographer and as a fellow student also am a complex bundle of things and interrelationships. When people come into interrelationships with one another, they related to one another on the basis of shared things and interrelations. People with more things in common have more to share with one another. Differences by and large are the basis of an I-it 'irrelation'--the defining of the other in terms of things which are different, of turning the other into an object of differences to be studied. As human beings, everyone has at least something to be shared in common with everyone else, but the more two people have in common the more stable the basis of the inter-human relationship. This forms the basis for inter-subjective understanding between people. There occurs a kind of critical transference or resonance between people when they share things in common. Two people, in a sense, match up personality matrices when they first get to know one another, when they open themselves up and each other to the relationship. The things and interrelationships which resonate do so in a distinctive pattern which defines the idiosyncratic nature of the relationship. Different people will relate on different things and no two sets of people will form the same kind of relationship. This sharing is the basis for inter-human 'bonding' in which people express and find some kind and degree of emotional satisfaction from the relationship. On the basis of the shared set of traits, the relationship itself takes some kind of 'life of its own' which is in an synergistic ?????? beyond either of the two partners, even though the relationship will be interpreted differently and mean something different for each of the partners in terms of their own personality matrix. Sharing in a relationship tends to 'generalize' into differences--there is a kind of 'stimulus diffusion' in which differences, over time, are brought into closer alignment between two people, and vice versa. In relationships which are asymmetrical, this process of 'interchange' becomes more one way in direction, with one person changing or controlling the direction of change in the other. This is the inter-human basis for power, in its externalized form. People, over time, influence others by their actions and reactions in inter-human relationship. Internal power, the basis for 'freedom' is to seek independence in the inter-human relationship from influence by another, or over another.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Genuine inter-subjective relations are the basis for personal and social growth, especially the 'interchange' tends towards symmetrical reciprocity--mutual sharing upon an equal basis. They are based upon shared similarities, of mutual identity, between two people. On the other hand, relationships based upon primarily differences, or in which similarities are rejected or denied, 'withdrawn' tend to be 'spurious' relationships.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Emphasis upon differences between people tends to result in asymmetrical reciprocity and I-it interrelationships in which the other person is made a 'thing' in relationship with the self, an object of learning or understanding, perhaps, but an 'object' nevertheless. This is the kind of relationship in which anthropologists are trained to engage in, in learning about peoples who are very different. In the process of getting to know these differences, similar experiences become shared and 'I-it' irrelation tends to give way to more genuine I-thou relation, especially between key-informant or interpreter who mediates the culture contact situation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In order to understand the intra-psychic function of this process, it is important to look to the interrelationships and things thus interrelated within a personality. Everyone is a unique and different bundle of things and interrelations--the unique make-up of this 'personality matrix' is the basis for the synergistic integrity of human beings--it confers the human sense of being unique in a universal reality. The persons apperceptive, self reflexive understanding of these things and their interrelations is the basis of the person's personal 'ego identity'. Sometimes a person embodies things or relations which seem to be inimically self contradictory, the combination of opposite tendencies which result in intra-psychic conflict. We all have had past experiences which seem somehow contradictory--we all have 'things' which we keep secret, things hidden away in the closet. This conflict between 'intrinsically different' things is the basis of neurosis. There is a struggle of the soul, a monster lurking beneath the conscious surface. We have a top-dog and an underdog. The underdog is the different part of the self that we tend to keep repressed--those things which cause intra-psychic conflict and neurosis because they are conflictual, 'different', for some reason unacceptable to the way we want to become. When a person is engaged in a process of changing ego identity, of discarding undesirable things, and incorporating new things, there is a tendency to repress those conflictual differences in the presentation of the self in interrelation with others. When the relative interrelationships between 'things' within the personality breakdown, perhaps because of conflict , when out understandings, intuitions, conceptions, perceptions, emotions and behaviors no longer function to integrate the things of our personality--experiences, memories, dreams, ideas, feelings, then there is disintegration of the personality or psychosis. Things are there, but they no longer make sense, they do not fit together. This leads to dysfunction in interrelationship with others, as there is an eroded stability as the basis for relationship. The self is disorganized.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the tripartite conception of personal psycho dynamics, there is a continual conflict between the eros and the thanatos of the id and the moral injunctions of the superego. Ego is the result of the successful integration between the drives the id and the controls of the superego--it is the mediation which results in a sense of reality, in an orientation towards reality which resolves this conflict. Ego identity is the sense of human reality which gives coherence and consistency to one's being. Ego identity is born in the interrelation between the personal identity of the self, as the individual inter-integrates the 'things' of his life and with social identity in relationship to other people. One's social identity is the necessary counterpart, the prerequisite feedback, by which ego identity grows and gains a wider and wiser sense of the self. Human maturity is born through social identity. Through interpersonal relationship intra-psychic conflict of contradictory relationships between things of the personality can be resolved on the basis of sharing.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Differences within the self, if repressed, will become projected upon others in inter-human relationships. Projection is actually the recognition of, or imputation of, the 'emphasis' of differences in inter-human relationships, differences in others which are actually repressed, but shared, within the self. Ego defense mechanisms, to protect the sense of ego reality, in the form of prejudicial nationalization and selective perception and cognition, 'ignore-ance' are part of the 'preconscious'--the pre-understanding of the self, to protect one from threatening, contradictory information. This is the basis of cognitive dissonance. Differences recognized within one another, are differences found within the self, or are similar to these differences. These may be experiences of the past which are normally kept under control. It may be evidence which contradicts one's sense of order, which is achieved at the expense of repressing an undesirable part of the self.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In reality, similarities and differences shared between self and other are not exactly identical things, they are analogical, metaphorical and metalogically similar or different. The difference by analogy or similarity is the basis of psychic meaning as it is derived socially through inter-personal interaction. Difference by analogy is important because it is the basis of the 'sympathetic magic' of inter-human relationships. In sharing related things, the ego must be able to empathize the meaning of the other. In this sense of empathy is not achieved or else becomes obfuscated by knowledge about the other, it breaks down into a spurious I-it irrelation focusing upon differences. To look only at things which are different, to emphasize these things, to focus upon them, is by implication to ignore similarities, to disallow the possibility for empathy--it is to assert one's ego identity, the authority of one's ego, in comparison or contrast with another. This can be either negatively done or positive. The other becomes a reference of significance for the self, a symbol of meaning which is 'ego-centric'--oriented about and for the self. The other is used as a basis for maintaining ego integrity. The others become 'nomothetically' framed, 'pigeonholed' within the personality matrix of the self. A negative reference is one in which negative differences, contrasts are emphasized. This is the 'counter reference' other which serves as the negative differences of the self. The 'reference' other is the other seen positively, even though it still remains an ego-centric I-it irrelation of a focusing upon differences. But this is done comparatively--the basis of measure for one's self, of what one wants to be. It is a model of change, to be emulated. But in neither case is the humanness of the other, the similarities of needs, recognized and shared.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This model is based upon dyadic interaction between two people. In a very real sense, all interpersonal interaction is dyadic, even in groups of more than two people. Only in group situations which are centered upon one individual who is the leader, as in a classroom, is there a kind of oblique interaction. But even here, at any one instant, each student is either focused upon the reference other or not. The teacher is a 'thing' to be emulated. If a student contradicts the teacher then this student nay become a 'counter reference' for the other students and be isolated or ostracized from the ranks. at any particular moment the teacher may be focused in attention upon any single student, no matter how briefly in ranging over the class, or else addressing the entire class as if it were a single ear, focusing upon nobody in particular. In this case the class becomes the counter reference other in relation to the subject of discussion. This is the authority of the classroom. A student who contradicts the teacher can destroy this process, demonstrating its spuriousness, disrupting the train of thought of the professor and the attention of the entire class. I have demonstrated this to myself and others many times in many classes. As a rule I like to do it in every class, if possible, to test my hypothesis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In social psychological terms, to be made into a thing in inter-human interrelationships is to be made 'subjectively self aware'--it is suddenly looking into a mirror. Differences within the self are emphasized, repressions become ineffective, conflicts well up. Ego identity is destroyed. A person's social identity is alienated. Existentially the person becomes alone, anonymous. One becomes lost in an uncontrollable sea of subjectivity. Inter-human relationships based upon sharing threaten to induce this subjective self awareness which could become out of control--indeed genuine relationships demand this subjectivity, but demand it with critical difference. As the self and the other are not 'things' but integrities. One's integrity is recognized mutually and one may remain 'objective self aware' of the person in interrelationship with others, while becoming 'subjectively other aware'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Inter-human relationships between self and other are a kind of nonzero sum game, nonzero sum game. The only way two people can get ahead is by both sharing together. If one person dominates at the others expanse, or both are competing against each other, making each other into 'things' then neither can get ahead. Both people have to be willing and open to share similarities with the other. If one person wants to engage in an I-thing relationship, but the other insists upon making it 'I-it' then the relationship is spurious and will be undermined.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Focusing upon differences and ignoring similarities maintains social distance necessary for protecting ego identity, it is necessary for maintaining a reference relationship in which the other is an object and not a person, a symbol of the self and not a symbol that stands for itself. On the other Masks, assertion of authority, of knowledge, enforced anonymity are all social distancing mechanisms employed in defense of ego identity. On the other hand focusing upon similarities and the sympathetic resonances which leads to 'understanding' of the other, leads to an ignorance of the differences and to a tolerance of them. Differences are given time to be worked out or accommodated. Differences remain but they are not important.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is the rationale behind the design of my survey. The human reality of the anthropology department is very complex with over a hundred 'bundles of things and relationships' to be understood. But there is a common thread shared by all of these people, the formation of the 'anthropological ego' within a shared academic setting. I wanted to focus upon things anthropological to discover similarities and differences upon this focal aspect between all the members of the anthropology department. I had certain preconceptions about what these things anthropological, but I soon proved myself wrong. They were too simplistic and superficial. Fortunately I did not want to build this sort of bias into my research design to go out and test any specific hypothesis based upon these preconceptions. But they did form a basis for a set of questions. I kept the questions open ended, because if I hadn't the search itself would have been 'closed minded' and automatically biased. I adopted in a sense an 'inductive approach' rather than one hypothetico-deductive because I did not want my preconceptions to influence and become the basis for biasing the things I would see. I wanted to allow, as much as possible the significant other to define what these things Anthropological were for themselves. The questions themselves were tailored to be logistically efficacious. I wanted to share a little bit with many people and avoid sharing too much with any single person.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The survey can be seen as a kind of general purpose 'bias screen' which was not too detailed in focus to loose sight of broader things. I was not exactly interested in how and individual defined friendship, for instance, rather than if that person needed to define it at all. So I did not seek to elicit ethno-scientifically the definition of 'How would you defined friendship?' or seek to pile sorts or any kind. This kind of work would be more profitable in a follow up survey after the broader outlines and parameters have been defined, but not before this more general determination has been made. This points up a very general and relevant methodological bias which is predominant in this whole 'training program' no student can be expected to know generally in any unprejudiced fashion what the hypothetical parameters are in the fields, until that student has first gone to the field hand inductively, 'openly' experienced it. But within this program this is exactly the reverse of what happens, as the individual is expected to have a hypothesis and a program for testing this hypothesis specifically before the field experience. But there is no possible way that this can be done, without implicit, presumed bias based upon one's untested preconceptions. If we are into proving or falsifying preconceptions only, then there is a very good likelihood that the preconceptions will tend to be proven, regardless of the field reality. But there is really no way of knowing before the phenomenological experience of the field whether preconceptions themselves are valid or not, much less the hypothesis and conclusions which stem from these preconceptions. But this can only happen the second time around, after the initial experience has been evaluated. The sad paradox is that there is rarely a real second chance even if the person gets manages to get back to the field, it may have been too late--things may have changed in critical ways enough to render the original hypothesis no longer falsifiable. Anthropologists are renowned for working a historically, with the externalized other, with the implicit presupposition that things never change. a person comes back from the first field experience 'unprepared', not with conclusions to preconceived hypothesis, but with an hypothesis in search of conclusions. This is just the reverse of the 'preparation; here, where the hypothesis is already mandated, all that needs to happen is to plug find and plug in the necessary data--this is method-fetishism that misconstrued the problem of original bias. Hypothesis come after, if at all, but not before. When I did my first fieldwork, my wise instructor told me to leave the library and books behind, that this might prejudice one's vision, instead to see the field first then hit the books with a lot of unanswered questions in one's mind. I like to think that my inductive approach is more scientifically realistic--avoiding the 'hypothetico-deductive' fallacy. I like to think of my methodology as conclusions ('preconceptions') in search of an hypothesis, answers in search need of questions, data in need of frames, rather than frames in need of datum. I believe this is more scientifically honest.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It was important to ask the same or similar set of questions from everyone. This was not for statistically significance and reliability per se, but simply to create a stereotypical 'baseline'--a model of my preconceptions, from which deviations could be distinguished. It was important to maintain the aegis of always leading back to the next question after we have diverged down different paths, until the questions had exhausted itself. Only two times did I completely lose track and depart from the general question format more or less completely. This 'bias screen' is applied similarly to everyone as a kind of 'reference matrix' against which each person, construed as a 'bundle of things and interrelations' could be compounded and grouped, to find ranges of variability between individuals, in reference to a focal aspect of 'becoming and being an anthropologists'. I was asking for the elusive 'anthropological ego' character type. I had a stereotype in my mind as to what this ego was, but this baseline proved simplistic from the beginning. People became anthropologists for many different reasons, see it in many different ways, and each anthropological ego, though similar in some ways, is uniquely different in many others. The questions were doors to my unknown, windows upon the life of the other. They were not closed doors.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If I were to continue this study, after writing this preliminary ethnography, I would pursue more 'objective hypothesis'--I would construct different methodological devices to render more conclusive, more decisive results. But I could not, nor shouldn’t have thought to do this before now. Now at least I think I have a more realistic idea of what exactly to look for. I would only have been deceiving myself beforehand.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I discovered in the course of the interview that I was sharing a different set of things about myself with each person and as they were sharing things with me. Each interview was a self exploration as much as it was an exercise in getting to know someone else. Past experiences and relations were reawakened in me with different people, and each time I 'grew' a little in my understanding of myself, of anthropology, and of people within the department. Everyone has a raison d'être for becoming and being an anthropologist, and this is both similar and different for everyone.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I was looking for the similarities, I wanted to avoid the differences. Ranges of variability were established via the open ended questions. These ranges theoretically have parameters and boundaries. There are some certain things 'anthropologists' are not supposed to be. Given established ranges, an outline of anthropological reality can be inferred. This 'outline' can be subsequently, more precisely investigated in further research employing more precise methodologies. Exploration must precede hypothesis testing, but exploration should not stop short of hypothesis testing, if anthropology is to become a full fledged paradigmatic science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the course of my survey, another thing became apparent, something I expected but was not certain about. Interviews are threatening, threatening to reveal somethings which the individual keeps repressed. Ego defenses are in full gear in an interview. There is a need to present an ego identity which knows what it is about, which knows why it is and who it is, without doubt or vexation. This is especially so with professors. Graduate students, most of them, are still exploring. This 'idealized' self is a front, an armor, a disguise, a distancing mechanism which keeps me the interviewer at an 'it's' distance. Before the interview many wanted first to know what it was all about. To see a short set of innocuous questions is more comforting, 'safer' and the ego defenses tend to be let down a little--at least in most cases to get a short glimpse of what was on the other side. In fact, only in a few instances, mostly with professors, were the ego defenses seemingly impenetrable. If this is what becoming 'professional' means then I suggest anthropology is mistaken about what its own ego identity. In these few cases there was no exploration, answers were short and direct. Behavior was defensive and distrustful. There was a greater 'need to know' what and why I was doing what I was. But this is not enough basis upon which to conclusively judge--it is only a sketchy suggestion of an outline for an hypothesis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The questions I designed were different for different groupings of people--mostly 'grade' groupings. The question I asked and the way I asked them, were different for professors, graduate and undergraduate students, though I did not do the undergraduate one. I found myself hurriedly making another questionnaire for people who were not part of the department in a marginal sense but were not anthropologists. I did not want to draw the line myself on who or who nor to interview, but I wanted to allow the line to draw itself. This it pretty much did. If I did a follow up survey, I would make up different questions for sub-disciplines, gender and number of years in the department, but this I could not do when I didn't even know who was who.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Logistical considerations are important methodological concerns--vital. It is important to learn to live and work within one's limitations. This has been a consistent shortcoming of my own life, in the exploratory phase of inductive, 'phenomenological' research, it is important to have a research design which is 'general purpose' and 'light'--adaptable and maneuverable and easy to carry, rather than special purpose and heavy--cumbersome and weighty. When one enters the field, one quickly learns the things one can and cannot reasonably do. To put yourself to task to do the impossible because it was part of the original 'protocol' is cutting off the nose to spite the face. It is a masochistic form of 'method-fetishism' but who is the sadist behind the problem? Like carrying too much luggage on a long journey, one is left to cast off many things. It is best to travel light. Let the bureaucracy boys bear the burden of methodological protocol. This is an important aspect of the inflexibility of the 'protocol review' which results in such hypocrisy. One must learn to move with the flow of events and not worry about waiting for 'protocol review' to catch up, it never will. Do only what is reasonably within one's means and let God do the rest.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I had no methodological tricks up my sleeve, I engaged in no methodological wizardry. People probably thought I didn’t know what I was doing, tolerating me like a child. And of course, I must admit I really didn’t know what I was doing, like a child, but though I was feigning innocence , I was not feigning ignorance. I didn’t know what I was about in my spurious, 'trivial' sense of an exclusive concern for detail--I didn’t run around watching everybody and jolting down notes, I didn't even use a tape recorder. But I did know what I was about in an important sense--I have faith in what I am about, like a rock, that no petty authoritarian anthropological ego can shake. Come clean and simple, and genuine people will appreciate it, and you will be able to tell the difference. Be 'chin chai' and the important people will love and adopt you. Be 'serious' and you will run with thieves. This is the difference that makes no difference, this is the indirection of dao, the 'gray way' of anthropological methodology. It is cultivating good Karma relation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"This was the ceremony, and as I said before, the power of it was in the understanding of its meaning: for nothing can live well except in a manner suited to the way the Power of the World lives and moves to do its work."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">--Black Elk Speaks.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of a possible 107 faculty and graduate students within the department, 2 faculty and 5 students were inaccessible. Of 34 faculty solicited, I received 17 responses and 17 no responses, exactly 50%, of these 17 responses, I received 3 negatives and 14 positives. Of these positives, I managed to do 8, or roughly 25%. My apologies to the 6 people who gave me their consent but were left waiting for a reply. Of 73 students, I received 43 responses and 28 no response and two unaccounted. Roughly 59% response. Of these there was only one refusal. Of the remaining 43, I managed to do 30 interviews or about 42% of the total. My apologies to 12 people. My failure to interview more of the faculty were somehow more inaccessible. Several gave me times which conflicted somewhat with my own schedule, though as a rule I tried to accommodate for this. I must admit some people I was less inclined toward interviewing than others--whatever the predispositions, it was more of an effort upon my part to 'force' myself to do these interviews. Also I become burned out. I grew tired of asking the same old questions and bored with the whole affair. My visibility subsided over time, other people became less inclined to find a convenient time. Interviews tended to become abbreviated. Towards the end, more interviews were canceled or post-poned, for one reason or another. Everyone, including myself, seemed less interested. People tend to keep busy schedules and these get busier towards the end of the semester. Of the 50% of the faculty and 41% of the students who did not give me a response at all, I have mixed feelings toward. Many people asked me how many replied. I felt I had to justify why they didn't bother with it. I will most of them the benefit of a doubt, but I have residual doubt that there may have been a few who either 'couldn’t care less' or perhaps thought it was 'wrong' or were 'threatened'. But maybe not. We all know who we are.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Interviews ranged between 16 minutes and 2.5 hours, with the average being about 45 minutes. Most were between 1/2 to 1 hour in length. Of interviews conducted in people's private offices, there was on the average 2 interruptions per interview, with as many as five. There was no interview done in people's office which were not interrupted, with somebody knocking on the door, or poking their head in to see if the person was busy. Interesting, all the interviews conducted in a 'public setting' of the Geology lounge or conference room, were interrupted (10). I suppose people could see what we were doing and so didn't bother us. But then no one came looking for us either.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">GRADUATE STUDENT INTERVIEW</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Fortunately, I managed to do 16 women and 14 men, just about even. I made up two sets of questions, the first being lumped into some kind of reasonable order and the second set of the exact same questions were purposefully randomized. I randomized the men and women into two piles, and randomly assigned each to one or other of the questionnaires. The only noticeable difference was that those who received the nonrandom set of questions seemed to achieve some sense of orientation or direction through the interview, while those who received the randomized questions seemed to be confused at the end of the interview as to what the interview was all about. My apologies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">1. "Do you believe anthropology to be a male dominated field?" 4/14 males said yes ( <font FACE="Symbol">±</font> 28%) while the balance, <font FACE="Symbol">±</font> 72% said no. 13/16 females said yes (<font FACE="Symbol">±</font> 81%) while the balance 19% said no. males tended to give ore unqualified and unequivocal answers, among those answer negatively, but on the whole most answers were well qualified and equivocal--specific reasons were proffered but few people gave an unequivocal yes or no answer. If it were male dominated, it would be on 60/40 or 70/30, or only in some respect but not in others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Five of the 14 males gave an unqualified no. Of those answering negatively, reasons were that even if numbers were uneven, this was not important, "in terms of impact on discipline equally involved." Of those males answering affirmatively, on one did so unqualifiedly or unequivocally. Certain areas are, certain areas aren't. "Definitely yes, not by numbers obviously, certainly there are a large number of women in the profession. I think structurally men still tend to dominate. Chairmanships of departments, key committee boards." "Yes, in a sense, there are a lot of women in it but subordinate. This is a male dominated society, why should anthropology be different?" "I think in terms of both numbers and seniority, more men holding senior faculty positions."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">No women gave an unqualified or unequivocal response. They gave longer and I think better answers. Those answering no, 3 did so on the basis of perceived historical changes, it is less so than it used to be, but it certainly used to be. They mention equal numbers and fewer 'boys'. Men going into it less "because it doesn't pay." "Men want higher salaries so quit anthropology." One mentions consciously taking classes with women professors, "always seem to read articles by women." Of those who say yes, they mention numbers, publications, "feeling of it, perception of it", few tenured female professors, more tenured male professors, fewer women in charge, embeddedness in theory, macho attitudes related to sub-disciplines, "power structure definitely male dominated", who's head of funding committee, statistically and theoretically, types of things studied, who publishes, meetings, administratively, very strong male bias, models geared toward a male centered research. "Yes, most of the professors as well as most of scholars, most of influential males as well."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For me, the question is not so much whether anthropology is male dominated or not. This point can be argued but not proven one way or the other. It is a question of what people want to see, of how responses to this question may be reflective of male or female ego identity. People engage in interpreting the essentially unknown reality in a way which will fit this ego identity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">My answer to the question that anthropology is of course male dominated in every respect, statistically, structurally, influentially, historically, theoretically and methodologically, but not unqualifiedly or unequivocally. Women have had strong role models in the fields but not enough. It is not a question so much of direct domination per se, as it is a matter of predomination--men have come first. Pre-understandings have in a sense been implicitly make biased, perhaps in ways we do not readily comprehend. This general situation can be expected to change too much until we begin to change our ego consciousness of human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Everyone, almost, who remarked upon this question mentioned that they thought it was changing for the better, that things were getting better than before. Everyone seems to see positive change. "Certainly hope it will become more even, certainly intend to participate in it to make it more even."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">2. "Are you married, do you have children?" Seven of the 14 male students are married, or 50%. Six of 16 female students are married, or <font FACE="Symbol">±</font> 37%. Among seven married men, there are 12 children, or 1.7 child per father. There are 8 children among 6 married women, or 1.333 child per mother. Perhaps the men who have children are a little older, but I hesitated to ask anyone their age. On the face of it though, men average more children but not necessarily more child care responsibilities. What are the implications of older adults going back to school, and of younger adults postponing marriage and family?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">3. "Do you work, if so where, and how many hours a week?" Seven of the 14 (50%) of the males reported working. Twelve of 16 (75%) of the females reported working. Places where men work included teaching, PAF, Museum Graduate and Teaching Assistants and 'self employed'. Women worked in GA, TA, RA, PAF, Part Time Teaching and Library Assistantships. Women report working <font FACE="Symbol">±</font> 250 or more hours per week combined, with 50% reporting less than 20 hours and 59% reporting more than 20 hours per week. Men report about 150 hours total, with 4 of 7 working more than 20 hours a week, and 3 of seven less. I think that women actually work more hours than this figure, or at least report more hours a week averaged. Men and women work the same kind of jobs, only more women are working. They are averaging, those who work, about the same number of hours per person.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">4. "How many hours a week do you average a week on campus?" Men report spending over 840 hours a week on campus, women report over 720 hours a week. One woman lives on campus. If she were dropped from the list, then women would be spending below 600 hors a week on campus. The men report spending more than 50 hours a week on campus, while only 3 women (excluding the live-in) report more than 50 hours. 12 of 15 women report spending between 20 to 50 hours a week on campus, while only 5 of 14 men report between these figures. 2 men and 2 women report spending below 20 hours a week on campus. More men tend to spend the more total number of hours on campus, and these tend to be unemployed. Of the women's hours of time on campus, more of these are spent employed. Women are spending fewer hours a week on campus and working more hours, and more hours on campus are spent employed than men. These figures could be broken down more precisely.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">5. "Where do you come from?" Eight men came from the Northeast. Three men are foreign. Three came from the central states, one from the west coast. All except one report a suburban background. Seven women report coming from the northeast. For are foreigners. 3 from the southern states, 3 from the central states, and one from the west coast. One reports coming from the city, 2 from rural areas and 3 from 'small towns' or cities. One male reports coming from the city, 2 from rural areas and 3 from 'small towns' or cities. One make reports coming from a 'small city'. 12 of 14 makes report a suburban background (85%), 10 of 16 females report a suburban background (62%).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">6."What kind of work do your parents do?" Fathers of males include 3 engineers, banker, high school teachers, social workers, university professors, machinist, electrician, 2 businessmen. Four are deceased. Their mothers include 7 housewives, I school teacher, 2 secretaries, one nurse, bank teller, book-keeper, insurance manager, one person is deceased. Of these parents 4 fathers are retired and 3 mothers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Fathers of female students include 3 engineers, I doctor, l lawyer, 3 managerial supervisors, 1 minister, 1 professor, 1 farmer, 1 biochemist, 1 businessman. Three are deceased. Mothers are 7 housewives, 3 school teachers, 1 professional photographer, 1 librarian, 1 farmer, 1 family therapist, 1 computer research analyst. None are deceased. Of these, 3 fathers are retired and 2 mothers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of the males, six come from upper middle class, 8 come from middle class or below. Of the females, 12 came from upper middle class families, 4 come from middle class or below. Of all families whose mothers are housewives, only two came from the middle class or below. All of the females who report their mothers are housewives come from the upper middle class. 75% of the females report coming from the upper middle class, 42% of the males.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">7. "How long have you been in the anthropology program here?" Nine males are in the first year. Six females are in their first year. One male and 3 females are in their second year. One male and 3 females are in their third year. None are in their fourth year. One male is in his fifth year. One male and 2 females are in their sixth year. One male and one female are over their sixth year.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">8. "What do you think of SUNY-Binghamton compared to other schools you were in?" Of 14 male students, 9 clearly expressed positive regard for the school compared to others. One did not respond, 3 were ambiguous (all foreign students) and one does not like it. Those who like it, believe it is academically highly rated, superior to many other schools. "Academically, it is okay." The department, the university and the students are competitive. In general people rated it over schools they were previously in. the environment is seen as lacking. "It lacks a sense of community." "Facilities, library, pub disappointing." "Town is a dump."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Eight of the 16 female students expressed satisfaction with the school, but only 5 were relatively unambiguous about it. One student was uncertain--"This is the only one I've done graduate work in--hard to compare." Seven expressed relatively unambiguous dissatisfaction with the school. Compliments included "It's smaller, more digestible." "Good school for serious students." "Intellectually has a lot to offer." "Teaching is much better here." "I like the atmosphere here, much more open--not competitive, students are much harder workers, more adult, more grown up." "More diverse." "More women in positions of authority", "definitely more women students>" "More minorities definitely by far." "Much less covert/overt politics, amount of interdisciplinary cooperation between faculty, less at stake in personal identity."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Complaints included--"An administrative mess, bureaucracy amazing, paperwork for this, that, lack of communication with students, here not clearly stated, get the run around, no one seems to know." Personal experience in a negative way--"U. G. school experience much better, I had mentors there." "Relatively apathetic, times have changed from the Vietnam era." "Separation of university and town population." "Need more involvement of grads. in professor research--its like its behind closed doors, never hear about it." "I don’t think this curriculum is as food as some I've encountered. Courses not as comprehensive as they could be. Half way between best and worst, better than some, worse then others." "People just don’t facilitate." "Very little nurturing of students, really my main gripe." "Students an economic necessity at Chicago, not much better here--benign neglect." "I think that the majority of professors are not supportive--students are left to muddle through their own." "Hard, I'm over critical of it, 80% of the undergraduate students are from the city, rude, sloppy pigs, materialistic, don’t share a lot of things." "Definitely more bureaucracy, also inefficient bureaucracy." "A pretty crummy school--ugliest, dirtiest, not well kept. I don’t deal with administration, I hate political machines."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Some of these issues are what stimulated me to do this ethnography in the first place. It seems there are several things working at once in the formation of a student's attitude towards this department and school in comparison with a wider arena. Prior experience, present involvement (or uninvolvement), expectations and standards, all shape a student's attitudes. In general it seems women are less satisfied than men. The women who have been in the shortest time have most positive attitudes. Women are more critical and judgmental than the men. It seems that some attitudes, based upon relatively limited experience, are not quite realistic--perhaps because these people are not really familiar with alternatives. There seems to be a great deal of ambivalence in attitude. Few people liked or hated the school unequivocally or unqualifiedly. Sometimes statements are made by different individuals are clearly contradictory of one another--too much research versus not enough research. The bottom line seems to be that whether or not this is a better or more worse school is pretty much a matter of opinion which is shaped by the student's attitude and ego identity vis-à-vis this department. Again people see what they want to see.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">About the library, computers, phones, student organizations. Information is not available. American academics are interested in statistics, in records for ranking this department. A very strange place to work. The vision of anthropologia through a foreign student's eyes is very clear in presenting the dilemma of the horizon of ego identity in trying to understand an alternative cultural reality. Different students have different needs and therefore see things differently, in ways that will be congruent with their ego reality, even if this is not necessarily congruent with the socio-cultural structure of their environment. This phenomenon occurs with all of us as in clearly evident with foreign students, but it is especially relevant when we go to the field or when we remain in our own.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In general, all of us need to learn to be more careful when we begin pointing out fingers at other people, not to make out preconceptions their misunderstandings.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">9. "What is the focus of your current research interests, and how did you come to have these particular interests?" Unfortunately I cannot risk discussion of individual's particular research interests without revealing their personal identity. What is most interesting to me about the nature of the response were with how an individual's current research interests were due to a number of different interrelated factors, things that would sometimes be clearly traced back to early childhood. Not always though, was there such long term continuity of interest. Another influential factor, was the presence at a critical period of such individual's ego involvement of a highly significant 'reference other'--a 'mentor' or several 'mentors' who influenced one importantly in present directions. Other factors which are apparent are the situational factors of family and home life, social conditions, opportunity 'structures' which may be available. Overall these kinds of factors combine to 'push' a student in a quite specific direction of interest. Past experiences, skills, knowledge, all contribute to the determination of present focus and future direction. Other factors are the age factor. Older students were either 'burned out' or 'frustrated' with careers and so come back to school--anthropology provides for these people a convenient framework within which to create an alternative life. People may be lead into anthropology by a series of choices which became irreversible. A person with a background in biology chooses between having to 'deal with botany or culture' and decides the latter alternative will be more tolerable. Voila, and anthropological golden boy in the making. Some people have been lead here through having acquired through work experience specific skills valuable to specific sub-disciplines. "I mentioned I had this skill…anything interesting about"…It's like anything else I thought. It became interesting." I had the opportunity and skills to do it primarily because someone else was interested. Some people came here by default in previous situations, others just 'like the subject" or something that is a part of the thing they study. Some people are brought here in fulfillment of personal needs that anthropology somehow seems to satisfy, that may have been frustrated in previous settings. If people genuinely like what they are doing, they seem to want to do it no matter how adverse the conditions or fierce the resistance or steep the climb. They refuse to give up no matter what the odds. Sometimes several sets of interests combine or overlap in a particularly interesting way which is important for the researcher, even though nobody may share an want to share these interests. Sometime one area may lose its appeal, become 'dry, boring' and another area may then seem more appealing--ego identity achieves a transformation. Some people may have always had a background interest or hobby in something--always fascinated with 'museums' and cultural stimuli. A person's background research interests are apt change several times during their school career, coincidental with changes in committee composition, school setting, value orientation, existential situation. "It has switched since I've been here, of course, with professor so and so, interest in this particular time period is convenient for me." "What lead me into archaeology--an introductory course. Field school provoked my interest in material culture to find out about past. What we can and cannot know about a thing. Interest in the past I think a lot of it comes from my father. On family vacations we would go to historically relevant sites, roadside stops." A memorable event of the past, a special project or experience may have helped provoke a whole series of later decisions which eventually brings a student into the department. "When growing up I always liked biology and history--I put the things together and I get biological anthropology. I always watched TV specials." "I was always interested in history. I had taken an archaeology course on Europe. Needed to look for people for a project. I remember in high school I wanted to go into anthropology, but I was told women couldn't do that." Sometime certain social issues or problems one encounters in one's life lead to a research focus. Sometimes proximity to a particular area of interest, or previous opportunities in such an area, leads a student, conditions a student's interests in a certain focus. Anthropological areas of focus can be a way for bringing together many different interests in an interesting way. "Interested in archaeology when 8 or 9. <u>Gods, Graves and Scholars</u>. My mother was an educator who always got into archaeology. My father was interested in archaeology, always really fascinated…archaeology had always been in the back of my mind. I became increasingly dissatisfied with my major, what I really wanted to do was archaeology…I changed majors cold turkey." "Combo bigger than that, a combo of ecology, political economy and development." Sometimes a person's interests come full circle in a very dramatic or tragic sense. Past traumas may lead to a present preoccupation with concerns about the world 'ecological disasters, natural disasters'--"maybe saner ways of where work can go. The subject is always in the background, in past years time I love, eat, sleep, drink this." Many things interested in my life related to anthropology, an area I would like to work in." "One instructor interested in subject…I stumbled on the subject." "Here's a story, as a kid I did every aspect of science, bug collection, chemistry, microscope, museums bring it all together. I was enthralled by the Natural History Museum. Opportunity for fieldwork, I loved it to death." "Like working outdoors, very interested in working with people instead of machines. Even if extinct, people don’t change. Wondered in suburban woods and find little ruins remains." "Bunch of things contributed to it, no one thing. I guess that’s why I don't have a clear research interest--interested in too many different things. Haven't found a way to synthesize them all, I can't be alone." "Who says natural curiosity isn’t a away to come up with a research question." "I started as a child, my father took me to many exhibitions, I read many books." "I don’t remember not ever being interested." "I don’t know where I fit in all of it."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I do not know if any hard and fast generalizations can be made, whether, for instance, there are essential differences between males and females in why they are biased towards particular fields of interest within anthropology or how they are biased. I suspect that the reasons are many and varied, cutting across boundaries of gender, class, background, culture. And then, all of this is after the fact retrospection from already being landed here in the department--these reasons are not necessarily account for the reasons why individuals actually made important decisions at critical conjunctures of their life development. Whether they are or not, they do go into enhancing an individual's ego identity as to why they are here, as rationalization of the present. I have no doubt that probably other, unrecognized factors have been involved in conditioning people's choices which led them here, in most people most of the time. From a personal history of what led (MISSING PART OF SENTENCE. PAGE 92: PART IV)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">10. "What do you think can be done to improve this department?" Four males made no comment--"I don't think I have seen enough to have any ideas on it." "Haven't been here that long--it’s a lot easier to point. We have a void which needs to be filled." Nine men mentioned social relations in one form or another--"Negligible in social relationships between faculty and students." "Not real good between grad. Students." "Students are afraid of faculty--faculty not caring about the students." "Nobody knows anything, nobody to tell anyone anything. Need to be introduced to the teachers." "Social relations. One of the realities of institutions. Don’t expect it to happen. People don't want to teach. Not much teaching going on with professionals." "Improve communication between teachers and students…How things are done in the department is found out through osmosis…probably done on purpose as a rite of passage. Little direction on the way, need a way of voicing objections, improvements. No communication on problems students are having." "Academic discussion very unfamiliar with me, like more practical, easy to understand style of study." "Need a central meeting place--a consequence of the physical layout of the building. Need a seminar at which all students and faculty are required to attend, all members…social relations is important…have a clear sense of who is responsible to one another…alleviate the problem of competition…" "Distressed by separation between the sub-fields." "Now there are too many damned hard working scholars."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Other kinds of improvements include structural improvements. "Unequal distribution of funds, arbitrariness of who gets what. Some consistently not receiving funds." "More computer facilities available for students." "This is a problem too, I think at graduate level every student should be about to focus upon his own interests--do not need to be guided, people are not allowed to learn what they want to learn. Have to learn this and that, even though they are not a student's priorities. Need freedom to budget out time, to have much more time for readings, have too many things to do." "Need to address more technical matters more comprehensively than in past--more computers is a step in the right direction, lab facilities, technical gadgets, overall expertise." "The department would improve if it admits students only if it could support them--need to not accept so many students."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Eight out of 16 women mentioned the issue of funding--'handicapped with the budget'. "Received more money from the state. Need more assistantships that are better paid. It doesn't have to be to risky for funding." "The funding issue…" "More money, funding for the students", "TA's and GA's should be awarded funding not so much for money as for experience. It should be passed around for all graduate students. The philosophy of handing out should be experience first with money as a by-product versus money first with experience by-product." "…Besides the obvious answer of more money…" "should spend more resources, time and money supporting language study."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Twelve of 16 female students mention improving social relations. "It's like any place, certain tight cliques make it difficult to make a friend. I find graduate students somewhat hostile. I am different because I have an accent, it is like a social stigma." "Should have ways for eliciting participation, possibilities for discussion…Now I don’t get much feedback from the professors." "There are no get togethers between faculty and students. Probably there should be more social parties or afternoon teas." "I’ll start with a shopping list…more social events. Draw in students of different sub-disciplines. Foster socializing. I think this can be accomplished if professors are part of the whole arrangement of planning. I had mentors and worked closely with a couple of professors. Some had much influence on students. Students and professors are unique people. There should be good relationships, plus the classes were really interesting--Is there a correlation between the two, 'interestingness and professors?' Exactly, that's how it works. The second thing, I don't know how or if it can be done. Philosophically, the professors should look at students as colleagues. As members of a future generation, as scholars, and they should be treated that way." "What role do you see professors playing?" "They play an amazing role. They set a model for students. Students are more transient than professors. It's up to the professors to provide models. They can create a certain attitude in the department. It is up to them to create this, such that certain students can follow. This can be done anywhere, in the classroom or outside of the setting, as in a restaurant. Need to have get togethers, to foster a loose social attitude." "Attitudes, communication between faculty and students is a major weakness in the program." "More interaction between faculty and students. Programs between faculty and students. Pressure both faculty and students into discussions of research." "Social life is one of the major problems. Feelings of loneliness, alienation, separation--how to alleviate it?--Have more social events, including everyone in the department, such as covered dish dinners, movies, etc." "If we sat down and talked, with some of the professors about why the students are so disgruntled--teachers are wet blankets, overly critical. No time for social life. This is one huge gaping problem." "Social interaction between students--a lot of students are competitive. They join the rat race to please student's egos. They are really scared that their life chances will be cut, their funding will be cut." "Need to improve social interaction with the faculty, maybe go to more parties." "It's a good question, I think the communication channels can be more open between professors and students, and between professors, a relationship somewhat distant at times--Can you put a finger on it?--my own tendency leads me to think about professor's egos and competition factor. Distance between graduate students is great." "It would be more helpful if there were more things where students and faculty could mix. We need a friendlier atmosphere, more concern in care and dealings. More social inter-mixing. I've had feelings of depression." Of all people asked about social relations, only two mentioned this problem of social relations exclusively, two didn't mention it at all, and one said, "I have no complaints about the social atmosphere."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ten of 15 female students mentioned aspects of academic structure. "Have more faculty and course in archaeology." "Get rid of two persons in the faculty." "There should be emphasis on teaching at the grad. level. Explain teacher's outlines…sometimes some faculty don't take teaching seriously in graduate seminars." "Get more women professors." "Besides overhaul it, hire more professors…who like to teach, whose primary interest is in teaching versus research, who have demonstrated the ability to work with students, who like to teach graduate students. The other things, at least for archaeology, is to reintroduce the course 'Teaching College Anthropology' as a real course. It has been on the books for years but is a 'non-course'. It has never been offered. Reinstate it as a legitimate offering." "Funding is not fairly distributed--four whammies against a person--one-older students have a hard time, people over thirty, two-people who are married, three-people who have children, four-husband who works. People who get money are people who are pets who speak the loudest. Should change the distribution for funding so that its not equal number of funding for each sub-discipline. Physical has only four students. Archaeology has 30 students. We need more discipline, structure, support…all graduate students should be involved in some shape in community activities, local politics, organizations in order to ground theory in practice." "Content in terms of knowledge they teach…I am not satisfied with the form, with the structure of the department. I'm not satisfied with teacher student relationships. They treat you as if you're in kindergarten, not as autonomous adults. They impose syllabus deadlines on us without ever thinking it is a communication process. The object of learning is not to accumulate deadlines. Not grades. Not at all conducive to the process of learning…definitely the lack of struggle from the bottom. A lot of people just accept the status quo or are scared shit that something will happen to them. Even though they feel the problem they do nothing. The whole organization of courses. What matters is quantity not quality. We somehow end up better for having glanced at Wallerstein or whatever. We should take a short article, discuss it thoroughly. There is a lack of knowledge by both students and teachers. They have a very superficial attitude. If more people are concerned it becomes an issue among students. We want change. Quality not quantity. Not to be treated as children but as adults. More quality and more responsibility in terms of knowledge. The same in terms of human relations. It is so hypocritical, on one hand so liberal, save the world. On the other hand so authoritarian in imparting knowledge." "I think we have a certain role, we can't just sit back and watch and describe." Only one person focused exclusively upon the structural matters, and only one person said, "I have a skewed perception, I'm not involved in the department that much, as far as politics are concerned, I'm not sure…"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It was apparent to me, or became so, that initially people sought me out, thinking my survey was a sounding board for <u>their </u>complaints, frustrations and suggestions in relation to the department. I believe some had a preconception that, that was what my study was supposed to be about. This happened enough that I began to think the interviews had some kind of cathartic effect within the department in general. Maybe it just broke some of the surface ice at the end of a cold winter time--maybe it was a bit of warm breath in a frosty atmosphere. What interested me was the number of people who made suggestions which were exclusively 'ego-centric'--seen in relation to their own personal needs. It seemed that most people tended to see the department in terms of their own ego identity, rather than trying to frame the department as a whole in its own terms. Most people though, did both. Few did this so exclusively in their own terms. And this could be quite subtle--easily overlooked if one did not know other things about the person's life and interests and problems. People socially satisfied in personal relationship looked to structural matters, if they were frustrated with their own standing vis-à-vis the department. People structurally well positioned, tended to be more concerned with social or funding issues. An TA is more likely to complain "TA workload is a bit steep…I have an assistantship. I am lucky in this sense…I get angry sometimes…last semester was a more difficult but I felt more appreciated, the teacher gave more reinforcements and was more apologetic. Now I don't get much feedback from the professors. Why teach large course if not able to teach it right? Why aren’t courses taught in a small level…" a person who has a need for structure will look for more structure, a person with a need for communitas, will look for more 'anti-structure'. "This is purely selfish, but get a few more archaeologists…" Few people actually looked beyond the department t fit it within a broader context, except in a sense of 'counter reference'--this is paradoxical with the previous question.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Other things…continuity of faculty…a problem in particular of archaeology…the 80's was extraordinary in there being several turnovers. This had a very disruptive influence on students in terms of stability, continuity and content--the philosophical orientation of the program. Some continuity of interests is not answered, students get left behind with the need to reassemble a committee--a difficult thing to do. The department needs a clearer sense of where it<font SIZE="3"> </font>wants to go theoretically. It exists in a state of eclecticism at the moment, a problem of the discipline in general, in what its trying to do. A dichotomy between UG and Graduate levels, presents anthropology in a way at odds with what's practiced at the graduate level. Anthropology doesn’t have any unifying paradigm--hyphenated, particularistic, directions not necessarily parallel. The division is not clear, over simplified in UG training. Intellectual dishonesty which occurs there. We need to reexamine which it is to do, why we choose to do it."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"A history of personality/political struggle among senior faculty…"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It seems in general, that the longer students remain in the department, the more disillusioned they become about it and about anthropology in general. Is being disillusioned necessarily an unhealthy attitude or is it better. Or is better to believe it is all one's own personal problem? A person's whose interests happen to coincide very clearly with a professor is apt to say "I never felt suppressed as a student--prevented from personally doing anything." Of course not.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Foreign students have special problems of language and behind language, understanding of cultural differences--this inclines one student to say "Need to be introduced to the American system nobody teaches (THE FOLLOWING DOES NOT READ RIGHT. A SENTENCE MIGHT BE MISSING) myself here, discussed in the next chapter, I have a suspicion of what some of these 'other' kinds of factors might be. History has a kind of funny momentum which catches most of us up in living, in which we become 'involved' or 'committed'--a momentum which can carry us forward to our separate or shared destinies whether we may choose to or not. Some may call this fate--I call it Karma-relation. There are very good reasons why we decide to do certain things, which only become cleared after we have finished. Like this study.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">11. "Do you expect some kind of assistance/funding for research?" Twelve of 14 males (<font FACE="Symbol">±</font> 87%) expect to get funding for research but only 8 indicated they will 'need' it or depend upon it in order to finish the work. Many are unequivocal about their expectations and hopes, but remain equivocal about their 'needs' or vice versa, some are unequivocal about their 'needs' but remain uncertain in regard about their expectations. Others are unequivocal or equivocal in both respects. Expectations do not always coincide or correspond with 'needs'. "I hope so…will probably depend on it." "I expect to get funding…I have to." "I don't know if I'll need it." "I do expect to have more money to play with." "I hope to…will not depend on it."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Fourteen of 16 women expect and depend upon being funded for research (87%). "When the time comes I will look for that." "I do anticipate it…""Yes, probably…will not depend upon it." "Counting on it, couldn't do without it." "I hope so, don't expect it…I'm very dependent upon it." "I hope…I don't expect it, I don’t know (if I'll depend upon it). There's always a place to go back to. I better or I'm not going. Yes of course." "Damn right, I expect it, won’t be able to do it without it. I don’t see how I could do it without it. To be perfectly honest, I don’t couldn't afford it." "Yes I depend upon it…I have always received assistance for field work. I don’t think I'll be receiving funding, not much, I'll definitely be needing it, in order to finish my degree." "Yes, Yes expect is, yes depend upon it, I need a lot. Not now, in future…transportation to and from field." "Sure, depend upon it, yes, I won't go out and make enough to support my own research." "Hope so, probably not, I'm working on other possibilities."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Expectations and needs condition one another, but not always in the same way. Expectations can be molded be perceived opportunities, or past experiences. Needs can be molded by knowledge of alternative options or availability of such options--some people are in a sense already 'funded' and expect to continue to be 'funded' so that they really do not 'need' other sources of funding. Needs and expectations come together in the recognition of a range of alternative funding possibilities--there is more than one way to break and egg. How much money is needed is another important issue--some people 'need' more than others for a particular set of reasons. Those with less obvious or less 'needs' seem to be less 'dependent'. How many anthropologists 'earn their independence' and learn to expect their freedom? Funding has its own kind of problems--creates its own kind of realities, its own 'involvements' which may make a 'difference' in guiding 'interests'--very real interests in money or the freedom money can buy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">12. "When do you expect your degree?" Again I cannot give data which may reveal identity. Five of 8 male students expect to complete their MA within 2 years time, the other two are looking at three and four and six years. Ph.D. males are taking a bit longer time with two questionable lows of three years and one of four years, from start to finish, while those who have been a longer time are looking at 2-3 more years time, three of them, and a total of 7,8 and 9 years.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There were four female Ph.D. students, one was looking at two years start to finish, two are looking at totals of 5 and 6 years and one is still not sure, but has been around a while. Female MA students, of 11 counted, four are looking at two years total, five at three to four years total, and one at six years. The people in archaeology seem to be taking longer. It would be interesting to correlate these expectations with opinions and attitudes about the department--again student's who've been around longer appear less naive and more disillusioned with things about the department. There are a couple of missing persons whom I didn’t get around asking during the interview. "I don’t know, I try to have as few expectations as possible, fewer disappointments that way."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">13. "What are your expectations for employment after you receive your degree?" six of 14 males indicate they hope or expect to become university professors. "My chances are as good as any graduating student from here. Jobs opening up in a few years--Korea, MIT, WW2 era retiring." "I have no worries about getting a job, I have very much confidence in myself and the system will hire me. The job market will be there and will open up in a couple of years. Four are looking for some form of contract archaeology and two are looking toward work in relation to development, and two in research."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of 16 females, two were not sure, eight mention university or college professors. Other interests include human services, development, health care and government. About half of all students expect some form of professorship at a university or college. The rest are divided between different areas of employment. Good Luck!</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">14. "What do you believe to be the goals of general anthropology?" Males said: "Don't have any idea--to make the world safe for human variation…Pretty good." "I don’t think there is a goal. We hold up a façade of being cultural. People in the physical journals are tying in culture very poorly. Diverging grossly, becoming more specialized. Human biology has split from culture…major split in anthropology." " Holy shit, in general to learn more about human beings. Our place in relation to each other as well as our relation to the natural world." " Study of people's and their cultures. I see anthropology as both unified and divided. There is much overlap, on the other hand the department is very divided--up to the individual instructor to make the course relevant to the whole." "Selfish, only consider my own goals. Find it difficult to see an overall goal. I can give you a bullshit textbook line…to elucidate aspects of Humankind." "To try and figure out why people do things in a broad sense, anything narrower for specific field. To figure out human nature." "I think anthropology is one part of the social sciences and for me the social sciences should have the goal to be a critical instrument of society, to have a critical theory of humankind and the world: part of a larger framework with no definite borders, emphasis in core of emphasis, go to the periphery to find differences, not completely shared features undercover of emphasis." "Anthropology's goal should be understanding social relationships of people and then try to use it to try to improve things, not just describe, observe but be critical, suggesting alternatives--where to push the process." "Maybe to understand more precisely about human nature.. how to define it. Every human group or society has conflicting interests, conflicting tendencies within a person. Human nature is a combination of these forces, a conciliation of these forces within an individual, between people and groups as well." "Not sure that I know. General anthropology in an academic setting should have the goal of making a wide audience informed about differences existing in the world--not just as a strange and different science--to examine validity of own behavior and beliefs, provide grist for self reflection. What else?--confused here--people feel it should be enlightening, demystifying, empowering. I'm not sure about all that. I like the sound of it but not sure what the practice of it involves." "It has unified goals only in a very philosophically general sense--striving for a common understanding of what it means to be a human being on this planet--approaches are all over the map--we are in a period of 'normal science' that doesn't have an overarching paradigm. Divergence of directions among sub-disciplines." "Unfortunately, anthropology is not monolithic. Fortunately there are different ways to see anthropology and these differences are not anthropological--they are philosophical, political, everything a human being does is influenced by a conception. My basic conception I am aiming at is that every single science should contribute in some way to improve the human condition. Anthropology in conception is still suffering from previous misconceptions of the exotic and different. Keep those people like this in their culture gardens, as a biologist looks after a plant. Help the children to live, instead of dying. Work to improve agricultural production so people can't get hungry, improve health, abandon the previous culture area concept. Who gives them the right, even those who believe anthropology to be neutral, to make their living by studying others. There is no way for human sciences to be neutral."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Women said: "To educate people so they won’t discriminate against one another, to clarify prejudices. Anthropology is to some extent a race issue. More humane and tolerant." "To wreck havoc on my future. I'm a little sarcastic about anthropology. Disillusioned. Exhausting the utility of anthropology. It is too Fad oriented discipline--studying one fad for another. Not that I have no use for anthropology. I'd like to utilize my knowledge. I wouldn't want to teach it. Let's say we've studied one another enough." "I probably would have come up with answers as an undergraduate, but now it's not so easy…I don’t think you can say there is one goal--there shouldn't be one goal. It is good to have competing paradigms in an academic setting. Consciousness wakening of undergraduate students. American standards are not the measures of all other cultures. To burst the plastic bubble. Don’t know if its possible to come up with generalizations about human cultures. It's pretty confusing." "Where its heading its hard to say--it is too chaotic. Cultural anthropologists seem to get the credit for everything." "Very briefly to explain human phenomena, all humans. How to define anthropology in general. That’s a hard. You mean a prescription, how to perceive it. Both? General anthropology should be definitely interested in looking at human development, whether complex, prehistoric, in a most realistic way. This means a balance between theory and what's out there. This means longer fieldwork for students. Teachers with tenure required to go out into field. Well balanced in all sub-fields, at least in some sub-fields and I think anthropology has capability to be more applied, more contact with societies interested in then now." "Hopefully, we're studying humankind. Should be able to learn something objective about humankind. Anthropology is too broad with too many sub-areas and interests to have one unified view." "To make other people's culture understandable to a very limited number of people for suspect ends." "Understanding of past, present to make a saner world. Diffuse some of its knowledge through teaching cultural relativism. The old saying knowledge is power. Anthropology could play a role in that power and how its distributed." "I don’t know. Its too broad of a field. In the big sense, I don't think there is a unified goal. Don't believe critical theory of 'making the past relevant' is going to last." "I don’t know if there are any, it's more all split up. The biggest problem is keeping itself together as a discipline. Respect as a discipline is rapidly declining." "Anthropology is a system of knowledge about people. I can't see a single goal. To understand people, cultures, all human beings as a group, and to make life for all of us better somehow, which is a value judgment. We also have to understand different cultural viewpoints, world views." "To enlighten mankind on how we're all the same, all part of one family. I think anthropology has the best chance of this realization. Religion divides people, show up differences." "To raise awareness and respect for cultural diversity, primary purpose is education, raising level of knowledge and respect for other cultures and people." "Now academically, other than my personal life, ideally to try to combine fields and try to understand human reality--social sciences in general need more unity. Anthropology seems to be a perfect vehicle in order to do this. Resistance to inter-disciplinary integration is false." "To make or give people awareness of how their own society functions, how all societies function, how one's own society is not the best solution, the only solution. To give an idea of what human is, more open, more tolerant. I think there should be one goal for anthropology. Different sub-disciplines approaches from different directions--different sub-goals there should be one overall goal--try to reach it from different directions." "My familiarity with anthropology is very limited, very much an awakening. Goals of discipline--the studies of other cultures--different goals within each sub-field."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I am sure that each of these people could go home and write many pages upon this question but when hit by it point blank in the course of a hurried interview, they either have a cliché answer already well formulated or else are thrown back upon their ego defenses to quickly find one, to quickly think about it and toss of a satisfactory answer from the top of their heads. Among females, I count 9 lumpers and 7 splitters. Among males I recognize four lumpers and 8 splitters. What this means I have no idea. Few lumped or split unequivocally--it was more a matter of emphasis upon unity or differences. The fact of recognized divisiveness among sub-disciplines seemed to cause a few people consternation. By phrasing the question this particular way, people were compelled to give a single, unitary kind of answer, even if they really could see no unity. Again people tend to see from the point of view of their own orientation. Biological anthropologists were splitters who saw no overarching unity--cultural predominance, alleged, was seen as not being necessary. Development people emphasized the need for application and change. Archaeologists are divided, seeing both unity and disunity. People caught off-guard typically responded with "holy shit", "don’t have any idea", "selfish, only consider my own goals", "not sure that I know", "what is general anthropology", "to wreck havoc on my life", "where its headed it's hard to say". I probably could have come up with answers as an UG. "I don’t know. That's a hard one."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">15. "How many friends, professors and undergraduate students do you know in the department?" Male students reported: 23% reported having 2 or fewer friends, 38% reported between 2 and 5 friends, 30% reported between 5 and 10 friends, and 7% reported having more than 10 friends. Females report: 13% 2 or fewer friends, 53% between 2 and 5 friends, and 33% reported between 5 and 10 friends, none reported more than this.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Males report knowing professors: 41% know no professors, 25% report knowing only one, 8% report knowing two, 8% report knowing three, and 16% report knowing more than three. Females report: 56% knowing none, 18% report knowing only one, 6% report knowing three, and 18% report knowing more than three.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Males report: 33% know no undergraduate anthropology students, 25% report knowing one, 8% report knowing 2,3,4,5,6, and 7 undergraduate students each. Females report: 20% report knowing none, 40% report knowing only one, 13% report knowing 2, 6% report knowing 3,4 and 5 respectively and 6% knows more than 10.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The number of friends among first year graduate students is the lowest. People who have been around longer tend to know more people, but not necessarily. Other factors are at work in making contacts and friends. Most people have more than 2 friends in the department. Most people know one or fewer faculty members. More than half the graduate students know less than one undergraduate student. Being a TA increases contact with undergraduates, or else the undergraduates are more highly visible within the department. These account for most of the undergraduates known by members of the department. 24% of males and females report knowing 3 or more professors. While only 8% of the males and no females report only knowing two professors. It seems students either know very few professors or else quite a few. It seems, to reverse this statement, that professors know a few students well and many students only a little or not at all. One wanders if these are the same students. This does not argue well for student teacher contact, or for grad., undergraduate contact. One must expect the undergraduate profile in the department to be virtually nonexistent--only 'honorary graduate, undergraduate students' are most visible. These statistics are quite meaningless and superficial, because each person had a different idea of what friendship was to the,. One person's friend may be another's acquaintance. Where does one draw a line, and why does one draw a line? Perhaps I should have defined 'friendship' or 'know' better for the individuals interviewed. Generally I left it at casual, or more than just acquaintance, outside of the classroom, etc. some people had a bigger problem with this than others. For some definition of friendship seemed less equivocal than for others. It seems most of the friendships are horizontal, only a few reported knowing more professors than fellow graduate students. Less than 25% of the graduate students are known by more than one professor. It seems there may be a premium on the academic market for professor's time and professor's attention. Most peoples' complaints of poor social relations focused upon professor student problems. The few instances where student-student relations were mentioned tended to deal with 'competitiveness'. This would lead me to hypothesize (not conclude) that what graduate students are competing with one another most, is for attention from the professors--for professor time. This academic community of less than 100 people seems to be hardly a Gemeinshaft type of community 'where everyone knows everyone else'. It is not like a military company where one learns to live, eat, and sleep with people one would otherwise hate and despise. It is more like a mini-suburbia, a hyper-suburbia with each person in his/her own castle, waiting anxiously for some distinguished visitor to come knocking on the door. Instead it is usually just one of one's peer group.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within this suburbia social relations are characteristically on the basis of shared mutual interests where these are cross cutting and diverse, as well as by social separation and relative isolation and anonymity. People see others everyday but may never end up saying a word to them. It is like shopping regularly at a grocery store and getting to know a handful of 'familiar faces and friendly smiles'. One would expect small 'cliquish' peer groups to form, say between 2 and 5 people, which form little family like entities. Maybe the Father or Mother is some VIP professor and his children. Also there are networks based on proximity and neighborliness and propinquity. People next door sharing similar work office hours meet more often and share more and become more friendly. Actually, it is more like a work place where people come for a certain amount of time to do a job, and then go home to escape the place. People tend to see it as a job, even if they are making nothing for it. It has a genuine kind of 'make believe' 'lets pretend' for a while quality about it. Not to imply that no work gets done. Like a miniature suburban neighborhood, there are people who are more 'regular' than others. Perhaps these people are thought of as more 'stable' somehow. There are also gossip networks or grapevines of information control--these can function as a form of social control--who hears what about whom told to whom what, finally reaches the ears of the guilty victim--everyone knows one knows that 'everyone' knows that one knows, etc. It has been interesting to me to see how information becomes disseminated to whom within the department--who's speaking to whom, and who doesn’t talk with whom. If there is a premium on professor attention, then it takes the form of professional authority--they give the grades, make the syllabus, cancel assignments, make alterations, set deadlines, give advice and personal instruction, and eventually sign the thesis, if it ever finally comes to that. The anthropological ego identity is developed in reference to the authority of the professor--ego identity is structured in relation to academic authority. This authority is paternalistic--professors are like either surrogate parents or big brothers, depending on whether they adopt a child, practice benign neglect, or play the bully. Academic is the power to create and control change, developmentally related to the student ego. If this really is like a suburbia, or a mini-mall, then one must expect social divisions of class, party, and status to run through it, and this seems to be the case, where these kinds of differences form the rules and sanctions for who talks with who, who eats with who, who sleeps with who.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">16. "If a TA, what do you think of your students?" "Two groups, one stares and one open their mouths. I get along with most of them. Some are very bad, not too aggressive, either get on good terms or not at all." "Good interaction, I think so. For the most part they get along with me. Not sure I have a clear opinion of students as a group. Individuals that I know, more benefit of a doubt, broader attitudes about student population." "I get along with them very well. Very few people I dislike. Sometimes disappointed by them. A mutual liking, they are very comfortable, happy with me, very positive." "I like them with the exception of one fellow. They like me." "Main thing, I was not aggressive enough." "Like most of them. Some do some are pretty apathetic. Before I was nervous, now more cavalier just do work, don't put up with a lot of crap." "Most I get along well with very nice--do a good job, show respect, mutual feelings. Evaluations are important, to find out." "Get along well with them. One's getting bad grades usually don’t get along well. I feel like they get along with me, talk outside of class, not about class work, how things are going. A lot are freshmen thrown in here. A lot of cream of the crop out of high school, not receiving attention, expecting it." "Generally speaking get along very well, we still correspond to this day. Generally evaluations are very good, honest, excellent. No idea what they felt about me." "Some utter morons, some utterly brilliant. Some though vice versa, good evaluations mostly--middle upper class."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">FACULTY INTERVIEWS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of the faculty I interviewed 2 women and 7 men. By my count I interviewed approximately 22% of the women associated with the department, and about 29% of the men.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">1. "Are you married and do you have children?" 78% of the faculty members interviewed were married, I counted 10 children, or 1.42 children per parent. Actually most parents had 2 children each or 71%.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">2. "How many hours a week do you average on campus?" Out of eight people they averaged a pretty regular 40 and 22 minute work week. The highs were 60 and 55, and the lows were 20 and 30. About four people, 50% averaged a clear 40 hours week. Professors indicated mostly these were invariable over the semester but varied from other semesters and seasons due to other reasons.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">3. "What are your parents' profession?" Fathers included 2 chemists, 2 university professors, a financial publisher, 2 military officers, a business accountant, a machinist and a mechanic machinist. Mothers included 6 housewives (3 part time), 3 high school teachers (1 part time), a medical secretary, cafeteria bookkeeper, dress shop operator. Of those interviewed, I estimate 66% came from the upper middle class and 33% came from the middle class or below.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">4. "Where do you come from?" Six of 9 indicate coming from the northeast, 3 from the south (Virginia, Florida). Approximately 78% possibly 79% come from the suburb. Only one indicate coming from a 'city neighborhood'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">5. "What do you think can be done to improve this department?" Women mentioned: "One thing that would help would be a very specific common social space, a meeting room to have coffee and talk, for all anthropology students and faculty. The lounge doesn’t serve that purpose, we can't organize it as our space that would be reflective of our interests." "An orientation course for graduate students, with each faculty coming in, so the students can learn the ropes, about the library, book reviews. All the faculty would come to know the graduate students and vice versa." "I should have written it down. I think it is good the way it is. I'm pretty happy here. A real nice community compared to what I've heard about. Faculty are much more fragmented other places. Complaints here are "that's not the way it happened to me. There is competitiveness here but it is worse other places. On this level it is a really good place. People are really tolerant of each other. Paradigmatic differences becomes personal differences. We need space that is ours, instead of just standing by the coffee machine. A nice central place, brown bagging lunch, talking about things. An example of how space can promote interaction. People working in offices--you feel like you ought not to be disturbing things. More informal interaction sort of waxes and wanes--beer socials in the department…people who are available go to these things on Friday afternoons. This is the best context, people are relaxed at the end of the week. We don’t have too many faculty who are hard to get at…ethos research is number one. Teaching means training a small number of students--teaching is apprenticeship, working on a one to one level--a lineage level institutional structure. People come in and get socialized. There are not a lot of rewards for being an undergraduate instructor. Not sure it would be that different. Students should be more advised to what to expect in graduate schools of different kinds.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Male faculty members said: "What I really think I'm not going to tell you." "Expansion of programs where possible. Hiring. Gradual, noticeable improvement in overall conditions. Things are getting worse, loss of faculty members, budgetary problems." "Funding is important, also the development of lab facilities could be improved a lot. It would happen through active research. In terms of social relations?--I think students are spoiled in regard to student faculty contact..." "This is not a very easy question. In Fantasyland, replacement of certain faculty. Improving the department gradually with outstanding new faculty. Need more <u>resources</u>. Good social relations with students--working relations. We need to go with the resources we've got. Problem depends on level of department at any given time. These are subtle ways. We are not doing too badly at this point in time. A few more key appointments." "With how much money? The answer is that we don’t have more money for improvement. Need more faculty lines, positions. This is one thing. More graduate assistantships, more first rate students here their first year, more useful students. More communication on a professional level among faculty, more professional interaction like brown bags." "Break up cliques, a lot more social interaction. Whether or not people agree with each other about things, at least they can get together more and be more active. Spend more time with students. A lot don’t do a darn for them. More seminars around, for all different facets of anthropology. Informal things so everybody can get a turn. Things are tight anyway, not only a matter of how much funding, but of funding for what." "Realistically or in the world of great others. A good museum facility. Not enough money is the simplest thing to say. Funding for all students, more publications coming out of campus. A center for all of the faculty. Additional faculty. A <u>good</u> library. A <u>good </u>computer center. More university sponsorship of faculty and student research." "I think this is a good department. A well respected department. We have done remarkably well. I don’t see the opportunity to invest in this department to overtake departments like Berkeley, Michigan, Columbia. Fiefdoms scholarships…nature of difference between state and private universities. Nature of the time. Alumni not likely to give big bucks. Don’t see the economy of New York State improving much. Invest more kinds of money, to build a first rate library, to make major acquisitions. My wish list is not to be a complaint list, it's a wish list."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I think there is a tendency to interpret the needs of the department ego-centrically, as a reflection of one's own background, needs, interests, opinions and value orientations. Unfortunately I did not get enough interviews to come up with a really good sample.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">6. "What is the focus of your current research interests and how did you come by these interests?" Again I cannot reveal anyone's identity. It can only be noted the kinds of connections between things in a person's past which have led them to the present, to present 'involvements' and 'commitments' theoretical and methodological. Some people are led here by a series of choices in research interests which "developed over time." "I happened to come up with data relevant to the problem." "Probably from things reading as I was growing up. National Geographic, among other things. I don't remember names. Dinosaur books. Paleontology. Things about humans. What did you find attractive? Curiosity of different places and times. My grandfather collected journals, travelogues of 19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> century explorers, mainly in Africa. I inherited his book collection. He had traveled in Africa. Curiosity about far away places and times, as well as creativity of trying to figure our how and why people are doing things. Sit down and provide interpretations." "Some get involved in research which is going on. Some express always having been curios and interested about a particular thing." "I don’t know, I've been interested since I was a small child." "Some had an opportunity which exited their interest--I've been doing it ever since."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">7. "What are your goals as a teacher of students?" Most professors distinguished between undergraduate and graduate levels. Comments upon undergraduate level included "I like to do my best to instill an interest in my field in particular, or at least to impress them with sorts of enlightenment. Anthropology majors constitute only a fraction of the undergraduate classes, certainly true in big course, introductory classes. At this level anthropology is treated as part of general education. I used to keep track of the undergraduates…" "I guess its different for undergraduates and graduates. For undergraduates there is a clearer set of goals. Challenge an American ideology about the world. People are thoroughly socialized in an American social system, they learn about what a self is. Not much challenged on cultural level. I'm pessimistic about a missionary set of goals." "It differs for graduate and undergraduates…for UG create a few moments during the semester when their lives become disrupted." "I must get them to really appreciate and empathize with another culture." "Undergraduates I teach will develop an interest in archaeology…they are pursuing an a vocational interests, the biggest difference is in depth, degree. Undergraduates don’t need as much in the way of practical knowledge and tools." "Grads. differ from UG as undergrads. Try to provide information about a topic and to inspire students to think…the so called critical thing aspect, but also to encourage students into a professional mode of behaving and learning, to try to help them to organize ideas, to try to inspire students to pursue interesting lines of research--this is done at the UG but much more at the graduate level." "To get as many people interested…as I can--to turn them 'on' if I possibly can. Knowledge of how the subject is used in everything we do, how it works, how it affects people, how it can lead to a respect for it and possibly might even shed light on related issues." "I take this as more goals, interests or relevant to most students. To make students conscious, to inform them of what it means to be a human being, to make the student aware of him/herself. Things taken for granted as natural…most are not natural."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">For the graduate level, people mentioned: "One assumes career interests--training, guidance, direction in a more professional sense. To become paid anthropologists eventually…" :Graduate students are a much more diverse group of people…graduate courses tend to be right in my area, than take me beyond my expertise and interest. I don't think I've gotten very good at this either, giving people a syllabus. I try to communicate enthusiasm of some theoretical issues, controversies." "For graduate students, most satisfying to help them discover their own interests. It is most gratifying. This is the project, there are fewer other rewards, intrinsically. I work intensively with students to encourage them to make links with personal lives, politics, many come in with a solid academic plan without really knowing at heart what they want." "I would like to inspire students to be as interested in the subject as I am, and to have them learn by asking themselves what they are interested in--provide tools for development, I have no real ideological ax to grind. To share a rich experience. Graduate students are committed to making a living in their field." "To make them question and think about everything they’ve never questioned before."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"To inspire students to pursue more interesting lines of research much more at the graduate level…to train them to be professional. Treat student in a way to enhance professional image--can't treat people badly. Presentation--professionalism." "It's not presentation, its values and interests, a fundamental interest in problem solving, doing it because its expected only, is not going to work. Sub-cultural values coupled with an interest in pursuing different lines." "Graduate? Yes sure, with graduates it is much more focused upon a particular field, although I still like to call these things into questions--that are accepted as tradition. Anything taken for granted as true--particularly interests in field methods."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">8. "What do you believe to be the proper goals and responsibilities of students in anthropology?" "Spend a lot of time reading and asking questions." "Their own individual aspirations and objectives and this is not just incredibly variable, at fundamental level obligations to faculty to try to do work. Thing most annoying is to try to motivate students. Self motivated students. It is important to distinguish between gradate and undergraduate overall levels." "Should be interested in learning how to be an effective anthropologist. Assumed for an anthropologist--nothing wrong with an undergraduate taking interest. Obtain a substantive background to call on and use in solving problems from and anthropological problems. Learn substance and methods 'facts' in anthropology--what they do with this. Some students are primarily teaching others doing research--applied research--not mutually exclusive categories of course a matter of interest." "If they sign up for a course they should be interested in the course enough to play around in their heads, to think about things, not just learn about facts. It is useful to get their brains working, which can be applied to anything, of course." "Now I think that, here I speak of a liberal education as opposed to graduate school. Student goal of a graduate student to develop into a research oriented professional to contribute--we all should be contributing to. Responsibility of undergraduate student to familiarize self with enough theory and interpretations in a wide variety of topics, to become an independent thinker--to be able to evaluate things rationally and morally, to reach independent informed decisions…I think also…a lot of informal teaching is very exciting, quite enjoyable…help students learn to cope with world around them, derive quality life…any graduate student serious about the program ought to have as a primary goal doing well and getting through--a pretty general response, some response a chemist or business instructor would give. I don't think anthropology carries any special social commitments other students might feel."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">9. "What do you believe to be the goals of anthropology in general?" "More for undergraduate teaching, play a role of culture at large, shaking foundations of cultural smugness and self assurance. A view of social change, a critical role." "Right now in terms of discipline a huge split in terms of people who think of explanations of how culture come about on one hand, on the other hand, interpretations aren't enough. Or while interpretations are necessary, can’t really let go of explanations of culture…interested in social change, how a system works, to tinker with. Is anthropology primarily theoretical or can foster change. All knowledge we have has an impact, to find out what that impact will be. Don't like the rubric of 'applied anthropology'--institutional repressive. The development program is full of contradictions--gives students a sense of contradictions. Most students really highly, sincerely interested--really skeptical when working for the US government." "I think there are overriding themes in anthropology. Most important for me is human reality. A pluralistic view of human culture, not just one way of seeing the world. Many factors are involved, none that are monolithic or correct. I think anthropology can do that better than any other disciplines, help to situate people in a context." "Study of humankind in all its manifestations. That's to start with. I tend to favor lumper type definitions, rather than hair splitting so involved with tree's lose sight of the forest. Class, the first day, what is anthropology. A number of things anthropological--too compulsive to lose sight of the forest for the trees." "My own goals differ, my own are to understand humans in their different bio-cultural science, at least my own understanding of the human state of experience is limited, if only defined in behavioral context. If in fact biological anthropology would be less effective as an explanatory science if it were just socio cultural, archaeology. A bio-cultural science with pre-historic, historic with four foci--a bio-cultural explanation explains more, numerically socio cultural is more dominant. Its true in any democratic system that numerical dominates, has more control--in absence of socio cultural there would be a concept of comparative studies, concept of 'culture of relativity' that really tends to hold." "To understand human variation, biological and behavioral. This is the general goal, includes understanding why things are the way they are now, how they got to be the way they are, how they are." "Anything of course. Work hard, but never forget education is not just grades or a job at the end. The study of human culture in all its aspects." "Awareness of the human condition, of human behavior, human plight. I would play a very important role in simply collecting information, knowledge as an abstract goal. Knowledge is very essential in what that understanding has made us what we are and I don’t think this is necessarily practical. Not opposed to development, doesn’t have to be. Sure I see conflicting paradigms, but doesn’t hinder unity--conflicting paradigms arguments will--if we don’t disagree then we’re not learning." "Anthropology is a very diverse discipline. I can't define goals of anthropology in a very general terms. I have an idea goals change fairly substantially across different parts of the discipline. History and evolution inter-function. I don’t think socio cultural anthropologists give this answer.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Lumpers I count six, splitters 3. 66% to 33%.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">10. "Do you believe anthropology to be a male dominated field?" "Yes, like all social institutions. Much less so than other academic institutions. Study of citation rates in socio cultural anthropology. A higher evaluation, access to grants, jobs. Is not as bad as the evaluation--women handicapped, indifferential distribution to males through old boy networks." "Yes, although when compare it to other disciplines, maybe not so bad. Structure for funding, leadership of major departments. Paradigm. Maybe a slight bias in publishing, real bias in citation rates, some presses more biased than others, some journals." "Actually anthropology, no. I don't know. Say yes first of all, more true in archaeology. I think it is power, most important, powerful members of most prestigious institutions, predominantly male, will slowly change." "A hard question. I think in terms of numeric or my perception of just numbers its no longer in terms of numbers more women than men are going into it. More men going into specialty areas, more equally divided then when I first started. Hierarchically it is mostly male. If just a historical consequence of, it may not be more than ten years. Assistant professor level. A chronological accident. Protecting their own. Some departments more willing to recruit equal numbers. 12 years ago, did fairly well, according to time UG department. Socio cultural/archaeology 7-74, one woman in eight socio cultural, proclivity of men/women predominate socio cultural/archaeology . Lab staff predominantly female, field crew predominantly male. More so ten years ago--prejudice. I've been with a crew of women most of the time. I've not noticed any difference in work they do, never noticed difference in quantity or quality of work they do, never sort out by gender." "Less so than all the so called hard science--less so than many social sciences, to the extent that we live in a male dominated field, society, numerically, anthropologically--as a profession, relatively open to female participation, relatively comfortable in a lot of profession." "Yes it is, clearly more in some sub-disciplines more than others. This doesn't mean they haven't an impact. They made important contributions to theory almost from the beginning." "Probably is, though can think about prominent female anthropologists, simply ration of people in field." "No." "No, I should think of social science one in which women participate more fully than any of the others. If wanted to discuss sub-fields, sub-disciplines, seem to be male dominated, others are not. Particularly paleo-anthropology. I don’t think its true generally."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Both women gave an affirmative, unequivocal yes, although both said not as bad as other disciplines. Only three males gave a negative response, only one without elaboration. None of the other males gave an unequivocal or unqualified response. It seems they tended to play down dominance rather than emphasize it. Only two gave unequivocal but not unqualified yes's.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">11. "How many graduate and undergraduate students do you know?" two mention only one graduate student whom they 'socialize' with. One mention six. Two mention 7-8. Two mention 10 and two mention interacting 'socially' with 12. One mentions interacting with 50-60. Others exist along a 'continuum' 'on a more sporadic basis' '7 offhand, had to home, would have, had have, on a first name basis with.' In regard to undergraduate students one mentions knowing one, one 'a couple', one mentions 'one in particular whom I see, one known none, one 'not more than 4 or 5' one 5 or 6, and one mentions 'a lot, 20 students interact with intensively, 6 or so with social relationship, usually with some overlap in outside interest.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">12. "Do you have any comments, criticisms, suggestions regarding this interview?" "It's made me think I haven’t really thought about." "No I'd have to see just what you are trying to do with it, before. Did you get it cleared through the Human Subjects Research Review, one thing methodologically, if you really want to do an ethnography of the department, may run into a sampling bias--get more members more involved." "No, no suggestions." "No, I'm wandering what to do." "No, no criticism. I'm not sure I see the point of some questions." Well. 1. In terms more encouraged when you were writing. 2. Could ask, what they like, don't like about the department, cases and preferences, salient events, more than general principles people stress a lot of things." "No I would be able to comment better if I know what doing with the information. Hard to say if questions are pertinent, effective or not." "Aside from the point of trying to maintain neutral stance rather than offer own opinions, leading the witness, nod agreement is at times the most one wants to do--as with any kind of open ended interview schedules, so difficult to interpret and analyze, inclined to go with more specific kinds of questions."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It would be interesting to come up with some hard and fast correlations from all these comments that have been made. Some suggestions of possibilities can be made. There seems to be some important differences especially between males and females among the graduate students. Females tens to come from better backgrounds, spend less time in the department , work more hours, take longer to get through their programs are more concerned with problems of department structure and especially social relations between the faculty and students, then males. They are also more 'dependent' upon the 'necessity' of funding in order to do the prerequisite research in order to obtain their degrees. I do not know how to interpret this, except to say that it may indicate some important fundamental differences of some kind between males and females. Exactly what such differences might be I can only conjecture, and not very safely. This was not something I was looking for when I designed the questionnaire--I did not pre-select my 'biased sample' in order to reflect this orientation. Women also tend to see anthropology as being more male dominated than men do, and give more and better reasons why they think this way. I suggest that when and if anyone tries to interpret any further these suggestions possibilities, then one needs to reconsider more generally what we really mean by the definition of 'male dominance' as it becomes reflected by structural bias within the department as its own microcosmic system, and as part of a larger framework of structural bias in a wider sense. The bias maybe fond as much within certain value orientations and outlooks of females who define their ego identity anthropologically, as much as it becomes the deliberate bias on the part of any male to actually predominate or come before women.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I do not think that these are sufficient and necessary results to render a profile of the basic modal personality of Joe or Jane average anthropology student, although some strong possibilities do suggest themselves. One of my biggest preconceptions when I began this study was that the anthropology department constituted somehow 'one reality'--a single whole within which there would be one kind of student and one kind of professor, or at least variations upon a very common anthropological theme. Instead, I soon realized that there were many different realities for the department, as many as there are people who call themselves and proceed to define their realities as being anthropological. There are as many models of the world of anthropologia as there are personalities within the field, and no one person or single party of people has a corner upon the meaning, a paradigmatic monopoly upon the whole. The 'department' as a cultural integrity exists, but only as a structural background, a commonly shared framework, against which these separate realities and models of anthropologia can be referenced socially, texted, amended and altered in conformity or in reaction with the predominantly structural norms of the department.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I would suggest that there are several co-occurring and competing personality pre-dispositions which are divided up along several different dimensions of ego identity. One important set of dimensions is of course the male-female. Other dimensions which seem to have some bearing are age, social cultural background an area of expressed interest. When these kind of dimensions are composed and cross referenced it is possible that students may come to fall within a single continuum--at one end is a low risk group, at the other is a high risk group, which defines on one hand any individual's status rank overall in the department, and which conditions the person's chances that he/she will receive funding, support or not. There are preconditioning factors which shape our own preconceptions pre-conceptual horizons of our own ego identity as it becomes socially defined vis-à-vis the department 'system'. There are only two sets of uncontrollable and decisive factors which may be seen to historically determine the cast of the dice. First, are the individual's willpower and belief in one's own ego identity which will provide the necessary motivation to push the individual through the program. Second are the pulling/preventing powers of gatekeepers strategically positioned at each nexus of the system--people who have the authority to make the important decisions in the department. This is the way the system is supposed to work, but this simplistic model does not take into account the possible manipulative actions on behalf of or by the individual's to create or foster a social environment conducive to ego achievement. This is done circumspectly behind closed doors, behind a front of objectivity. As long as it is not publicly visible, it is possible and effective.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a sense, the hypothetical little world of the department is a world of limited good. It is as one professor remarked--"Academic funds are always limited funds." Within such a social system it is necessary to promote a 'competitive spirit' of the 'survival of the fittest' which becomes the selectivity of the system. It is meet deadlines or drown, publish or perish. It is necessary that everyone comes to believe in this imperative in order to effect, or confect the sense of immediacy and realism about the struggle, the ordeal, hence the values and priorities of the system. This is the subtle indirection about the system, the perversity of its power of authority, which, in the historical structure of the long run, is not really so subtle after all. Along with all the written rules, when one accepts to play the game, are all of the unwritten rules which makes the ideal system workable, indeed very human system, it is this way with any human system, social or otherwise, however, 'scientific' it seeks to define itself as. Unfortunately, not everyone knows or understands or is in position to exercise the unwritten rules equally or fairly. This confers a special 'players edge' advantage. This is an anthropological game, a circle of ego consciousness which goes on in our own anthropologically oriented heads, as well as in the 'mind' of the system as a whole. In our efforts to define and redefine our own ego identity in interrelation with significant others within the department, and counter reference others outside of the department 'in the field' we play a roundabout game of manipulation and denial. Through this constant play, we condition ourselves in a way which is 'pre-selected' congruent with the values of the system. We play games of denial an rejection of who we were and are and of how and why we came to be that way. As our models of ego identity do not always correspond well with our actual phenomenological realities, we are left to manipulate either one or the other, and most frequently, both, to bring them into congruence with one another. This leads to the 'socializing' of the anthropological ego identity to meet, even if in name only, the accepted standards of that grade status. There are several other models which sees the problem of human reality and its understanding as basically a matter of puzzle solving. This model is what defines science as 'paradigmatic'--another model. This suggest that when we refer to the teaching of anthropology as consciousness awakening, or as, we are implicitly alluding to a model of human development which might be better defined as 'intellectual/spiritual enlightenment'--(might add empowerment) in which the self, the superior ego, can hope to one day finally transcend the dialectical conflict of its own inherent contradictions, just as the system itself will one day, achieve its own utopia. And we have come full circle in our expanding consciousness, to not escape the limitations of our own reasoning. The circle of our own Reason. We are back to the days of Spencer--we have not broken the chains to our own intellectual and spiritual fetters, we have gotten no further from the place where we first started.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If anthropology is passing through an identity crises, it is because humanity is bypassing through a human identity crises, has been passing through an identity crises, as long as it has known its own history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In closing it is interesting to me how much or what people initially thought and said about my study. Once it became formally initiated, there was no turning back. I sensed defensiveness on some people's part and a subverted aggressiveness on the part of others. There was a temporary twitch in the stone face of power. Spurious smiles became glaring stares. People automatically presumed a critical aggressiveness, a self reflexive orientation even though I did not necessary intend this kind of approach. People read into what they wanted to see and no one really bothered asking what it was really about. After the initial shock dissipated the stone face and the white smile came back to normal--it did not make any difference, or only a 'disinterested difference'. It became as consigned officially to the trash-can of trivia, and quietly passed out of the immediacy of people's critical consciousness. Why I should be intended a self reflexive, hypocritical ethnography of the department, trying to spill the gory details of people's petty private lives, I don’t really know--except it only lead me to see another face behind anthropological professionalism, one that I have seen before, and am now quite familiar with. It is a historical fact, the suggestion of insult, that some kind of problem really does exist which may implicate people's personal lives, within the realm of anthropologia, a problem which is denied, ignored, neglected, rationalized away, as so much 'sweet lemons'. And this, ultimately, is the problem of power, and its human perverseness in history. If there were no problem, it would have been a different study which made no difference, rather than an indifferent study which makes, however covertly, a critical difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I elicited from a group of graduate students answers to what they thought my study was all about--"I think it is very interesting to find somebody asking about institutional issues in the department because usually Americans don’t question their own academic institution. I'm curious about the outcome of your research and the possible effect of its disclosure." "Auto reflexive anthropology at the personal, departmental and discipline level…at the discipline level: the anthropological study of anthropology itself…at the departmental level, the study of the workings of the department itself and relation to discipline and individuals…at the personal level--an examination and evaluation of your personal role in the discipline and in the department" "Impressions--taken to mean opinions. I'll give mine in detail but overall seen as a potentially very valuable examination of academic culture (what of it is specifically anthropological academic culture we don’t know) interesting to me personally because of my interest in sociology of the profession but also as an insider." Project seemed motivated by strong ideals and I've worried about openness to different material tat might emerge, less as time goes on…would have liked to be interviewed more and longer."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The ego reality and the cultural reality in which it is essentially situated, each from complex inter-functioning systems of stasis and adaptation. These systems are in their inter-functioning termed 'ecological'. There is a certain ecology of ego consciousness is which it works to construct a coherent, consistent conceptual model for the cultural reality which is by nature ego centered. Within this ego system of ego, be it anthropological or some other, there is an inter-functioning of belief and behavior such that internal and external realities become 'harmonized'. A person shape their beliefs around the existential necessities and choices of their behaviors,, behaviors become determined by existential. Anthropology is a belief system as much as it is a 'system of knowledge' or a system of science. Science itself, and especially 'true science' is a belief system. These belief systems orient behavior and provide direction and coordination for behavior. In this regard, they are little different from other kinds of ideological or symbol systems of meaning and signification which maintain a certain regularized praxis of behavior. All religions are exclusive, entailing a rejection of other competing systems, and the belief that there is only one true way. In this regard, true science, with its bottom line upon facticity, it unambiguous numerology, its positivistic 'prove it to me' fundamentalism, is every bit a religion. It is interesting that positivistic methodology excludes the possibility of religious belief as one of its central tenets and reason for being. Those who exclusively emphasize this hard line are committing the ultimate coup de grace for their own belief system. True science is especially exclusive and delusional in its denial of any belief system whatsoever except its own. Science is raised to a religion, and in its tyranny over the human soul destroys all contenders. But this happens, even though scientists themselves cannot agree on what real science is all about. Our conceptioning of narrow minded science must change if it is to be relied upon to create a better world, a more human world, a more ecologically adapted system.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The question becomes whether we can ever adequately escape the circle of our own ego centered system of belief and behavior, step outside of our own spheres of influence, to enable us to see a cultural system as a whole, in 'objective terms' especially one which we ourselves are fully, existentially involved with. Everyone is operating and functioning within their own spheres of belief and behavior, ought to see the system as a whole 'in its own terms' rather than just as a reflection of an ego centered reality. I believe in a sense, this is what ethnographic fieldwork enables us, more or less, to do. But in so doing we must step outside of our own spheres and systems of belief and behavior, and get to know those of many others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Only then can the broader outlines of the whole become ascertained. We employ within our spheres of influence, models of understanding and functioning--which provide meaning and sense of order to our realities--these models function as symbol systems of signification which become communicated to others in a common language with whom we interact. These models are always to some extent both implicit and explicit--they are the greenness of meaning. We daily employ implicit models, only if these are to be inferred 'unconsciously' or unselfconsciously, through the wider social implications of our behaviors. Science, in a very real sense, attempts to render implicit models explicit within a well defined language system, and to be more realistic, representing the whole which lies beyond the horizon of our own spheres of belief and behavior, by consistently tying its language system to correspondence values in phenomenological reality. Scientific models thus become empirically anchored to human reality in a way other systems of belief and behavior do not have to be. But in focusing upon the narrower, analytical role of explicating inter-functional models of reality, it cannot therefore exclude or deny the complementary, necessary, a priori larger role of implication in all human understanding of models. There is nothing without unseen, implicit values. To exclude and ignore the wider role of implication and the pursuit of implication in human understanding as the ground of meaning, is to restrict ego consciousness to the narrow horizons of one's own sphere of functioning, system of belief and behavior, and to commit science as a model of understanding which transcends the subjective horizon of ego consciousness, to become the victim of its own methodology. A language of implication is by nature one which is metaphorical, descriptive, and loosely tied to the data, it begets a form of consciousness which is open, imaginative, only loosely bound by the data. Science to be effective, is the marriage to these two language systems, their complementary dialectic employing implicit and explicit behavioral models in the understanding of human reality. True science attempts to exorcise unambiguity in language, inspite of the fact that these people remain, beneath their cool guise, inherently human unambiguous. The only important questions are not 'answerable ones' necessarily. Indeed these usually turn out to be the most trivial of answers. The most important questions are those which are inherently ambiguous and hence ultimately unanswerable. But this does not mean that our models of science we employ to understand these questions are irrelevant or impossible, 'fundamentally unfalsifiable'. It means that our answers are never finally 'correct' and therefore never perfect. But they can be made more realistic models about the whole. Just as meaning proceeds, consciousness proceeds from implication towards explication, so to does our language proceed from description to prescription in a narrower sense. All explicative models are by implication of their simplification and generalization, by their presumed validity, models which are prescriptive choices which reflect the value orientation and system of belief and behavior which creates models and invests them with importance. They entail a choice as to which, among several alternative answers, is necessarily the 'best' or 'correct' answer. True scientists adopt methodological criteria which serve to guide their judgment. They believe in the truth value of Parsimony or efficiency of explanation. They believe in truth value of reliability and falsifiability of the model--whether it can be empirically tested through experimental replication and control. Thus we have a system of belief begetting a system of ritually prescribed behavior, one which is complete within its laboratory setting, its purity, its white robes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Failure of these true scientists to understand the larger implicit role of history in human reality is due to their own failure to embrace the history of their own systems, of their own consciousness. The prescriptive rules of the game, however proscribed by holy writ, remain a matter of critical decision making, of choice, which in the final, existential analysis becomes quite arbitrary and human, and therefore historical in its broader implications. Decision models are always based upon value orientations of systems belief and behavior. The evaluation role in prescription stands in contrast to the interpretive role description. What is the difference which becomes critically significant in making a decision, ultimately these are guided by one's sphere of interests. Within the larger structural framework of an overarching political economy, these differences guided by critical interests revolve around the significance and importance of Money. It must be seen as part of a larger credit system, a vicious cycle or regenerative system, in which there is a general effort to 'materialize' significance--to precipitate and concrete, results which are quantifiable in terms of their mass which become credits which can be exchanged upon the academic marketplace for money and the status symbols and material advantages and emotional/existential security money can buy. This becomes fairly clear when one sees how systems of true science are linked up to funding agencies. Symbols and models, become invested with material significance, they become socially important, and is the real bottom line which makes the critical difference, empowering status symbols with the feeling of reality. This is the magic of money in a material culture. The central existential dilemma to be faced in becoming a 'professional' anthropologist, is the question of funding, and the production of credits in a credit system, to perpetuate and augment that funding.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All learning is normative, all questioning is dialectical, all language is descriptive, all teaching is by definition didactic. But we must be wary of unquestioned authority which dictates knowledge, which proscribes understanding, sanctions conformity, represses the asking of questions. Academic authority invested with the status of power, does not have the bottom line on truth, or even able necessarily better understanding of the direction to go, on the kinds of decisions to be made, which will lead to these understandings. We remain skeptical of academic authority, that what anything anyone might say, is necessarily correct or true, for some reason, better.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The process of becoming a professional anthropologist academically is a process of socialization, or 'professionalization' which teaches quite prescriptive appropriate models of belief and behavior. This system of instruction and training is to some extent pre-designed and predetermined around a more or less conventionalized model of belief and behavior deemed appropriate to becoming anthropological. These models preconditions peoples' adaptation within the cultural system of the department. This socialization process involves a repression of aspects of the self, upon significant reference others positively within the authority system of the academic milieu and negative upon counter reference others. To turn other people into a thing to be counted is to turn oneself, in one's own setting, into a thing to be counted--a thing to be used and manipulated. Both fields of perception and recognition become 'dumping grounds' of one's repressed ego motivations--others become the objects of wish fulfillment and ego gratification, to be used for one's private purposes, then conveniently discarded. Part of this professionalization process implies a desensitization to the ethical consequences of repression of aspects of the self in presentation/performance of the self in reference to significantly defined others. In learning how to present ourselves and perform routinely, in how to act and not to act, how to think 'critically' as anthropologists, in modeling the ego system of belief and behavior about a conventionalized role model of becoming/being the best anthropologist, we reject and deny the implications four our own being, the existential responsibility for the freedom of shaping our own human character. The conventional mold of the professional anthropologist is, I suggest, not big enough to serve as the best framework for the science of human understanding. It breaks under the weight of its own authority. We must learn how to ignore or deny the existential consequences of our own system of behavior. Anthropology is fun, exciting, as long as we have the 'fly away' power, the political economic means to remove ourselves at a moment's notice from the perils and dangers of the existential realities of the people we are 'studying'. We get to share in others lives while always keeping for ourselves an option of escape, of the back door, when the money runs out, when the seas become stormy. We suggest that we engage in the existential lives of significant counter reference others, without accepting the full existential consequences of such engagement, when the consequences of engagement reach critical points which come into conflict with out anthropological ego identity, with our 'objective' interests which are centered in the field of academia, which look toward another set of significant reference others, for the promotion of our own private interests. The myth of true science, neutral objectivity and the unquestioned presumption of the inherent 'goodness' of our science, is only a mythology, an ideology of false consciousness, a veil of Maya, disguising the existential consequences of its praxis. As long as we guard for ourselves the privileges, the monopoly of our own academic powers, self guard the 'fly away' option which protects of existentially when 'out in the field' then we are refusing to accept the other 'on their own terms' and making them accept us 'on our terms'. It is incomplete involvement, half hearted commitment to the understanding of the lives of others, because it is divided commitment, spurious not genuine interest, involvement with a critical, creditable difference, because it is existentially, ethically, irresponsible commitment. It is the perversity of anthropological power to deny its own history in the making. It could not have come to pass without the necessary money, the funding, which created its power, which privileged its way of life with authority, which empowered it. The hypocrisy is to return from the field 'fulfilled'--taking the other into ourselves--we become the transformed spokesmen of the best interests of others, the only interests, the mediators of their differences. The other in us becomes the legitimacy of our power, our authority--the other has been appropriated for the private interests of ego identity. The hypocrisy comes with the lack of reflexive recognition of this historical fact and act of appropriation--when we, within our own community, become the official representatives, the voice, the embodiment of the other's symbols, without the incorporation of the other's existentiality. It is when one anthropologist dares to speak for a whole culture, a whole people, for all of anthropology, in his own and their best interests. It is placing ourselves above and beyond the reach of the significant others we ultimately address in the larger dialectic of history. And we must in the structure of the long run suffer the consequences of perpetuating in ingenuous, spurious, true science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within this department, there are many different 'competing' models and many different interests. There are several party lines which are engaged in promoting their own interests vis-à-vis the department as a whole, but right now, there is one party line which remains predominate. It is male dominated. It is a conspiracy to promote their own orientations above all others. Its scheme is gradual revision--weed out by benign neglect the less fit, gradually restructure the program, bringing into it 'more useful, more highly rated, better students'. Generating research in order to make more money is its primary function. In its monopoly from its corner of the academic marketplace it is setting the norms and standards of academic professionalization--promoting 'critical thinking', 'framing of answerable questions', prefabricating research hypothesis, emphasizing competitive performance, presentation. It sticks to a very behavioristic program of training. It fosters a true science orientation which is undeniably positivistic, statistical, 'social scientific'. It is intent on explain human diversity, and change in this diversity, focusing thus, emphasizing analytical differences between people. It is aiming deliberately for paradigmatic closure of the anthropological community--a model of normal social science which is anti-humanistic, and comes straight out of Scientific American. It is aiming to define human reality as preeminently biological, seeing culture as adapted to biology, tracking genetic evolution, rather than conferring biological adaptability, or leading genetic co-evolution. It sees other sub-disciplines to this overarching goal to explain human biology and behavior as means to its own ends.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In order to achieve paradigmatic closure as a scientific community, anthropology must, as a whole be reduced to being a hand maiden of biology in the explication of 'human nature'. As long as the anthropological community insists upon defining itself paradigmatically as a natural science, it has no other consequence but this inexorable 'nothing but' biological reduction. To pass itself off as 'ecology' is its ticket to the arena, its bureaucratic label its stamp of approval, in a world of big brother bureaucracy. But it is more than a mere suggestion, alternative anthropological models exist. This model is unphilosophical, anti-rational, simply because it is not a genuine science, but true science in a religious sense of promoting in belief and behavior positivistic fundamentalism. Evolution is its only response to human history, and ecology is its synchronic discourse, a historical discourse.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is not to deny an important place to this kind of biological science in the understanding of human nature--but it cannot be over emphasized above other forms and ways of anthropological understanding without having destructive consequences upon the discipline as a whole. To promote personal ambitions in the guise of public authority is to deny the historical consequences for such promotion. Such paradigmatic unity is inevitably bought at the cost of ultimate moral default. There exists a systematic, equally scientific 'something more' models which does not deny the consequences of the power of its knowledge. It is paid for by the opportunity cost of realizing alternative models of belief and behavior, by the cost of dimensioning degrees of existential freedom in becoming and being an anthropological professional which is not so ego centered upon models of academic authority. The shortcomings of this anti-rational model of true science becomes most evident whenever it becomes bold, moving from the trivial important questions which are framed in answerable ways, to the trivial questions which are more essentially ambiguous and unanswerable--it is an inevitable leap of faith in which this system of belief and behavior attempts to achieve closure upon the understanding of human reality. Then it becomes clear what this scientific systematizing is really all about. The trail of its paradigmatic progress is littered with the carcasses of its many failures--and they have gotten nowhere, because they are making the same mistakes they have always been making, for the same exact reasons. It is not a real science, because it is not open to learning by its own mistakes. It must deny its own history in the circle of its ideological deception in order to continue to justify its own 'mode of informant realization'. In its comfort of material security, professional privilege, scientific certitude, academic authority, it denies its own essential existential ambiguity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The black and the white of the paradigmatic sciences and the anti-scientific humanities becomes the historical dialectic of two cultures in constant contradiction. To over emphasize the black or the white is to fail to recognize the greyness of their mutual complementarity dialectical complementarity. There is a place for science for anthropology, but there is also an equally important place for the humanities, to deny one or the other is to destroy the synergy of the whole system of understanding--it is to destroy its historical dialectic and render its special culture spurious in its functioning. To see the whole is to see the yin and yang of the whole system--to focus upon the in between greyness of their dialectical turning through history. Anthropology has a transcendent more rational model which is both scientific and humanistic. It can be both paradigmatically and unparadigmatic simultaneously and be 'a-paradigmatic' in their mutual destruction.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(PART OF THE BEGINNING OF THIS SENTENCE IS MISSING PAGE 126: CHAPTER IV) on the anthropology department, students and faculty, concerning how they view the department, and some of the interactions that occur." "You may want to look at how the students perceive the department of anthropology works. The student's perception will be used to appreciate what the department thinks of itself and what is in reality." "I think you have some personal questions concerning academic bureaucracy, politics, gender bias in this department superficially and the university in general. Through this study, you are trying to understand the perception of this problem from a student's point of view and the point of view of professors." "I believe you were trying to understand the decision making structure within the anthropology department to find out whose interests (faculty or students) were being served." "you're carrying out a study of departmental <u>politics</u> via in depth interviews with graduate students." "Hugh is examining this anthropology department mainly by interviewing the graduate students who are studying in this department. What is the purpose of studying here? What kind of interpersonal relationship does each student have with the professors or other students? And so on. He may get the personal network data in this department. "I think it is important to do this type of study on an academic department where input and analysis of policies and procedures are ignored or overlooked." "1. A critical study on the anthropology department. 2. About students/faculty conceptions of the department, their roles and their aspirations. 3. How to improve the department. 4. What the learning/teaching process in this department is all about." The project is interesting for a couple of reasons: 1. There is an apparent silence to the gap in communication between: faculty-faculty, faculty-student, student-student. It'll be interesting to discover if its possible to understand impressions on the individuals in this department and what is creating the diversity. 2. There is no reason why not. "Knock 'em dead, Hugh! Anything to shake the dust, blow the cobwebs away or displace the cornerstones of this hallowed institution has my vote." "Looking at the neurosis inside the department, possibly related to types of dominance and submissive relationships of faculty and students--expressed by lack of accurate information." "I don't know what you are doing, I guess I missed the day(s) you discussed it."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The 'data' speaks both quite literally and figuratively for itself, if only one learns to pay attention to 'it'. I am not the model of the perfect anthropologist--I have more human weaknesses and faults, and have made more human mistakes than most--but I am not alone.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I haven't yet met anyone who is that good at being what he/she says they are.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Here already we are encountering a conviction that will be implicit in my whole lecture. If the definition of what is rational is narrowed beyond its true meaning until it excludes subjective experience, a great part of what it means to be a human person, then we are forced into a betrayal of all that is most distinctive of our species.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I have come to have a distrust of the contemporary worship of 'rigorous objectivity' and the withdrawal of the personal even from human studies. In my own subject, for example, I have argued that excavation reports should not be deprived of descriptions of the expedition, the workers, the surroundings, moments of triumph or disaster and other such relevant human affairs. It is quite wrong to think that scientific truth will be better served by treating that highly social and individual operation as though it were a manipulation on a laboratory bench. The chief result is to make the reports repulsive to all but the specialist. That perhaps, unconsciously, is the purpose.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The analytical approach has had a astounding success in the physical sciences that it has produced an equally astounding hubris among the smaller minded scientists. What was really a method, one way of turning our brains upon limited aspects of the universe that has produced them, has tended to become a view of life, a totalitarian ideology. It has been held that nothing that cannot be measured and proved experimentally has any validity. Extreme, and I think we can say extremely naïve, forms of behaviorism and positivism have captured able minds. Philosophy has been castrated, metaphysics made a dirty word.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Looked at in terms of <u>being</u>, reductionist thought suggests that the whole is no more than the sum of its parts and so leads to an old fashioned mechanistic view. Applied to man this kind of thinking can still produce painful crudities. For example, that man 'is nothing but a complex biochemical mechanism powered by a combustion system which energizes computers with prodigious storage facilities for retaining encoded information'. Looked at in terms of <u>becoming</u>--that is within the dimension of time, reductionism suggests that the evolved form is explained by its origins, the fruit by its roots. This reduction to origins can be stopped at any point that pleases the reducer. A vast reading public was apparently delighted to be reduced to Desmond Morris's <u>Naked Ape</u>. Or if we prefer it, we can go back to the assumption, to paraphrase, that there is nothing in man which was not first in the amoebae.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">First of all there will certainly have been a process of self selection. Many different types of man and woman are attracted to the various sciences but they will be broadly different from those who are drawn rather to the arts and humanities. Among them the finest will have the imaginative, intuitive powers that enable them, as Sir Peter Medawer has admitted, to leap ahead to fame those bold new hypothesis that can afterwards be tested experimentally. Scientists of this caliber will never be crude reductionists, for they cannot forget that this method is only an abstraction from the fullness of life. But they are always a small minority. The average scientist is liable to be practical, an admirer of efficiency and soon to become deeply entrenched in his specialty. Such a man is very ready to forget the fullness of life, to see it projected in his two dimensional world, fixed like a butterfly pinned out on the collector's board. It is so much easier to study that way when it is flitting among the flowers. Then there are the external pressures which may be greater than we realize. In the final discussion at Alpbach, a venerable American scientist rejoicing in the degree of unity that members of the symposium had attained, said "there are so many things that fall into place, if one is careful to avoid doctrinaire prejudice, and avoids acting the way one usually does in one's own guild, where nobody in modern society dares to step out and speak his mind as we have done in this interdisciplinary group, where none of us gets jobs from the other, and nobody has to worry." If you feel like that at the top, what is it like when you are far lower down?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is not, however, the extravagant use of academic resources for a small return do far as the reconstruction of history is concerned that appeals to me most, nor even the slight smell of intellectual dishonesty that arises from the 'scientific' display. Rather it is the fact that if these methods and this outlook prevail all those elements in human life that are not amenable to measurement and analysis will tend to be neglected. We are back, in fact, wit the deficiencies of reductionism at their most extreme, where it is man's self awareness and its fruits that are lost in the analytical process. Religious sentiment, the arts, intellectual adventure cannot be expressed in graphs, tables and histograms; moreover to convey anything about them demands a high standard of literacy. Better, then, concentrate on technology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I will end with a few words about the effect of this long spell of reductionist thought on all civilized societies of this planet, the East almost equally with the West. I agree with the judgment eloquently expressed by Victor Frankl: it represents the modern version of nihilism--nothing-but-ness in place of nothingness. Here we have the amazing spectacle of men of highly human capacity denying those capacities--so bravely built up (or unfolded) during thousands of million years. The more extreme absurdities of behaviorism and logical positivism have died as they deserved among the elite, but they still spread among the rest of the populace. The mind is nothing but a computer, love is nothing but a goal inhibited sex and so on. And still it comes down from above: 'Values and meanings <u>are nothing but</u> defense mechanisms and reaction formations' some of your value psychologists are saying. It is a kind of belittlement of man that foes with the breaking down of the whole person into little parts and finding nothing human in them; the kind of sub-humanism that sees defecating as being in some way more real and therefore more important than writing a poem.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Since that time what wonders men have created, what richness and variety we have known! Essentially all I have tried to say to you is that we still inhabit a mystery, and that the best of scientific wisdom recognizes that this is so. Those scientist who live as a whole and imaginative men do not believe that anyone has proved that their minds, their individual psyches, are nothing but chance responses to chemical and molecular games played on the skin of the earth. The degraded masochism of this <u>nothing but</u> does not represent a rational view of the universe. Let us have the courage to accept the inner experience that tells us that we are something more--and that we may be part of a process that is something much greater still. (Jacquetta Hawks; <u>The John Danz Lectures</u>, 1972)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">V</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SEEING WITH ROSE COLORED GLASSES</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">on learning to look beyond the department: the view from within<font SIZE="3"></p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">the present moment, then, is all important. Mahayana writers point out that the semblance of unreality in the present is due to its receding into the past. But existence and nonexistent are not features of a thing but are the thing itself. The venerable Indian texts have said: "The nature of anything is its own momentary stasis and destruction." For the Buddha, who 'transcends the eons', 'there exists neither past nor future.' Buddha himself expressed sorrow for those who fail to risk the moment and allow it to slip by. He taught his disciples 'not to lose the moment'. In particular one should respond to the illumination of the 'favorable moment' which projects man into the eternal. This may be any moment--now. (R.G.H. Siu; <u>Ch'I: A Neo-Taoist Approach to Life</u>, 1974: 15-16)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">in the methodological praxis of the beliefs and behaviors surrounding the becoming and being of a professional anthropologist, there are always two sides, two faces of the same coin--the etic and the emic. To emphasize one and exclude the other are to neglect the historical dialectic implicit in ethnographic participation and observation. The previous chapter present an etic approach of a survey which was done in a very 'emic manner'. This chapter focuses upon basically an 'emic' approach which is attempted very etically. It covers the same anthropological reality the department, but it does so from the insider's point of view, look out beyond the horizon of the department, onto a larger community. It is based upon two semesters of acquaintance with the 'system' and its people, as an 'observing' participant as an enrolled member of the department. While I have remained more or less upon its periphery, looking in, I have occasionally taken the opportunity to look beyond the department and see it in a larger context.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important to anyone within the department to learn to look out and beyond its doors, for so only by doing so can the individual orient oneself within a much larger framework, hopefully in a more realistic way. If the individual did not have this larger frame of mind, then the individual's ego identity would become exclusively defined within the parameters set down by the department structure--their sense of identity would be necessarily distorted in unrealistic ways by the looking glass. I have, furthermore, gone through the first year's process of initiation and at the end of it I feel a bit ambivalent about anything. I have suffered through some of the emotions of anguish and frustration, of ego loss and rejection, of anonymity and loneliness within the program, and I know from talking with many people that I am not alone. I know that may of these people who have these kinds of feelings keep it to themselves, repressing it and putting on a happy face. I know that maybe this is the best of possible things to do. But also almost anyone must also once in a while look out upon a larger reality in order to get a better sense of proposition about their own existential reality. People set deadlines for themselves, to rush through the program schedule to get to the light at the other end of the tunnel. It is easier to cope, if one has never really been to live outside of the academic framework except in the framework of fieldwork, vacation or hiatus. The existential commitment required by academic standards becomes ended, when one exits school academically. It takes a little getting used to the 'really real world' just as when a person reenters the academic structure, it takes a spot of time to get 'one's feet back on the ground'. Once one's existential ties to academia are cut loose, then the notion of academic achievement motivation and intellectual character recedes into the background. One changes existentially. One's values, attitudes, orientations and life directions change as well, and often quite dramatically. But if one has never really been existentially independent of academic structure, then there remains a sort of taken for granted authenticity of academic values and orientations which are difficult to objectify or realize outside of one's own ego identity. One's own character remains rooted to academic soil--without suffering the shock of soul loss. But there is also a burn out factor to be confronted down the long academic trail. Burn out happens when an individual peaks out in their inherently upwardly mobile career. The problem with any hierarchical power structure is that there is only limited spaces in the upper echelons, and there are always more than enough people willing to fill them. This means that changes are against any single person, regardless of how good they are, to make it up to the very top rungs of success. The higher up the climb, the more stiff the climb, the less room for maneuvers and the more pressure from your competition. Burnout come soon gradually when one finds oneself still spinning one's wheels but not getting further ahead. There is a noticeable lack of social reinforcement commensurate for one's expenditures and one eventually begins seeing younger, strange faces in positions of authority and privilege above oneself. At this point incentive and motivation begin to run dry--no matter how much one tries or wills, it never proves adequate enough to propel one forward onto the next plateau. One is left struggling just to maintain the ground one has gained, as a crowd of people rush by. But burnout is a systemic affliction which becomes reflected in the changed attitude of the victim--his identity becomes alienated from its well-spring of meaning and inspiration. One is left to face the limitations of one's position within the system, as well as a resurgence of all these compulsive weaknesses which one has kept a handle on for so long. Academic strength dissipates , vigor wanes, depression sets in, as one find old comrades and colleagues redefining your ego identity for you, rationalizing away your shortcomings. The burnout syndrome shows plain as day, and once the hawks and watchdogs and old cronies turned friendless begin to see the symptoms, they begin labeling the person. Then the most an individual can do is to make a lateral move, to reposition oneself in another program, department or school. Or else to start building up the bulwarks of the ego defense--to become an island in a sea of anthropologia, to become eventually forgotten and ignored. One has become committed to fighting a holding action for the entire duration, restructuring one's ego identity to protect it from any untoward advances. But even if one manages to gain in time a few inches of advance, it will probably have been a Pyrhic victory--hardly worth what it cost.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If my thesis that the credibility and validity of academic authority rests upon the channels of access to limited funding, then when and if these funding sources become turned off from above or re-channeled into another academic area, then the seemingly solid foundation of academic authority begins to break down and crumble asunder. The motivational superstructure remains 'in name only'. Even more if the promise of future employment remains unfulfilled, and for the part an empty promise, then disillusionment must either begin to creep into the seams or else people to alleviate a great deal of existential cognitive dissonance, entrench themselves in systems of rationalization, of belief and behavior, which will enable them to make an island of their own ego identity, seemingly, temporarily cut off from the wider streams of history. There is gossip which is spread from coast to coast about the anthropology job market 'opening up in the next ten years' with the retirement of 'WW2 and Korea Era' professors. I first heard this rumor from an ex-colleague of my own, one who showed me the back door of friendless smiles. I call it defensive rationalization about a sinking ship. It is very possibly a rumor instigated by the triple AAA to prevent a run upon their academic bank of credibility. The reality of the future remains to be seen, but if one must honestly assess it from the events of the past decade, it is not a hopeful reality. And yet people who already have many years of investment need to have something at the end of their trials and tribulations to shoe for their educational big bucks, something besides just a piece of paper and a handshake. For most people except the most privileged dew, anthropology has never been a great investment. It probably won't be getting any better in a world that is rapidly shrinking. But still people who already have money riding, hedge their bits and chant little spells that their gamble will eventually pay off.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I will not hold my breath today in anticipation of something to happen tomorrow.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But those who exit anthropology leaving it behind existentially without the expectation of ever returning, find that the world does not necessarily end upon the anthropological horizon, indeed, it is only just another new beginning as one discovers a whole world of many 'conscious awakening' interests. Why anthropologists should believe and behave as if they have some kind of privileged monopoly upon 'consciousness awakening experiences' I do not really understand, except that this privilege is bought at great cost and little beyond extra intrinsic, ego concentric rewards. The awakening of anthropological consciousness is indeed only just a birth experience--it is the beginning of a road to human maturity and not necessarily its end. Indeed, one can learn to live separately, independently from anthropology. And then too, one begins to learn the real wisdom and value behind the anthropological perspective. No matter what kind of situation one gets oneself into, one can always fall back upon a broader understanding which can be appreciated in the silence of ignorance company. It is learning to listen to the anthropological meaning of the silence--the sound of one hand clapping in the corridors of human history, that one gains true transcendental enlightenment. The active anthropological voice which need to compulsively tell the entire world what its problem is learns to shut up, and listen to the real sounds of other peoples' voices. It gives up spurious knowledge of what it thinks about the world, to better appreciate genuine understanding of what the world itself really thinks and moves to do its work. Post academic anthropologia is a private, peaceful, personal realm where one can find solace and comfort of understanding that the dirty world cannot contaminate with cacophony and noise.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Those who have been brought up within academia have their authority defined by 'lay' people who tend to treat them respectfully as if they know what they are talking about. The well conditioned academic authoritarian comes to believe that he/she knows what one is talking about, and expects to be treated this way at all times. Snobbery results when their own ignorance bits their tongue or slaps them in the face. Acting and thinking like you really know what you are talking about, what you are supposed to know, that you are indeed an expert and authority upon sacred realms of understanding, leads a person into a predisposition of addressing other similarly unqualified as if they were ignorant, and didn’t know what they are talking about. This academic authoritarianism then learn to address the ignorance of another person, and finds its main audience among ignorant people, or else among a community of scholars who play funny games with each others heads and egos.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">These are not common sense comments, they are derived from personal experience as an acting ex-anthropologist and from the observations of other professionals acting as anthropologists.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The other side of the coin of ego identity is the possible lose of ego anonymity. The other side of the coin of authority of ego consciousness is the possibility of the anomie of ego consciousness. Anthropological anonymity and anomie are threats those well situated in academia are protected against--but when and if they leave the protection of their birthplace, they no longer have the ready screens of protection around their ego identity. Then ego must be redefined as its left to stand upon its own. One loses one's naïve innocence from existential responsibility, but one no longer suffers the spell of un-disillusioned ignorance. Respect does not appeal to the differences or ignorance of others. It appeals to the shared sense of common humanity, a sense of personal identity, and integrity, found in each of us. Growing up in the real world anthropologically is not the same thing as being 'brought up' in the academic world of anthropologia. Education makes an important and intrinsically valuable difference, but in the longer world of humanity, it is an important difference which is important, because it makes no difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Those securely situated within academic anthropologia like to take their job seriously, even if a bit routinely, no matter what may be happening in the larger context. They maintain an illusion that what they are doing educationally will make an important difference in the lives of their students--that they necessarily have something which is valuable to be 'proffered' to those willing to pay them some attention. They like to think they can 'share a rich experience' to needy others, who by some forfeit of historical happenstance, come seeking their enlightenment. Sometimes, in order to make a difference, perhaps because it may not really make much difference, they tend to take their jobs a little too seriously perhaps, and end up expecting everyone else o be taking theirs seriously, 'as if it made an important difference'. But as a friend informs me, a professor who is egocentric and preoccupied with power over others, tend to be 'too serious'. He does not mean by this that the person is too genuine, too committed, over involved with research, but rather that person is too selfish, too unfriendly, to unhelpful, biases in his 'objective' evaluations and cannot be depended upon to help out when the going becomes more difficult. And one cannot always judge by a book by its cover only--by the way one dresses or smiles or speaks. It is not always easy to determine the best, most suitable committee for one's own interests, such that one is not left spinning one's wheels just to please the beliefs and behavioral interest of a significant reference other. And if one finds too many who tend to be taking their own jobs to seriously, then this becomes a critical difference which makes an historical difference in one's own success or failure.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of the academic environment is that it is an artificially contrived environment. It is a hermeneutic utopia of the establishment, a veritable model city upon the hill. It is the place the outside world is supposed to look up to, not down upon. Being confected, its sense of reality is not necessarily proportionate within the larger framework. There is an important ritual reason for this insulation, this sanction of protection--it is where sacrosanct values of the system become realized, where an individual's social character becomes socialized and specialized, to function within a complex world. It is easy to lose sense of proportionality about things within academia. Things are made the way they should be but never really ever quite are. This exceptional environment of conditioning leads to an exaggerated sense of ego involvement in reality--of the sense of importance and of 'making a difference'. But the streets in real life are always two way--involving both give and take, without always fair return. One spin-off of this sense if privileged insulation is that there develops an academic discourse and dialogue which is almost totally removed from the everyday existential workings of the real world. Things which are academic only take on the appearance of substantial reality--things which are important in a real world get consistently ignored. But this is a trite cliché about the academic tradition. But academic structure fosters this sense of insulation because, in order to become successful upon the academic ladder of success, it requires almost total and complete commitment of one's lifetime. Other episodes and experiences of one's life record become tangential to academic just as academic experience and qualifications can become very easily tangential in another kind of real world situation. It thus become fairly easy to adopt a distorted sense of larger reality, which is not existentially commensurate with the larger stream of history. I would suggest that while academia remains an invaluable life experience enhancing immeasurably the quality of a person's life, it should never be allowed to become the main or only experience of a person's existence, then it becomes empty and shallow indeed. Academia should be protected in its ivory tower armchair, but its realm is not thereby inviolably sacrosanct, untouchable--its all the more important that its doors and windows be wide open to a larger vision of human reality, which the lone academician scholar in his lofty heights can scrutinize more distantly, and hopefully, more objectively. But power should not be allowed into the realm of anthropology, for behind power is human perversity. Anthropologia becomes corrupted by the preoccupation with limited power--it fosters authoritarian power structures among petty, over inflated academic egos who lack a real sense of understanding of the broader reality. As long as its hypothetical discourse remain entirely academic it is safe from corruption--but when vested interests are intent upon the pursuit of power from within, from personal aggrandizement and professional glorification, then academia no longer serves its primary purpose of remaining academic. It becomes a marketplace encapsulated within the narrow parameters of an bureaucracy, where everyone and his brother is competing for a monopoly.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Among students committed to an academic course or program, there is always a constant pressure towards over involvement and subsequently a continual need, a healthy resistance, 'to get away from it all for a while'--weekend excursions, locking oneself in one's bedroom and the holiday escapes homeward--to renew one's sense of perspective. A few days or weeks suffices for the time being to renew a sense of balance, restore a sense of more realistic proportion about one's existentiality. Preaching and practicing academic value orientations becomes a long and tedious, at times quite boring process. Students come with high hopes and high expectations for future success and successful adjustment, inevitably are bound to feel extreme let down at the reality. They are in a sense setting themselves up for let down because no one but their own naturally vicarious desires promised them a rose garden. This let down can be quite extremely traumatic for especially sensitive and hopeful students. It is like training for a good job and then when job hunting, realize the existential limitations of your own qualifications in securing a job--I have experienced it with myself, and seen it with others. But when facing existential reality one usually adjusts one's sights to a more realistic and reasonable size, and then, given persistence of the pursuit, more tangible, reasonable rewards are waiting. But at the time of let down depression and rejection, withdrawal can set in which leads to a vicious downward spiral without a bottom. People can also be let down existentially when they are informed they are over qualified for a job--another way of saying one's education really doesn’t mean anything. And then even more existentially let down when one discovers the only kinds of jobs available are those for which that person is over qualified for. But existentially speaking, the real costs of getting an education which promises not to pay off is that, not of unfulfilled job expectations or promises, because one discovers suddenly they are the wrong 'type' or fall into the wrong 'bureaucratic category'. The real heavy costs which weigh upon the soul like a ton of bricks are the inevitable potential opportunity of suddenly discovering that the trail one was pursuing led nowhere after all, despite all the signs along the way. Somewhere one was misdirected, misled, or misread the road signs. As one progresses down the road one accumulate an ever growing fund of experiences and mistakes and wisdom of mistakes made and lessons learned but also uses up one's finite resources of existential options and opportunities and resources. And while there is no turning back once a critical decision has been made there is stopping dead midstream and making a radical turn.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is unfortunate nobody is keeping track of the attrition rates from anthropologia, to learn better who might fall into the 'high risk group'--but then there may be a very real need not to know, or to ignore, this kind of knowledge. It seems to me it would be a matter of professional principle, if nothing else, for persons in charge to take an interest in those who choose to drop out and why they choose to do so, in order to alleviate their stress, if not their own. But the impression to be gained is that because anthropology is largely an artificial environment--most of the relationships formed are in principle ad hoc., situationally defined and ephemeral, not extending very far beyond the bounds of the department, any great distance or length of time. One is drawn by existential circumstances into association with others who, through sharing similar interests and needs, may actually be very different kinds of people with very different value orientations. There is always thus a superficiality and superfluousness of social relations which rarely breach the surface appearance. There is a hollowness to people's words as they echo down the corridors of power. To find a genuinely good friendship that lasts a lifetime beyond the department is indeed an exception to an academic rule of thumb--mind your own business. Thus, people come and go with little fanfare, and only the most farcical and hypocritica, the most 'special' people have high visibility or maintain a high profile within the department. If people choose to remain or leave the department, it is of little lasting concern to anyone else, little mention is made, except for the rumor control circuit of the grapevine. In the structure of the long run, the academic department is a corporate organizational structure which extends well beyond the life of any single member's involvement. It is the form and process itself which makes the critical difference. If people expect or build up high hopes of forming long lasting friendships and genuine rapport within the department, they are likely setting themselves up to be let down again. This too, is part of the learning process. Occasionally an exceptional person's reputation may outlive his/her physical and mental presence in the department and by and large people come and go, put in their time and two cents worth, take their diploma in hand, and walk off into the sunset. The only physical reminders like tombstones upon a shelf, are copies of the thesis collected over the years 'for safekeeping'. No single person within the department, me nor you, makes that much difference in the larger frame of reference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">So it is wiser to look at the department setting as a job, as a means of employment and as a marketplace where one bids for one's career opportunities. To learn to see the department setting as an academic marketplace is a more realistic adjustment for taking the academic clearing house existentially for what it really is. One learns the ropes, where the market opportunities and moments lie. One learns not to feel too disappointed when one misses one's chances for a market exchange or profitable transaction, because there will be other opportunities other days. One can then even share a little bit of the joy in others success and commensurate in others failures. But one knows that however like an ass-hole a person behaved to you one day, he/she must show their face to you on the following day, and learn to accept you as a competitive member in the same marketplace. Shortsighted market strategies of capitalizing upon immediate rewards may backfire and rebound upon you on following days. One learns to shop around and seek out more informed advice from many different people. One never allow oneself to become too bothered or sensitive to the inanities and subjective un-realities of ego conflict and games. One learns to keep one's head afloat in rough seas and even to swim a little more strongly for a distant shore. In the academic marketplace one learns to get the most for his time, to place the system more effectively--what professors to concentrate upon, which ones to avoid. One learns to expect from others a certain market performance that is worthy of one's time and attention. One can even learn to expect this from professors who somehow seem to know it all. In the marketplace, people don't necessarily get what they 'deserve' but what they bid for and what they pay for--it is not 'fair', it is capitalistic. Thus one learns American citizenship values, of not allowing ones neighbor to bother one too much.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is much anguish and mental pain in tearing down ones old models of reality which seemed so tried and true and comfortable like a trussed mule, especially if what replaces these models is exceptionally foreign or somehow seem inadequate replacements. They assist more immediate adjustment in the existential demands--this is why they are instituted, but their longer range or deeper value may be quite dubious when compared to previous models which seemed to be more successful in previous settings or more realistically adapted to existential exigencies. If what replaces old models is somehow questionable, seemingly false or superfluous, then there will be psychological resistance, in which there will occur a kind of syncretic bastardization, trying the salvage and hang on to the best of the previous world, bringing in the best of the new world, while leaving out the worst. In the long run these models might prove to be unsuccessful eventuating in maladaptive behavioral patterns. This is an intrinsic part of the migration experience, of sojourning at great distances and for long periods of time, and it applies to sojourning students who are traveling through anthropologia. There is a failure and refusal to embrace the whole of the new, or to leave the best of the old--there can be much internal schism and conflict as these internal differences are forced to fit together within a single personality. Fear is a very natural outcome of meeting the strange and the new, as so is an ambivalent kind of excitement and anticipation--these can become to seem unrealistic if pronounced or focused upon seemingly trivial or unimportant things. Fears become all pervasive, decenter in the personality such that the environment seems to be overwhelming like a tsunami, one loses a sense of environmental and self control--there is resistance and withdrawal. There is a need to escape to overcome and regain one's inner sense of balance. There sometimes seems to be a moral deficit of personality that wants or expects more than it seems to deserve, that 'wants their cake and eat it too'. If new models which replace or substitute old ones in the transformation of ego identity and consciousness, prove through time to be less satisfactory than previous ones, there is always a malingering sense of dissatisfaction, of estrangement, of unhappiness about one's existential predicament. This is one of the important risks of exercising existential freedom. It is a responsibility of facing the future without a guarantee of success.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Repression of the self in adaptation to an environment is a necessary coping mechanism for the stresses caused within that changed environment. It is the existential price we pay for transformation into something new and different, but not necessarily, not assuredly better. Some people pay a higher price than others and this is not necessarily because of mediocrity--it is only a reflection of the mediocre banality of a system which cannot tolerate the noise or ambiguity of different personalities within a single 'information' channel. But to pass, transform people must, no matter how much resistance they may have to finally put away, how much 'sacrifice' they may feel themselves to be making. If they fail to allow themselves to be transformed by the demands and imperatives of the system, they will not be successful--the past has too strong a hold to let go of. This is why there is premium on younger, 'brighter' students who have essentially no past except academic to let go of. They are more manipulatable and malleable to the demands of the system. There are more opportunities and existential choices yet to be made. They do not yet have to live with the survivalist imperative of 'publish or perish' or even 'pass or fail'--they simply continue not noticeably minding doing what they are told so that no harm can come to them.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If repression has been usually strong, or traumatic or dramatic, one can expect the resultant amount of academic authoritarianism to be high. If no perceived choice or conscientious decision was subjectively perceived in this transformation process, one can also expect the degree of authoritarianism to be high. The conflict in the self is great--the walls compartmentalizing the personal from the public, and the private from the personally shared, can be quite high and impenetrable. The amount of projection one must do to keep these walls strong, of 'character displacement' is also a lot, and this kind of projection upon significant others of internal, inimical differences, is a way of keeping the walls intact, impenetrable, impervious to threat or insult. But this projection for the maintenance of ego identity leads to a prejudicial, ignorant and discriminating perception of a significant other who lives upon the horizon of one's own sphere of existential belief and behavior. This distortion and denial of the reality of significant others has significant, critical implications for the academically authoritarian character--for it determines the range and objects, characterized by boredom, intense disinterest or distaste in a topic or person presenting the topic. It determines the ego identities selectivity of perception and cognition in human reality, especially in regard to significant others. Only when one begins to tear down the boundaries in one's own soul can that person become more open minded and genuinely objective in interest in things. Only then can a person begin to bring other's into his world, and begin to genuinely enter the world of others. These are critical periods in the life of a person--the doors of existential reality suddenly swing open, for whatever reason and a person begins to be transformed. I have witnessed this with the transformation of refugees and immigrants--the opening of the doors of consciousness and the windows of perception and a streaming in of a new, strange and overwhelming world.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is sometimes preceded by a great lull before the storm, a great depression of a person's final descent into the maelstrom of inchoate, misplaced consciousness. The breaking down of the last barriers of the soul, the dark ages of the soul preceding the renaissance. But other people are unable, for various reasons of extraordinary strong attachments to things and interrelations, to give up and break the fetters of the past. The become like lost little children without a home. They become the homeless refugees from existence, the vagabonds of freedom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The view from the inside looking beyond the department marketplace is putting on and learning to wear gracefully a pair of rose colored eye glasses which somehow makes the world look happier while hiding the feelings people can see in one's eyes. It is sweet lemons rationalization which assists one's capacity to tolerate nonsense and to adapt more efficiently to the ceaseless demands of the system. There are, in this emic approach towards the etic, several key features of the academic landscape which are visible through some of its inner windows. There is the gateway of the past through which every one entered at some point in time, and there is a doorway opening upon the future through which most hope to eventually pass. Beyond this, there is no seeing. There are also several side portholes and several interior doorways which one must successfully navigate through. The first is that of Time Management, the second is that of Spatial Allocation, the third is that of Funding Distribution. Then there are Performance Rating-Ranking and one's own Ego Presentation. It is also important to see that the pathways which course through the corridors of the department open onto larger concrete walkways of an academic institution which open onto roadways of a local community and a larger university network, which open onto state highways which in turn open onto a nation and a world of people and differences. Learning to look out emically through rose colored glasses is an important step in the transformation of one's ego identity--it brings with it that though one may be existentially lonely within the strange department, one is not necessarily alone in a bigger world. This marks the end of the settling in period, and for all students it is a different length of time, and it is the point at which the individual student finally realizes that it is not so different, and there really is light at the end of the tunnel. This is also the period at which the real work begins.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">One of the most important values of the system, is the value of efficient Time Management. People are rewarded or not by becoming routine operationally efficient in the management of time process. Power is largely measured by the length of time span which under a person's control as well as the number of people and amount of time in their lives controlled. It is amazing how much time remains an important factor in the daily lives of every member of the department. This might be seen as an all too obvious statement, but I believe it to be revealing about the fundamental value orientation of our society. We are trained to be good time managers--we feel guilty when we 'cheat' time. Our lives are run by the clock, whether we chose to be or not. Time penetrates in important ways into our consciousness of human reality. One of the most important aspects of our vaunted Scientific Methodology is 'reliability'--repeatability, controllability, all ultimately determinable by the increments of the clock. Likewise, negative stereotypes focus upon connotations of unreliability, unpredictability, idiosyncrasy, uncontrollability. A person who is difficult to control or manage is deemed as a threat to the time process of the system. Time can be a statement of social etiquette or a means of indirectly, perhaps unconsciously, rejecting a person. Teachers control the weeks, months and semesters. They set the test dates, research deadlines, they control and dictate the time of the students--rescheduling classes, letting out early or late. Generally it is impolite to come late chronically to a class, or to leave before the class is through. I have noticed some students who do just this, as sort of a rebellious statement about the control over their lives. Teachers time schedules are likewise controlled and set by the administrative schedules of events, dates, etc. Approximately 15 minutes before every hour the campus corridors and grounds suddenly fill up with pulsating flow of the student body, emptying out of one class and going to another. Time is important in learning the prioritization of values--a person on a restricted time framework learn how to best budget time--what to eliminate and what to focus upon when things start speeding up. The semester has its own seasonal rhythms. And slowly the years, and the changes accumulate. In the corridors few of the IBM clocks work properly. Time is kept in offices and in classrooms--the corridors and hallways are between time. People become unexpectedly uninterrupted in meeting people in corridors--time becomes freer, flowing more freely, less structured, between people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A student largely determines his/her rate through the program, setting the speed fast or slow depending upon existential priorities and deadlines--those who want to move on quickly become more time conscientious and more efficient in the budgeting of their time resource. In a sense, time is the most important resource. Time is the human resource of phenomenal consciousness and existence. Money buys time. The essence of a systems control is over human time. How one manages, budgets or spends time determines and translates into many other factors of the person's life. We live in a society in which ego consciousness and identity are time determined--framed by the clock, by the schedule, by the career. A person's worth per hour is a measure of status and class. Some people are much more flexible with their time than others--others are much more time controlled, being so tight as to not even spare another person the time of day. There is a curious paradox about this preordinate value of time management--are lives existentially and historically so controlled, and yet we provide in our mythology and anti-structure realms a concept of synchronic 'without time' of frozen, eternalized present. In the hallways of life, time becomes more flexible and more unpredictable. One is less in control of time there. If I'm in a hurry, I always avoid passing through the hallways of the department. But if I would like to talk to someone I may take my time down the corridors, looking in on people. Learning and earning responsibility for one's time management is part of the whole educational process. A person who can demonstrate his commitment and capacity for extensive research, is given independent license to exercise his own time management 'out in the field'. Time in the field becomes encapsulated only in the most general sense by bureaucratic strictures. A person is trained to be methodologically proficient, to think proficiently--maximization of one's time resources is seen as the necessary prerequisite for production. The person can be officially trusted to deal with time in a highly controlled way. Playing hooky from the game is a kind of unconscious rebellion against time keeping. This is overlooked--rates of absenteeism are expected normally, as a system of coping, but if it becomes pronounced then there will be negative consequences. Failure to come to class one day may mean missing important information that's going to be on a final exam. Time coordinates human activity and interaction in a systematically productive way. Habituation to a time routine is the end of the settling in period.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Spatial Allocation is another important existential factor of the department. It is not a matter of who gets what, or of structured space in and of itself, but of people in relation to a given spatial environment. A history of the department reveals that over the last decade or so there has been a general squeezing in of space in the department. Space becomes important if the department seeks to grow. Basically, administrated encapsulation has been the cause of the squeezing--there were offices where the Chenango Room now sits, then there was enough space to go around. Before that the PAF was situated in another building, and the geology occupied that space. As people become squeezed, the relationship to space becomes more important. "The department never recovered the loss to the Chenango Room." Now there is competition between students for the need of office space. In general, professors have much larger, private offices of their own. Their desk sits facing inboard. There are chairs and a space for students to sit or lounge. Students have shared rooms or little cubby holes off the main hallways or within some of the laboratories. In general their desks are facing outboard against the wall--the central space is open, and the backs of their desks are opened. Whether this is a sign of control or not, of being seen but not seeing, I do not know. I know professors when interviewed tend to seek comfort from behind their authoritative seat's of authority. To not be allotted an office space is to be made to feel like a pariah, floating around and sitting in hallways. The office for the student is a big factor of social status and ego identity--a feeling of importance and belonging to the department. I would say that students who have rooms are awarded more 'anthropological status' than those who don't--they are accorded their first badge of status along their road to professionalism. Space situates and orients a person's ego identity in the department--it becomes the focus of the student's activities, if they are needed, they can be found there. A person putting in many hours routinely on campus is making a statement about status--to be seen as an efficient and dependable anthropologist. It means also perhaps a statement of social needs. It was clear to me the number of interruptions within offices as opposed to outside of offices in the course of the interview. I averaged about 1 interruption every fifteen minutes. It is questionable how much real work can be done in an office in which there are constant interruptions--a person is putting in one's time. Perhaps there is a head-trip going on here--a need to put in the appearance of 'making time'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Space is important for other reasons as well. There is no common social place. This became the outstanding criticism about the department. No space the anthropologist could call their own, that would be conveniently and situationally located--the conference room appears to be a good candidate. But here the arrangement of large bulky tables in the middle area takes up too much space and are inconvenient to move around. It has been suggested to me that these should be removed from the room and replaced with more comfortable furniture, perhaps a large round table or a set of round tables. This space would serve as both a focus for intradepartmental social activities and administrative/teaching functions. I have also to voice a complaint about how the allocation of space is deliberately used to set off a status differential between students--everyone should be found a space, no matter how cramped. Upon a lifeboat from a sinking ship there is always room for one more. The kind of mentality which perpetuates this formal discrimination is the same kind of mentality which would perpetuate discrimination in other ways, and probably does. It will be interesting to watch the next batch of 'children' who come in and try to orient themselves in the department, to see who counts and who doesn't.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Space is important in other ways as well. The central office is the network, the spinal system of the department--the switchboard for communication. The head of the department's office adjoins these offices for efficient monitoring of central departmental activity. The presence of the Chenango Room also has certain reverberations upon the atmosphere of the department. It has, for one thing, an exclusive country club atmosphere which heightens status of members who regularly eat there--its proximity provides a convenient excuse to dine. It is characterized by high visibility from the outside. Well dressed groups of strange faces walking through the department brings a bit of skewed real world into the department. One is constantly craning one's head to see who or what is coming, or going, whose at home in the department. There is always a look around, a look back, a glance down the way. The kinds of advertisements and statements pasted on doors and walls is interesting. It is noteworthy that the first glass showcase presents renowned persons who had degrees in anthropology--a writer, a jazz musician, a member of the royal family.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The Distribution of Funding and research opportunities is also very critically important--it is directly tied to one's status, if none other than by a ranking rating system employed by the Faculty to help determine eligibility and perhaps to weed out undesirables. There have been complaints that these distribution is unfairly distributed. My own observations would tend to support this claim, but without critical information, I cannot form a conclusive opinion about it. No limited funding system can be fair, unless it is divided up equally and all students had to wait their turn. I favor this idea. It saves face, on board a sinking ship. There are many complaints that some individuals consistently receive funding while others perennially suffer from benign neglect. A differential reward structure creates a hierarchy of status in which rewards are distributed unequally throughout the department. Favored, low risk students, whoever they might be, are more likely to receive more better funding more consistently than unfavored, high risk category of students. It is unfortunate the system has to feel inclined to think this way. A few individuals, because of privileged status, are virtually guaranteed both funding and research opportunities while some others have a virtual unwritten guarantee never to receive such favors. It is hard to maintain a healthy, positive attitude when there is no reward structure within the system to socially reinforce it. I believe, though there are deliberate reasons for this. There are also complaints that reward decisions, as well as critical information, is manipulated personally and on a none to one basis to bias who ends up with what, who gets where how soon, who has to take what, etc. etc. etc. No more needs to be said. The writing is on the wall, and we all know who we are.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A student's individual 'Performance' is tracked and monitored--and students are rated by teachers in a rank order of status. This is done confidentially, of course. I was told when I first arrived here that I would have to prove myself by my performance, when it was quite apparent that a whole lot of other people did not similarly need to 'prove' themselves. If my admission to the program was not proof enough, as it was for many other students, then I fail to understand the system of rationalization that justifies discrimination in any form. A word of wisdom from a person who stays angry for a very long time--I have not forgotten and will never forget. This was very much like the evaluation system employed by the Marine Corps to create a 'file' on each enlisted man. Past ratings became the bias for future decisions--a person should not have to normally e a prisoner of their past. I suggest this system is a substitute for breaking down barriers between faculty and students, it creates distance, and creates from the beginning an unfair bias which determines the member's future live chances. It is interesting that the appeal to this system is made on the basis of more 'objective' rationalize evaluation of students needs and rewards. I suggest it is a hypocritical front for blatant subjectivity in rating others--a front which also obscures the subjectivity in the teachers grading of individual students. The problem is not grade inflation, it is grade discrimination--enhancing biases which already existed. If people fail to see how it can be done differently, then I suggest their vision is quite narrow indeed. The first thing is to control for subjectivity by being open and honest about the biases--embracing subjectivity instead of repressing it beneath a methodological disguise of objectivity is a way of maintaining a more reasonable handle upon its natural biases. But this argument has really been an underlying theme of this whole ethnography.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Student's individual presentation to significant others is another critical factor in the structuration of the departmental ethos. Every social interaction a person engages in within the framework of the department results in an assessment of that person's status, abilities, capabilities, character, etc., if only implicitly. This too becomes an uneven, distorted system when access to certain status symbols or resources conditions one's aura and ego identity in the department. I've seen students who consistently failed to do their work, who consistently failed to be in class, who manipulate the class interaction, and yet are still treated like God's little children. On the other hand, I know of earnest, sincere, hardworking students who must compete even for a word in edgewise in a conversation. A person's aura, command of presence, sense of security and authority, all go into making up this game going on between students of who is better than who. It is a child's game, but it begins with faculty and passes down the chain. To maintain a Great Chain of Being is to perpetuate a mythology of the past. I am mostly immune to this kind of social bullshit, though I've had my share of it thrown my way. It is mostly to petty to care about. It only leaves me feeling very angry about people and their petty ego identities. Maybe one day I'll slap some special person in the face just for the hell of it, to give them a better sense of immediacy. But presentation of ego identity is critical to the process. In general there is a need to disguise the real, weak self, imperfect, unscholarly, ignorant, bored, behind a façade of 'too serious'. About mid-semester, as things pace themselves, the ideal facades begin to break down--if the system breaks down the real self shows itself in the nooks and crannies of the system. People miss important classes, conspicuous in their absence. People always have a good excuse, except the real one. I felt overloaded and needed to take a break or get work done. Though people fail to do the necessary preparation, they feel obligated to perform anyway, if even a bit awkwardly and obviously. There is always a number one priority, to be maintained at all costs, to maintain an authoritative air of professionalism. I worry what some of the hidden consequence of this type of preparation are in the field and beyond. I suspect not very good. We are not great, talented, anthropological geniuses, we are pretty average in a pretty mundane place--we should start acting that way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Traditions are admirable, but they can become straight-jackets for existential freedom. Tradition and consciousness fails to see beyond its horizon, fails to recognize alternative models of belief and behavior. Tradition promises authority and hierarchy, and hinders the realization of equality. In the classroom, it translates into professors who put down certain students because they fail to see beyond their own ego identities, so reinforced by the authority of tradition. It also translates into a classroom full of students who may not really want to be there because they choose to, but were told to be there by their parents. Traditions are stronger on the east coast than the west--they are more settled in, tried and true, unquestioned and untested. I must admit my own subjectivity when I consider my conception of the 'average New Yorker'--ambitious, pushy, impatient, gruff, aggressive and most important of all, narrow minded. They can blame the south for all the ills of prejudice and discrimination, yet fails to face the fact of white discrimination in their own comfortable tow. As one girl blithely told me after she had pushed in front of me in line--"you have to learn to be more aggressive." I responded to her laughing--"that's what I came to New York for, to learn how to become aggressive." She missed the humor in this, and stalked off. This school opens onto a wider community and university network, which have their own implications conditioning the atmosphere in the department. Beyond New York, is the whole world. What goes around eventually comes around. This is not fate, it is human Karma.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">First impressions are lasting impressions, and new experiences are always inherently interesting ones. What are the implications of always seeking new interesting impressions?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I have first attempted to describe an etic system emically, and then attempted to explain an emic way of seeing etically. In systems, whether emically within, or etically reinforced from without, if in place of system, order, structure, pattern, sense, context, process, culture, fact, datum, knowledge, framework, you substitute the word 'thing'--then you will suddenly see the really real meaning of the words.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Interest and disinterest condition what is selected as significantly important or trivial in their turn by a leap of faith they become, in the tautology of our language, truth and falsity--it always makes a difference but it never makes a difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…when I am faced with a vague concept and feel that the time is not yet ripe to bring that concept into strict expressions, I coin some loose expression for referring to this concept and do not want to prejudge the issue by giving the concept too meaningful a term. I therefore dub it hastily with some brief concrete colloquial term--generally Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin--I will speak of the 'stuff' of culture, of 'bits' of culture, or the 'feel' of culture. These brief Anglo-Saxon terms are vague and await analysis. It is a trick like tying a knot in a handkerchief--but has the advantage that it still permits one, if I may so express it, to go on using the vague concept in the valuable process of loose thinking--still continually reminded that my thoughts are loose." (Gregory Bateson; <u>Steps to an Ecology of Mind</u>, 1972: 83-84)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">we walk down the dusty path</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">hand in hand we pick and smell the flowers</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">all along the way</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">and we find rest from the hot sun</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">beneath this big shady tree</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">down the road we come to a parting of ways</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">and though some hurt is involved</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">there is mutual understanding</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">there is no turning back</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">VI</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">WHITHER ALICE?</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Out from the cave and off to Africa: some salty advice for future fishermen</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of course, the first thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she was going to travel through. "It's something very like learning geography," thought Alice, as she stood on tiptoe in the hopes of being able to see a little further. "Principal rivers--there <u>are</u> none. Principal mountains--I'm the only one, but I don’t think its got any name. Principal towns--why what <u>are</u> those creatures, making honey down there? They can't be bees--nobody saw bees a mile off, you know"--and for some time she stood silent, watching one of them bustling about among the flowers, poking its proboscis into them, just as if it was a regular bee, thought Alice.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">However, this was anything but a regular bee; in fact it was an elephant--as Alice soon found out though the idea quite took her breath away at first, "And what enormous flowers they must be!" was her next idea…</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…I know what you are thinking about," said Tweedledum, "but it isn’t so, nohow."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain't. That's logic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"I was thinking," Alice said very politely, "Which is the best way out of this wood: it's getting so dark. Would you tell me please?"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Within the cave, there were no ticking clocks--a small fire burns and shadows dance upon the walls. The young female anthropologist, notebook and pen in hand, asks her next question: "And what is freedom?"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There was a long and stony silence as the people huddled around the fire, looked upon one another with seeming askance. Finally a wrinkled old woman with bright eyes said: "Some people earn their freedom by hardship and the toil of suffering, while others have it thrust upon them whether they deserve it or not." After another brief spell of silence:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Homo <u>sarathustra:</u> "No, no, not at all, freedom is learning to live as no longer the prisoner of the body--liberation is found through the escape from suffering."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Homo <u>van gogh</u>: "Liberation is the transcendence of dependency--learning to live with loneliness and death.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Homo <u>sartre</u>: "Freedom is learning to live with the limitations of living--the responsibility for being.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Homo <u>authoritatus</u>, the leader of the group seemed to have the bottom line on the truth when he said, once and for all, with a tone of finality which echoed back through the recesses of the darkness: "There is no such thing as freedom--it is the illusion of wanton license, the deception of irresponsibility!"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The small child at the cave entrance, was too busy playing with a stick in the dirt to care about the adults' conversation. The mother, fearful of the dangerous wild beasts that stalked the darkness of the night, suddenly swept the child up in her arms and carried it into the cave. The young female field-worker was too busy writing in her notebook to notice.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">When dear Alice finally leaves the cave of infinite wisdom, she will forthwith embark on a long and perilous journey of a lifetime to the mysterious heartland of deeper Africa, there to find waiting for her a perusal a pre-selected band of dark natives in Playtex bras and grass skirts, the chief of the tribe will pick her up at the air strip in his new Mercedes Benz and they will drive off down the dusty single land road into the Serengenti sunset. After about a year of intense, highly productive and promising ethnographic research, she will be ready forthwith to return to the cave 'transformed' into a tried and true anthropologist. She will then be busy with another year of writing her thesis at the end of which a fancy diploma inscribed in gold ink will be handed to her, and she will forthwith be off to find a comfortable tenured position with starting pay of US$35,000 per annum. She will get married, to the man of her dreams, settle down in a house upon the hill, and beget 2.3 children. She will spend the following years of her life dutifully keeping house, loving her children and husband, attending lectures and colloquiums and bouncing about the US in a jet plane. There is a new success story born every minute. Africa will always remain the seat of her deepest interests and she will forthwith become the leading US spokeswoman on the culture and life-ways of the ulu-ulu peoples of deepest Africa' and will travel on several nationwide speaking tours attended by the bourgeoisie elite of every small city on the itinerary, in their mink coats and Mercedes Benz cars. She will return on several occasions to Africa, to renew old acquaintances and get a fresh update on the goings on. She will fight for their rights upon every campus that invites her to speak. She will even be invited to give a lecture tour abroad. Meanwhile she will have spent her leave time and sabbaticals carefully writing and publishing journal articles, books and book reviews and she will become an outstanding authority in her own field. If, in her middle age, she may make a stab into more political or administrative arenas, trying her hand at now this, now that. Her renown in the local community will have increased by several hundred increments, and she and her family, with teenage children, will now move to a nicer house with a pool in a more exclusive community. As the youthful appearance on her face begins to wane beneath her make-up, she can take satisfaction in the fact that she earned a name in anthropologia. She has become the living embodiment of the American Dream anthropological style. In her dissatisfaction and frustration that she was not able to reform the world into utopia, she will begin to preach Marxist theory in her courses, taking her entire seminar classes out to dinner at a nice restaurant, charging it upon her Golden Card Account, tax deductions at the end of the fiscal year. She will also become a leading spokeswoman for women's' rights. As she approaches her golden years, she will get regular physical examinations and have a small operation to remove a benign tumor. She will begin to make plans for a comfortable retirement, looking for a place in a warmer climate, perhaps even in a foreign villa. She will wither away quite gracefully, like a beautiful flower that's seen its glory.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We would all like to be like Alice, men and women alike, and if we are handed the opportunities and make the most of them, then chances are good that we can become like her, and we would be crazy if we choose not to, for one reason or another. When we meet Alice, we admire he for her aura of solidarity, her command presence, and her strength of anthropological character. She can talk pango-pango with the best of them. If we had the opportunities, most of us would become like her. But this is a big if--as for every success story who gains renown, there have been many who have tried but failed, to become forgotten by history. Alice is the Horatio Alger version of the American Dream, anthropological style. Work hard, save your credits, be frugal with your time, burn the midnight oil all ploughing through a pile of books, and maybe someday, the dream will be fulfilled. Your family and friends who never heard of anthropology before respect and admire you for your early achievements--your high grades, your scholarships, your invitations to the field. But they do not understand anthropology and still question what kind of income all this effort will finally bring. Alice is a 'superwoman'--the counterpart of the American mythology of 'superman'. And if we look closely we can see that this mythology is an ideal role model of the American Character--the baseline value orientation underlying the American success ethic which drives the capitalist dynamo. Witness Superman, born of extraterrestrial Gods but raised humbly as a good farm boy in a small mid-western farm town. He grows up to be a soft spoken team player, a secret hero when he goes home to change his clothes. He is the living embodiment of many contradictions, of superhuman strengths and visions, but meek, unpresuming and mild mannered. Faster than a speeding bullet, he gets about with a casualness and careful nonchalance that tricks his foes and saves his friends--his hair is always pasted back upon his scalp in perfect condition. 'The little boy haircut'. It is interesting that this same value orientation underlies the rating scale of 'adaptive functioning' used to measure an individual's mental health. This rating scale is based upon a normative framework which prioritizes existential values--this rating scale is a reflection of the American work hard/play hard ethic. Interestingly enough these priorities of values ultimately have to do with how we choose to spend our time.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…I have found it to be pretty much the case that the real division of our culture is work and play, and that whether we try to fill up our leisure with others or by ourselves is a choice we have to make--rarely can anyone have the best of both worlds and even more we had better not get our work and play ethics confused--to try to make play our work or work out play. Why is there so little originality among socialites?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Furthermore in a rating scale it becomes evident that a person's values must be social relations and occupational functioning first and foremost, while leisure time activities are second rate--even negligible. You have a choice of being a good worker (a garbage man or a university president), a student, or a housewife. But what about a starving self employed artist or musician or writer? The rating becomes how much money 'do you earn and how difficult is the work you do?' I am an artist who inspite of my 'full time' commitments of much money, time and energy, and just because I have earned very little money, my ultra conservative neighbors still only perceive my activities as being demeaning leisure time hobbies--"Are you still doing your hobbies?" You have another choice between being a highly sociable individual (how many friends, superficially, and how good friends, in depth) or else being considered 'impaired'. Does it matter who your so called friends are--whether the love is genuine or hypocritical? What about availability, opportunity, shyness or social disillusionment? A Chinese individual born into a larger, over extended family, might be considered more socially healthy than an only poor WASP child of divorced parents or whose Father had died.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The three categories are anthropologically wise, but the stress of which are to be considered more important and the qualitative evaluations are culturally biased. I have a book entitled '<u>Leisure: A Basis of Culture</u>' by Joseph Pieper, which might refute this cultural orientation of values. Why must Parkinson's Law continue to enslave Homo<u> ludens</u> to the work/play ethic?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The rating scale is another matter. A person is doing good if he is only slightly 'impaired' but to be really mentally healthy he must be better than average without any impairment at all--while the ideal is the unusual 'superior' personality. I believe this to be particularly revealing of cultural values and an underlying ambivalence--one I prefer to call the Apollonian 'Superman' myth. The ambivalence is trying to be a good worker with team spirit and a modest unpresuming profile, while at the same time feeling the compulsion to become a superstar, a veritable dynamo with inexhaustible energy (what kind of food does he eat?) with more than the average amount of time (70 minute hours, 25 hour days, 8 day weeks, etc. etc.) who is machine like in efficiency (swift and accurate without many errors) who always has a new dynamic idea which solves the problem (where does he get all these ideas) and who is preferably a male (definitely not a homosexual) but not any more as things are changing a bit, and maybe money is an important factor also. True to Christian form, we must become Godlike (God is a white male) we must somehow be something better or 'more' that what we are now, and yet we can never upset the natural chain of order with our secret fantasies. Somehow, being just simply ourselves (merely human) is never quite good enough. But human beings are usually 'impaired' (imperfect) and only Gods are superior (unimpaired). Of course God does not defecate, but that there is always a human being around to clean it up. 'He is so blessed, talented, gifted--or maybe just rich.'</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The composite ideal of this Apollonian superman myth of our culture is an emotionally, moderate, stable, temperate (flat) individual integrity who can skate through life relatively unaffected, 'unnerved' by the turmoil and strife and stress, he/she supposedly encounters along the way, a highly motivated high achiever, who has high critical intelligence and who is a highly 'rational' (very well ordered, almost like an automaton) but who nonetheless does not work too much, but who is always clean cut and beautiful (a true socialite) whose teeth are white when he smiles and who has never had acne or cut himself with a razor--a person unbeset by with any anxiety and who does his duty with self justified impunity and immunity. This is the 'norm' as ideal. The reality is quite a different picture. Personally I am wary of such personality types whom I meet that fit such description. In all their superhuman superiority I sometimes wonder whether they don't pay to great a personal price. I can even be moved to pity them if they weren't so self righteous. I see a potentially dangerous super egoist at work--a virtual sociopath fulfilling his Godsend role without doubt, uncertainty, without question, without remorse. I see them as being cold and insensitive and out of tune with their own inner feelings and with the feelings of others. They invariably 'appear' highly successful but for all their touted success, I wonder whether they are really any happier or healthier than a more average person beset with disorder, anxiety, impairment and lower class status." (Lewis; <u>Philosophy, Irrationality and Ideology: An Anthropological Synthesis</u>, 1983: 76-78)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Superwoman/superman is secret model of our collective imagination. Everyone has secret desires to become someone exceptional, some one better, superlative, but we must always observe a taboo which keeps these feelings from view in our everyday activity. It is our alter ego which comes to our rescue when events conspire against us. The antithesis of the archetype of the American Character is in its most extreme from the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' demonology of the psychopathic mass murdering homosexual child slayer. The less severe form, the more common garden type variety can be found congregating in the local bars during the day and night--they are the sociopaths who can be found in any peaceful neighborhood setting. They are the repetition compulsion frustrated overachieving husband and father who beats his wife and children when he comes home from a hard day at the office. They are the family man who at work becomes the obsessive compulsive little Tyrant who gets elected to public office. These are models which are in all of us, to greater or lesser extent.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Repression of parts of ego which comes with the territory of becoming a professional anthropologist, cannot have some kind and measure of rebounding consequences upon one's personal integrity and behavioral repertory. Perhaps, if we really got to know dear Alice a little better, she may not be that special of a person after all.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This superman/superwoman mythology is supported by another kind of American Character Archetype--that is the model of the 'Beautiful People'--this model is all about us in the status symbols and media which we cannot get rid off even if we wanted to. The beautiful person is the naturally special, the superlative person who is qualitatively better or 'best'. It is an attempt to hide flaws, repress weaknesses, disguise imperfections. Nose is a little too long, Dr. B can take care of that. A little too much cellulite around the hips, the beautiful person spa can take care of that. The Beautiful People model clearly tied by conspicuous consumption of sumptuary symbols which is a way of buying status--perhaps, as Weber so astutely saw, buying credits to get into heaven. The clothes one dresses in, the car one drives, etc. etc. etc. Maintaining and reinforcing the Beautiful People models keep the whole capitalist system turning in its production cycles. There is nothing that modern science cannot take care of or cure. If your suffering from a case of low self esteem, then go have a permanent and buy inexpensive modish wardrobe on credit. Come from the lower class--you too can have the luxury symbols that will hide your class status--just shop at K-Mart--America's saving place.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What is insidious about this pervasive promotion of the beautiful people model is its inherent implication of social race. Racism doesn’t necessarily begin on the other side of the town, in the city ghetto, or in the deep south. It begins in one's own neighborhood, in one's own backyard, in one's own bedroom and bathroom. Race is the belief and behavior system that one group is naturally superior than an apparently different group. Class prejudice becomes tied to social race by means of upholding Beautiful People models. Scratch the cosmetic, silicon surface of a beautiful person, and one will find a true blue Racist pig. Social race is a set of status symbols which serve as social distancing mechanism to maintain class/caste boundaries. Differences which are wholly contrived, synthetic, unnatural, are passed as evidence of natural differences, innate superiority, etc. between people. There is a kind of mythological inversion in which natural differences are substituted for artificial ones. The power of enchantment, the sucking in power of the boob-tube, the appeal to the represses unconsciousness of the self so overwhelming and strong, that there is a trick of the eye--one sees natural beauty in a pair of jeans, a permanent, a mass of mascara.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">So Alice, as an American anthropological success model, holds membership to the exclusive club of the Beautiful People, whether she rejects the privilege or not, it remains her privilege to choose. And it really makes no difference whether she consciously accepts the ward or refuses it ever nobly, for in her eyes she becomes in her success the embodiment of beauty, the model of emulation which so many adopt as they are trying ever so vainly to achieve the same status and success. Success buys status, and status buys success--and money is what makes the critically important difference. Anyways, to step down gracefully from the pedestal of success is highly unlikely and foolish, perhaps even very difficult. The driving ambition, the achievement motivation and the opportunities and money well spent which got her there in the first place all contrive to keep her there to form systems of rationalization about it all. The system seldom rewards or reinforces losers who will cop out. It is difficult because it would be to run entirely against the grain of the ethos of the society which put here upon the pedestal in the first place. Nobody likes a loser, nobody loves a fallen hero or heroine. Look around do you see anyone else doing such a silly thing? Anyways, with rising social status and income, there is an almost automatic rise, need inflation within the capitalistic system. One becomes attached to the security and conveniences, the privileges which money can buy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But Alice is the living exception of representation of an ideal exception to a normative rule and is not the rule itself. Everyone knows that Alice is an ego trip through life--she can afford to be. But most of us can’t. most of us are average, mediocre, usual types don’t even really want to be. The rule is another, more modest and moderate model of the same kind of value orientation--it is scaled down and tempered by life's limitations and weaknesses. The average American goes to work during the week, and plays Rambo on the weekends. He is a low profile team player who likes to drink beer and watch the 'Superbowl' on weekends. The wife has her own network, does the shopping, gets her hair fixed or cut off and buys clothes for the family at the mall. The average American is not looking to get above the boulevard--he just wants to escape his neighborhood once and for all. He is satisfied with a few lifetime promotions, a few pay increases to keep up with the cost of living, and if he really wants to see his four children off to college, then maybe he has his own business on the side.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If Alice is the anthropological exception to the mundane rule, then we need to find that other, more common archetype--the average American anthropologist, or AAA for short. No, it is not American Automobile Association. The average member of AAA subscribes to the journal of the American Anthropological Association, keeps up with its most recent publications and occasionally attends its annual conventions to participate or perform in mainstream anthropology. This member of AAA is a pretty WASPy fellow. Of course he has the accouterments which serve as badges, marking his membership to such a prestigious bunch of boys. If he has really 'been there' then maybe he has some genuine articles which distinguishes him/her as an 'authentic anthropologist'.. and of course what vintage are you? What school did you come from, where did you go to do fieldwork, what about, where do you teach…and the pango-pango principle is set to motion. If you go to these parties they are for the most part pretty boring affairs. If one lingers around long enough, there might even be a first flight or mud slinging match in the backyard. But this archetype is a stereotype anyways, and is quite unfair to al whose who take their job seriously and do a good job inspite of handicaps. It was like that in the Marine Corps too. Draftees 'serving their countries' were just trying their best damnedest 'to make the best of a messed up situation in Vietnam.' But Vietnam was still Vietnam, and Anthropologia was still Anthropologia. There is another fitting appellation--AAA--Alcoholics Anonymous--no one said anthropology was a ticket to stardom. The average American anthropologist is a pretty anonymous fellow--no one reads his/her books collecting dust on the shelves. No one asks for their autograph. And many are probably moderately alcoholic. But the greyness of being an authentic anthropologist is not completely black--there are occasional moments which really make an important difference, just as there are many differences which really make no real difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The average American anthropologist will, in the course of his/her career, have 1.4 lateral career moves, 1.5 divorces (.75 of which were with fellow anthropologists), have been abroad 4.5 times (not always to the same place), will have published 1.3 books, 3.4 journal articles, and a forgotten number of book reviews. He/she may have owned 2.5 homes, had 2.5 children and hosted 4.7 anthropology parties in his/her new home. The list carries on. Not too impressively. In the course of a full 30 year career, he/she may instructed a total of 150 graduate seminars and undergraduate seminars, in 6.7 different topic areas, may have signed a total of 50 thesis, and shaken hands with 130 graduating anthropology students. He/she may have seen 4.5 department heads come and go, attended 60 colloquiums and symposiums and given 7.5 addresses before a large crowd. He/she may have been in the newspaper 3.4 times, etc. etc. The point has been made. He/she may have shown Trobriand Cricket, Dead Birds or Nanook of the North, 68.5 times each, splicing the films 84 times.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is anthropologically wise if the thesis is true that we all live within a single political economic world system, to recognize one's own place and position and future within such a world wide order. To under-emphasize one's first world status vis-à-vis a third, fourth and fifth or sixth world refugee, is the equivalent of over-emphasizing it. The closeness gained via such under-emphasis is a false distance closeness, the relationship formed are spurious relationships. To over-emphasize one's superior status would be more honest, direct and better understood vis-à-vis the significant counter reference other--in the anger there would be mutual understanding of inviolable, inconsolable differences. To go 'native' is to make a mockery of one's own heritage and to shit all over the heritage of those with whom one is living and 'studying'. I have seen ugly Americans many times, who in the course of burning their bras, taking their shoes off, 'hanging out' with the natives--become the worse hypocrisy of all. It is the critical difference which makes no difference, the critical indifference which makes a difference. The person is only fooling the self, and probably being fooled by the 'natives' around who see through the disguise as plain as day. On my last night in Penang, I treated my Chinese friends to a nice dinner to a club, an exclusive, ex-colonial club afterwards. It cost me more than any of them could afford. In the club there sat a rich American family. The man glowered at me that I would invade his sacred space. I waved to him but he did not have the nerve to confront me. The band played a song for us and we danced. Outside there were 'hippies' being cool with the trishaw drivers. I has the extra American money and I wanted to treat my friends to a bashing good time. They had an experience they not I will ever forget. The next day, as we got on the plane, everyone cried. This is the difference, the critical difference which makes no difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The money was the critical difference that made no difference, it was the indifference to the money which made a critical difference in out inter-human relationship. If a 'native' student craves and has designs upon your only field typewriter--put your money where your mouth is and give it to him/her, and however used you may feel, you may also have made a genuine friend of an entire family for life. When you come back to the area, if you ever do, you can visit these people and they will treat you royally. Money does not buy or substitute for human relationships--money should not matter as a means toward achieving this inter-human relationship. In the course of your anthropological career, you will have many options to pick up another better typewriter.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Underlying this didactic lecture is a central thesis about inter-human relationships with significant counter reference others. Just as we live in a cultural medium which certain kinds of archetypical models are implicitly, behaviorally believed in, models which form the horizons of our own ego identity and ethno-centricity, so too will the significant others be living existentially in a realm of archetypical models. These models will likely be very different--they will have a different history. But there will likely be some common basis of similarities between the two sets of models which can form the basis of mutual understanding and growth. These may be things which are negative or repressed within one's own models. Not all people value hard work and economic achievement like Americans do--not all peoples have the same superman or beautiful people models we share, though in a single world system, this has become a predominantly archetype. The peoples, in spite of their differences, will likely have had enough contact with the prestige symbols of America to learn to recognize them in you as their embodiment, whether they get played up, like a trashy culture shocked expatriate, or get played down like a dirty 'hippie' who shows no respect for the people's traditions. Their models may be so different that there may seem to be no common ground for understanding, until one learns to recognize in one's own realm of possibilities, the basis for such a common sharing. Though they may be trying to figure you out too, don’t expect them to reciprocate with the kind of understanding you anthropologically command. Put the anthropological ego model aside. Once the common ground is fathomed and determined, one can begin to construct in one's own reality and ego identity a facsimile of it, and from this reconstruction, however imperfect or bastardized, will come the genuine understanding for the models of another culture--as they are existentially lived. The world order and style of life will gain better sense and the old American models will lose their meaning or values. At first, the other's model being stereotypically a misunderstood baseline, will see, to be merely superficial prejudice hiding or masking the genuine cultural meaning system. But as one makes the transition to the 'inside' one will begin better to see the model as it is lived, as it makes sense to those who share it. It will become a part of your personality model too. Subtle variations, critical differences which from the outside seemed to make no stereotypical difference, will become more apparent. The why and the how of what they say they are doing or what they seem to be doing will make a difference. You will have your foot planted however precariously one in each world. You will be trying to translate one model into the other, and vice versa, even though they do not often seem to match. But, unless you're special like Alice, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. There will come a day, soon, all too soon, at which you will have to make a critical decision of which set of models you will choose. This is an irreversible existential decision to be made, like all of history. It is in a sense a question which has already been answered for you, one which the larger stream of history answers by the strength of its currents. To make a complete transition, to effect the fall from anthropological grace gracefully, is very difficult if not impossible to do completely. The odds are riding upon a traumatic withdrawal, a dramatic reaffirmation of one's newly achieved 'anthropologicalness' which now seems to fit so naturally. The Alice's of the world and the average American anthropologist will most likely choose the latter alternative. The drama and trauma will be cathexsis and catharsis of the 'writing up' the fictional reliving of the experience, no matter how 'facticiciously' inscribed for American consumption. One's brothers and sisters in the field become distant kin instead. But the trial by fire has been completed--one is anthropologically 'transformed'--you have withstood the pull and currents of an alternative history and lived to tell all about it. You have not copped out or become a traitor of your own people, you are not, from a social racist point of view, trying to 'bastardize' the h and 'mongrelize' the human race--you have met the other on his ground, and you have triumphed. Veni, Vencii, Vendi, long live Pax Amerikana.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is, upon a more open cultural continuum, the possibility of biculturalism or even of 'multiculturalism'--this is perhaps, in a world system, an ideal we should be striving for. But like our American born and bred Alice, the true bicultural, like the true bilingual, is a rare sort indeed. To have the best of both or more worlds, is to be fortunate enough to have your cake and eat it too. My acquaintance with multiculturalism is that it is a political hype to fool the American tourist, an ideological smokescreen of a socially plural society hiding blatant ethnic, racial differences. I suspect the bicultural model too, is where it is promoted, more preached than actually practiced, hiding in inimical and inconsolable ethnic differences. It is possibly a privileged form of ego identity in which the individual is indirectly emphasizing one's privilege vis-à-vis significant others. But this is a worthwhile ideal which maybe ought to be striven for nonetheless. But it can only be achieved when ethnic differences are no longer the basis of identity, when the differences created by a political economic hierarchy become 'evened out' between differences groupings of people--when peoples many separate histories, becomes genuinely, existentially, a single common history. "Biculturalism is essential to those individuals who live in such bicultural communities…the detrimental effects of acculturation can be ameliorated by encouraging biculturalism…" "The mature bicultural individual may rise above both cultures by following superordinate social prescriptions that serve to integrate the individual's behavior relative to each culture." If 'passing' between cultures in a global political economic hierarchy is 'biculturalism' then I suggest it is only a spurious 'biculturalism' which is ahistorical, i.e. ideological.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The biocultural model proposed here holds that if the cultural context within which acculturation takes place is bicultural, then the acculturation process will tend too take place along two independent dimensions (e.g., Lasaga et al., Note 1). The first dimension consists of a linear process of accommodating to the host culture; the second dimension consists of a complex process of relinquishing or retaining the characteristics of the culture of origin. This acculturation/bicultural model further suggests that the most important variable influencing the individual's accommodation to the host culture is the amount of time a person has been exposed to the host culture, while the most important variable influencing the individual's retention of the characteristics of the culture or origin is the degree and availability of community support for the culture or origin. In both instances, the age and sex of the individual may be related to the rate of change along these dimensions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…it would appear that some of the findings on acculturation and adjustment can be best explained by using a model of biculturalism. According to the bicultural involvement model of adjustment, individuals living in bicultural contexts tend to become maladjusted when they remain or become monocultural. Individuals who live in a bicultural context and who either under acculturate (fail to learn how to, or do not want to interact with the Anglo American context) or over acculturate (reject the skills necessary to interact with the Hispanic American context), do not have the flexibility necessary to cope with their entire cultural milieu. This state of disequilibrium between individuals and their context is maladjustive. In this regard, the data are not entirely clear as to whether lack of biculturalism is a contributing factor to maladjustment or merely a symptom of it. It may be possible that individuals who tend toward the acculturational extremes may have certain traits that are either pathological per se or become maladaptive when confronted by the additional demands placed by a bicultural life context.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The acculturation/biculturation model presented here proposes that acculturation is a multidimensional process that functions differently depending upon the cultural context. Under certain conditions (i.e. a monocultural context), the model holds that acculturation will be basically a undimensional and linear process moving <u>from</u> the culture of origin <u>to </u>the host culture. Under other conditions (i.e. a bicultural context), the biculturation model holds that acculturation will be two dimensional, involving an accommodation to the host culture as well as retention of the culture of origin. Furthermore the model explicitly recognizes a normative component of the acculturation process which is closely related to amount of exposure to the host culture, and a pathological component which deviates from the normative component and is reflected in over-or-under acculturation. What makes this deviation from the normative maladjustive is that it renders the individual inappropriately monocultural in a bicultural context. Thus, the component of monoculturalism/biculturalism provides a more parsimonious and heuristic explanation of the relationship of acculturation to adjustment.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The Zeitgeist of past decades has encouraged a melting pot philosophy of thorough acculturation on the part of immigrant groups. More current views tend to value cultural pluralism which encouraged maintenance of ethnic identity. The mounting evidence concerning the nature of the acculturation process and its implications for adjustment--some of which have been revised in this chapter--suggests that in bicultural communities--exaggerated acculturation or exaggerated maintenance of ethnic identity (one to the exclusion of the other) is detrimental to the mental health of immigrant groups. Biculturalism implies that the individual can participate in two cultural contexts. Immigrants living in bicultural communities…must be able to effectively interact with both of these contexts in order to avoid the detrimental effects of acculturation such as psycho-social or behavioral disorders. Clinically, this model of biculturalism acculturation/biculturalism would suggest that the detrimental effects of adaptation to a new culture for individuals living in cultural communities can be ameliorated by encouraging biculturalism. ("Acculturation, Biculturalism, and Adjustment Among Cuban Americans" by Jose' Szapocznik & William Kurtines: 144-157 in <u>Acculturation: Theory, Models and Some New Findings</u>, edited by Amado Padilla, 1980)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If biculturalism is an ideal model, one which anthropology and anthropologists might strive for, then it is a healthy alternative to the acculturative American heroine model of dear Alice. In the study of culture school, adaptation, acculturation, the experience of the biculturally oriented anthropologist is essentially in elucidating a new kind of understanding for and of humankind. If taken in this vein, anthropology has much it can contribute to the understanding and resurrection of a new kind of bicultural or multicultural model. But as it stands today, if the anthropologist seeks to stand between two or more cultures which are very distant or widely divergent, if they are essentially two relatively different courses, separate histories, then the anthropologist must face the risk of becoming a 'double identity' or a 'split personality or multiple personality' or of becoming a chameleon and the possibility of anthropological schizophrenia. As it stands today, for Alice and the AAA member, the counter reference significant other is an appropriated other, or misappropriated other, that serves anthropological purposes in an academic framework. The acculturation remains undimensional--the anthropologist remains a tried and truly tested American, whether he/she say it or not. We are living in an age in which the long separated streams of history are coming together into a convergent confluence. History remains strongest near its central concourse--people are drawn centrifugally into its mainstream. The view from the middle of history, from its center, is not like the view from the edge of history. Time may seem to stand still upon the edge, but the center rushes on with ever greater speed. To be in the center is to be immersed in its confluence, to be behaviorally existentially living in the models which are current and predominant--to move to the edge is to escape the immersion process, to be left outside of history, to be able to look at the models from a distance which the swimmer cannot ascertain or manage.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The Chinese have their own superman model which is similar in some respects to or own in the prioritization of essential existential values. But their dragon/phoenix has important differences coming from a different historical origin which makes it very different and distant from our own western superman/superwoman mythology. But in this case to over-emphasize the commonalties and neglect the critical differences is to run aground in seeing no difference which does make an important difference. They value leisure time less than we do, and for them socializing is more or as important as the work ethic--work by itself makes no difference if it is not somehow linked up to viable social network from which rewards will be forthcoming. To work hard and pay no attention to important social relationships will be to run quickly afoul of Chinese ethos.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Emphasizing and focusing upon differences between people is to create boundaries. Seeing the role of anthropology as a positivistic science is to adopt the American Hero ideology in support of capitalist interests--to study human diversity and variation, is to create concomitantly and implicitly a world of differences which make no real difference. Theoretically, methodologically, existentially, ethically it is to foster models of social racism which will lead to the artificial perpetuation of ethnic racism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To achieve a cultural continuum of multiculturalism, different kinds of models must be constructed and historically realized. In the global hierarchy of political economic interests, money makes the important differences. Money creates artificial differences between people, which in a more natural world would make no essential differences. To 'naturalize' these differences is to perpetuate and perpetrate a belief system and set of models which leads to social racism and eventually ethnic racism. This is what the positivistic sciences have been up to. Anthropologists stand in a curious kind of relationship with money. They enter as beginners in anthropology and find anthropologia a friendly realm in which a world of differences made no important difference. When and if they progressed through the hierarchy of anthropologia, they find that anthropologia becomes an increasingly less friendly and more hostile realm--more competitive by private interests. They certainly didn't come into anthropology with the idea of realizing from it directly a lot of money--no one comes into anthropology because they expect to make it rich. But they change, as they 'professionalize' to become increasingly more concerned and preoccupied with the differences money makes, to the point that money becomes the primary and final objective of a whole vicious 'publish or perish' mode of production cycle. The true science of positivism stands as an American Ideology in reference to the significant counter reference other. It exists because of the differences which money makes in the field or out--it enables the field experience in the first place and determines the overall directionality of the flow of acculturation. Intrusions disruptive for native peoples are minor for the intruders. Anthropologists serve as change agents in a world of change whether they accept it or deny it. Money makes the difference of social race, the 'fly away' difference, the difference of how one can make only US$3,000 last a whole year in a poor country, the difference of the buying power of the US dollar--look at all the nice things I was able to buy for just US$100. In this regard, then, the US anthropologist is no significantly different than the US tourist--only perhaps more influentially.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">If I have to distill out of this a kind of ethical plea, if I should risk it, a plea for human equality, real and relative human equality in a multicultural continuum, then the advice I would give to future Alice's and AAA members is that Money is a kind of difference which does not, or should not, be the critical anthropological difference. The difference which Money creates are contrived, artificial, hierarchical and unequal. Science, in its positivistic ideology, emphasizes and 'naturalizes' these differences which money creates, serving as a system of social race, which becomes eventually ethnic racism. Differences of money or nature should not be the important differences which make the critical difference. These are differences which in the historical structure of the long run, make no significant difference. The significant differences, the cultural differences, are the ones which should be the basis. The significant indifferences, the cultural and natural similarities, are the basis of the important differences which should, historically, be allowed to make no difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Humankind need models to integrate a personal and cultural reality. Models of scientific positivism are models useful not for the majority of humankind, but for a small minority who wish to capitalize and predominate in a world wide political economic hierarchy. To be significant, to make the important difference, models must be effectual--effective in integrating together into a consistent coherent unity, psycho-social realities--the realities shared between self and others. No model which is based upon difference can achieve this kind of integration. Alice will leave the cave, go off to Africa and then come back again, and go on to pursue a successful career in Academia. She is the representative of a model based on emphasizing differences between people. The AAA citizenship of Anthropologia are, in their comfortable academic armchairs in America, not the correct models to achieve this kind of integration. The kinds of models needed on the historical convergence of human civilization, is essentially a model of human equality--one which emphasizes the similarities between many different cultural models and plays down the differences. If models become historically ineffectual in mediating change in human reality, then they must sooner or later be discarded, but not before more effectual ones have arisen to take their place. If this is Mazeway reformation, then we need desperately new models. Models we need are not ones that emphasize difference which make no difference, but one in which no difference make an important difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The old gray-haired Indian man dancing wildly in the crowded streets</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To a rock and roll song only he can hear</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Barefoot, bare-backed, black skinned with blue shrunken tattered blue jeans on</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The passers-by look on and joke and laugh at the poor old oblivious fool</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The young male anthropologist, camcorder on one shoulder, lap computer slung from the other</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">hedges in for a closer look</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">He impolitely bumps into the by-standing gawkers, would be hawkers</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"I'm sorry, please excuse me," he says with serious sincerity</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Too politely the lookers on just nod, thinking to themselves, whispering to themselves</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Isn't he a selfish pig?"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"He can’t help it, he's an American"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Yes, but he's rich!"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">You lick this hand</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This hand pats you</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ticks in your ears, sores festering your belly</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Black dog, so young and beautiful</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This hand releases you off the cruel short chain</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I paid an Ang Pao of a pound of sugar</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the indifferent old patriarch</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I let you run in freedom you've never before had</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Only to run wildly in madness</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This hand constrains you by a leash</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As I carry you to meet the dog shooter</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This hand sadly strokes the soft fur of the rigid flank</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In a final gesture of goodbye</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">VII</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">REDEFINING ANTHROPOLOGIA UNPARADIGMATICALLY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">deconstructionism deconstructed, ad finitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseum</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Zeno once proved that fleet footed Achilles was forever doomed to chase the tired tortoise. Modern mathematicians have lifted that old sentency by forever banishing the infinitesimal and fashioning a logic for infinitely peculiarly its own. This domain for thinking stipulates that individual elements in something like a straight line, which possesses continuity are infinitely more abundant that those in something like the realm of rational numbers, which does not; that the number of odd integers is the same as the number of odd plus even integers; that there are just as many points in lines of various lengths; than an infinite set stays the same despite much thinking; and that there are correspondences among continua. And the mind boggling goes on infinitely on. (R.G.H. Siu; <u>Ch'I: A Neo-Taoist Approach to Life</u>, 1974: 16)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The concept of <u>sakti</u> in the Tantric sacred texts is the projection of the 'energy' of the male as the female. Male and God are the passive polar manifestations of a single transient principle, while the female and the Goddess are the active. In this manner, said Heinrich Zimmer, "the male is identified with eternity, the female with time, and their embrace with the mystery of creation." Time and eternity are two aspects of the same. By abolishing opposites, the static and the fluid are viewed as a single entity. This can be imagined through the use of symbols and their opposites, such as a door through which a person cannot pass. (R.G.H. Siu; <u>Ch'I: A Neo-Taoist Approach to Life</u>, 1974: 15)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </blockquote> </blockquote> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In approaching for an effective alternative model for anthropology, it is necessary to reconsider anthropology from the point of view of whether it is or is not paradigmatic in the Kuhnian sense. The reflexivo-critico critique of scientific anthropology which stems from the appreciation of the humanities, and especially from de-constructionism as a form of literary criticism, it is necessary that a critique and polemic leveled against scientific anthropology, an anti-anthropology from the humanistic side of the coin, does not end in and of itself provide an alternative useful model from which to reconstruct an alternative anthropological model. Such reconstruction must begin from the anti-scientific critique, but it does not end there. Such reconstruction must involve redefinition of essential concepts and meanings within anthropology in a way which would render its models more theoretically, methodologically, existentially, ethically and historically effectual in the integration of human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology is inherently divided between 'two cultures' (I would claim multiple cultures) it has one foot in the sciences and one foot in the humanities. I believe this schism is itself a reflection of a prioritization of values in which there is a dichotomization of work and play--the sciences work hard, the humanities, in being pursuits of leisure, play softly. This results in an inherent fundamental schism between biological sciences and symbolic--between nature and culture. Where one rationalizes the other relativizes. When the other relatives, the other rationalizes. But this fundamental dichotomization is inherent reverberating throughout the many fields of academia, is intrinsic to the dualistic nature of structure of academia as traditional--they must be seen not so much as contradicting opposites of one another but as complementary counterpoint in an dialectical circle a dance of opposites--in conflict they separate, in synthesis they come together. Only by seeing the whole as a dialect of anthropology as a whole can one step outside of the hermeneutical circle in which its participants are caught. Outside of this circle, the field is more of a unity rather than a duality--to learn to see the reality as an undifferentiated, unanalyzed whole. The dialectical dance itself, its every thesis, anti-thesis, re-synthesis, becomes the paradigmatic parameters of its praxis. It becomes historically defined as paradigmatic, as a 'culture' inherently dichotomic--this is the basis of its dialogical discourse. Every time a new true believer movements synthesis is achieved, it becomes shattered again by the embodiment of contradiction. But there is an alternative path, an alternative way of proceeding. As soon as it seems to become a 'unified paradigm' a new school comes along which destroys the serenity of peace. Anthropology is born of discord, of dissonance, and noise. This alternative way turns the tables by stressing balance and symmetry rather than dominance and asymmetry. In this approach neither system of conceptioning is better than the other, but both are mutually necessary. On the other hand, where there can be no analysis, there can be no synthesis. Where there is no paradigm, there is no 'progress'. It becomes no longer pre-paradigmatic but un-paradigmatic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology, as any of the traditional academic disciplines, can become both paradigmatic and un-paradigmatic and neither. It can come to embody and transcend contradictions while allowing the dialectic to continue to play itself out. But by becoming both and neither, anthropology no longer has to be bound to history, bound to the structure of paradigmatics. Only by divorcing oneself from this paradigmatic structure is their hope for making anthropology something 'different'--independent of power, and thus an alternative way for humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">******</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In redefining anthropology unparadigmatically, it is fitting at the outset to proffer working definition of key terms (operationalization) and a broad description of overarching themes (contextualization) in order to provide a general rationale and sense of purpose. To propose a new way for 'seeing' an old reality requires much rethinking old thoughts and reinventing old schemes for organizing such thoughts. It is necessary to proffer new meanings to old 'things', new definitions for old 'terms' and even to devise a new idea for an old way of talking about such generalia (old things and the new relations between them). This alternative idiom is the formal expression of an alternative frame of 'mind' in the broad sense. Idiom here refers to a characteristic or stylistic pattern of language of a particular class or group. A new idiom refers to such a patterning as it is different from a previous way. A new idiom refers to an alternative language for describing reality, one whose rule structure begets alternative explanations and prescriptions for reality. It begets alternative system of belief and behavior. It is necessary to <u>recreate</u> a new idiom of 'things' and their 'relations' by which framing an alternative mind about human reality becomes possible. This new idiom must meet certain conditions of systematicity and organization--it must be internally coherent, making sense in its own framework of meaning and be non self contradicting, and it must be extrinsically consistent in achieving a certain general equivalence or correspondence between the thing and the meaning of the term. Most of anthropological methodology concerns the problematic of first hand recording of 'information'--marking or framing, selectively. Recording can be accomplished in a variety of ways which ranges along a continuum from purely object and quantitative to purely subjective and qualitative. There is a hidden tautology in any recording methodology--the methodology employed forms the parameters of description, the language for framing 'information' in some coherent way--interpreting or reinforcing significant differences in the recording is the second step of the ethnographic process involving translation of the first language in terms of the second. This translation into one's own, becomes very problematic and obscurely self reflexive when both primary and secondary languages are the same.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Rethinking, reinventing, recreating, transforming an old idiom into a new one is referred to as re-synthesis, defined as 'the combining of separate elements or substances, previously and differentiated in order to form a coherent whole'. This work has followed a synthetitistic methodology towards understanding human reality--it is a dialectical methodology which is not mutual exclusive of either deduction or inductive analysis, but rather incorporates these as necessary prerequisites of the entire process. In this mode it is a logical form of question and answer argumentation, of the analytical contradiction of opposed meaning (thesis and antithesis) and rather than a true or false decision made between them, as in the positivistic methodology of science in framing an analytical 'either-or' type of question, the resolution (re-synthesis) involves the incorporation of both into a single understanding of interrelationships. Here re-synthesis also refers to the fact that the substance of the reconstructed whole is not the same ass the substance of the previous a priori undifferentiated reality from which it has been analytically, dialectically derived. Synthetic realism models the really real after the fact of its experience, a posteriori to its deconstruction and reconstruction, which emphasis must be distinguished from the tendency towards reification of the model as if it were real, of imputing substantial reality to mere ideas of the mind, of hypostatizing abstract thoughts as if 'they were out there'. This is easy enough to accomplish when one's language quantitatively 'materializes' reality in its description in the first place--that historically one person's suicide could ever be the same 'thing' as another person's act of suicide--'facts'. The avoids the problem of investing re-constructions with misplaced concreteness, a false sense of realism, and then of attempting to methodically, behaviorally, 'recreate' this realism, avoiding this tendency of human belief and behavior, by preliminary acknowledgment of the artificiality of the reconstruction. Re-synthesism also refers to the fact that we are dealing with more than a mere single instance of reconstruction, but with an ongoing set, indeed a continuous dialectical process of reconstruction without end. More so re-synthesis reflects in a limited and cautious way the use of the term by Herbert Spencer who referred to synthesis as the attempt 'to fuse all sciences into a coherent whole'. Each scientific discipline and sub-discipline has its own theoretical, its own territory of the human mindscape--these areas of the mind are not discontinuous, but articulate upon the margins of each focal area of understanding. Uniting alternative paradigms into a general framework requires much re-translation by metaphorical means. But the key metaphor is not evolutionism which implies an a priori sense of purposefulness, a sense of 'progress--it is another Historicism in which development is dialectically cyclical and change is mostly unpredictable--the by-product of unintended consequences. This throws a mental monkey wrench into the whole orderly and mechanism machination of positivistic Scientism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We must broadly survey the contiguities of the anthropological realm as it presents itself to the rest of humanity in a more or less united front--the guise of a single anthropological face. This approach to anthropology by an anthropologist is not completely unthinkable--it requires a certain measure of 'marginality' from the field as well as an intimate acquaintance within it, from the inside. As I felt myself becoming excluded from what proved to me to be a relatively tightly knit, closed, self enclosing circle of anthropologists, I lapsed into an liminal lacunae of anthropological anomie. Also I went outside of the whole of the culture and social framework, in which anthroplogia is institutionally embedded, as an ex-anthropologist. I no longer had a reputation to live up to, or as soon became evident, to live down, in a bigger world. Though I have sneaked back into the Anthropological Mansion via a side door, I have since remained a 'professional stranger' who has resisted being completely reintegrated into the old way. It is from this vantage point, gained not without much turmoil and distress that I can better understand an American Engineer who finds anthropological literature unnecessarily obscure and obtuse, or a brilliant French ex-pat who has distrusted and disliked anthropologists in his past, or local inhabitants who complain of being used by an anthropologist just in order for that anthropologist to achieve status in their American university--what does writing a book in English do for them? Thus more than a modicum of disillusionment goes into what constitutes an 'informed' outsider's point of view. I have only been able to do this study because I have been beyond anthropology the anthropological horizon.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">More and more what impresses me is how much of what anthropology studies and the ways it studies can be turned upon the study of anthropology itself as a sort of anthropology of anthropology. How much like small tribes anthropological departments become--how much daily ritual and regular rites of passage obscures academic pedantism and authoritarianism as something 'genuine'--how dependent anthropologists are upon their own sub-cultural style of life, upon sources of funding, upon a 'reputation'--how much social distancing mechanisms are operating in including/excluding novitiates from the tribal ranks. there is a preoccupation with border patrol, boundary policing when there are no a priori clear cut boundaries. Educational anthropology becomes academic scientific anthropology in similar way that academic experimental psychology is scientific psychology--both come from an American tradition of biological biologism and behaviorism--trying to figure out human nature and in the process 'naturalizing' humanity, and human differences. The quest is for the spurious and elusive 'universal'--the ground law of human nature. Even after the prerequisite year, the bourgeoisie guilt complex cannot simply be washed clean by any amount of academic literary achievement--"What do you know of our lives when you are a mere child, a stranger who cannot even speak our language very well. What right do you have to study our way of life when you know nothing of our lives, of our histories?"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">How like priests and spirit mediums they behave in classrooms, how like regular human beings, they become behind the closed doors of their homes. How like Americans, so typical--a poor cross between a dirty hippie, a foreign tourist and an official diplomat they appear to poor ignorant people who have difficulty with the enlightenment attitude of the intrinsic value and extrinsic payoff of higher education when they are struggling just to feed and clothe their children--much less to provide them with even a rudimentary education. They do not need another American baby to take care of, especially when it is a strange American adult acting like a baby who is obviously better off then they are.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">More than just an anthropology of anthropology, we must see the ultimate embeddedness of the values of anthroplogia in the historical civilization and socio-cultural life ways in which it took shape and flourishes today. It must be viewed in terms of its praxis, its total praxis, in both an academic milieu and in the field, in relation to a larger socio-cultural and historical framework from which it derives its existence. To the outside anthropology presents a complicated but still contiguous front--its internal divisiveness and dissension melts into sheer confusion and misunderstanding from the uninformed outsider, preventing entry into its inner complexities by an 'lay' or casual onlooker.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">First and foremost, anthropology must be regarded as a 'science' (just exactly what kind of science it is another matter). Whatever else it may be, most anthropology courses are conducted in buildings designated as 'science'. There are anthropology 'laboratories' where methodical science is rigorously conducted. There are of course heretical anthropologists who dub themselves humanists, but these are by and large within American Anthropologia, a pariah group. All classes require pariahs, just as all courts must have a jester or two to be complete. As a 'science' anthropology is cast in a particular frame of mind which is characteristically 'scientific'. It must first be seen as a western rationalistic/empiricist frame of mind. Secondly, 'nature/culture' is the fundamental dichotomization of reality which informs this 'most human of sciences'. Nature is always taken as the antecedent, a priori, culture is always the a posteriori consequent--Nature leads culture, culture tracks nature. As a science formulated in a traditional western framework it can be nothing else except philosophically and mentally tied to this framework--it cannot think 'scientifically' outside of self. This is not to say that in the historical dialectics of anthropological development, there have not been frequent rebellions and defections, but by and large these are minor variations upon a major theme of scientific discourse. Contrapuntal exceptions to the paradigmatic rule of scientific anthropology must be seen as part of an ongoing dialectic about a major central axis of the question 'what is human science?'. By continually revolving and unfolding around this central axis of the nature/culture dichotomy, it is never really able to assert its own sense of independence of 'mind' outside of a scientific framework which had a western origin. No matter how unscientific or soft or thick any particular anthropologist or part of anthropologists might become, in relation to a larger scientific community, almost always a debt and allegiance is acknowledged that anthropology as a whole must remain true to scientific discovery of human reality, anchored to formal, methodological fieldwork, to systematic principles of organization and praxis which define the boundaries of any science the core of any scientific 'discipline'. By continuously revolving and unfolding around this central axis of the nature/culture dichotomy, it is never really able to ???????Philosophy too has had its minor counterpoints of variation about a central 'rationalistic' axis of development. The implications of science, and of a philosophy of science, are crucial to an understanding of an anthropology of anthropology. In terms of self identity anthropology maintains allegiance to 'science' which puts it into an uneasy and strained, distanced relationship with both history and philosophy as these have fallen for the most part within the academically contraposed camp of the humanities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whatever the track record and history of anthropology in its development as a science, one which has been by any means smooth and singular, anthropology remains today more tightly tethered to conventionalism than it had been at any time previously in its past, inspite of the identity crises of the reflexive criticism which is a self conscious readjustment to a more normal scientific modus operandi, as anthropology 'comes home' to academia, no longer being able to practice it scientific methodology 'abroad' with the freedom and impunity it had long enjoyed within a neocolonial framework. Anthropology turned reflexive turning its mirrors upon its own consciousness vis-à-vis the other, at precisely the historical moment when anthropology had to seek refuge in its academic armchair. The image of the anthropological lens is but the image in the crystal, the reflection in the looking glass--its essence is without the substance of the real 'thing' it is meant to depict. As such its content aims always to go beyond itself, but in the process it never really gets outside of its own boundaries of existence--always bringing itself further afield, always in the process bringing a little bit more of human reality into clearer focus, bringing a little bit more of the outside world within the purview of its own scientific boundaries--appropriating a bit more of human reality and in this gradual cumulative at best piece-meal process of anthropological acquisition and appropriation enlarging its conception of itself and its realm of scientific importance in human reality, exchanging a bit more of its smaller, pre-developed self, for a bit more of a larger human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From the insider's perspective, the divisiveness of anthropologia is legend. Anthropologia is like the eastern philosopher's elephant--spectacles blind, limit and distort the vision of paradigmatic anthropologists, obscuring what they 'see' only touching the parts and trying to relate the whole in terms of its individual parts. No wonder one touches the ear and feels language, another touches the leg and sees ecology, another the turn trunk and thins symbol. The realm of anthropologia is a Wonderland--a 'wilderness of mind' which so far has few clearly recognizable boundaries. There are maps leading in different directions, delineating different pathways which lead everywhere and nowhere, but none so far has led beyond, outside of the forest itself. And none ever will. Anthropology cannot know itself for the many trees. Anthropologist cannot see the whole forest for the many trees. But it is almost as if anthropologists surreptitiously delight in disorder, in haggling amongst themselves about which road to take leading out of the forest, making muddles of each others models.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And yet, from the outside looking in, inspite of all the apparent divisiveness of anthropological praxis, in its own elephant likeness it nevertheless exhibits a certain broad sense of order all its peculiar own, and there are identifiable traits, like the nose, foot, ear, trunk, which outline its distinctive form in broad fashion. Anthropologia occupies a particular terrain of mindscape--it has its own definite sense of territoriality over which it can become quite protective. Its apparent disorder defines its first characteristic--its breadth, scope, broadness which lends itself well to confusion, struggle and conflict and a disordered sense of purposefulness "what's it all about, any way?" what is most obviously distinctive and defining is its inherent complexity and vastness of subject matter which it purports to comprehend--virtually the whole of human reality. This is no doubt contributes to the appearance of anthropological disarray and disorderliness. Anthropology defines itself most broadly by its cross-cultural diversity and its broadness and variability of interpretation.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">What distinguishes anthropology is indeed its peculiar kind of eclecticism. Beyond its 'organization of diversity' it has no overall centeredness or sense of complete, overall balance. But we are not so much interested in every detail of anthropological generalia, all things categorically anthropological but more expressly in anthropology in terms of general theory and in terms of total everyday praxis as an academic institution embedded within a larger societal matrix. But even from an informed insider's point of view, general anthropology and anthropological praxis is no less a seeming muddle of diversity--of partisan camps protecting their own turf, of contradictory words uttered in harsh criticism or defensive aggressiveness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nevertheless, beyond its broad scope, other characteristic features delineate and demarcate the mindscape of anthropologia. Though an insider's perspective is the only one which counts in Anthropologia, an alternative outsider's frame of reference mustn't be to hastily discounted as inauthentic.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are several interrelated characteristics of anthropological praxis and generality. First, most anthropologists identify themselves as professional scientists. To the extent that anthropology is recognized as a science, it shares certain formal affinities with other scientific fields of inquiry--'family resemblance's'. It's 'scientificity' also renders it more or less <u>paradigmatic</u> in a sense that Thomas Kuhn has framed it. But it is and cannot be strictly a science, as much s the 'hard' sciences are so construed, and its 'approximate' only character of being 'more or less' like a science, its indefinite paradigmatic structure as a scientific community, renders it a problematic paradigm, inherently, from first to last, in a distinctive way all its own. Its <u>problematicalness</u> must not be underestimated as a central distinctive defining feature of anthropology. Being self redefined as an extremely problematic scientific paradigm, it is important to identify and elucidate the sources of its problematic character in its own praxis and theory. Its problematical character is fundamentally dialectical in character, set up and made realistic by the inherent rational dichotomization of its domain--there occur several cross-cutting essential dichotomies which serve as parameters of praxis and theory. They are not strict dichotomies, but operate upon the boundaries of the anthropological realm in a loose, metaphorical way--constituting the pre-logical, metalogical foundations--the pre-understandings underlying the scientific understanding of human reality. They become posited or deposited as systematic analogies, analogues precipitated out of theory making up a disposable polythetic class sharing a diverse set of uncommon attributes along lines of family resemblance's.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The first and foremost, if only, consensus is that anthropology must be regarded as a 'science' (an inexact science perhaps, but still a science). Most (but not all) anthropologists prefer to think about what they do in terms of being good science. Some prefer a stricter definition of anthropological scientificity than others, but most will agree that anthropology 'thinks' and 'speaks' sound science. There are of course a few heretical anthropologists (like myself) who dub themselves spineless humanists, but these represent a minority 'pariah' group. All artists need critics to make the world go round, all scientists need humanists to maintain a sense of balance.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology then, construes itself reflexively, as existing somewhere within the more general science--it strives to gain recognition as a formal and respectable scientific discipline. Thus it interprets itself, when and if it ever does, in a scientific idiom and programs itself in its praxis to some version or other of a scientific model.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The main aim of anthropological praxis has been to situate and orient itself securely in the land of science. This anthropology has grown within academia, come into its own, somewhere amidst the sciences. There have been vigorous efforts to rigorously and repeatedly apply some form of scientific methodology of descriptive, quantitative empirical inductivism and hypothesis testing to the comprehension of the reality which is creates for itself. This is not to say that in the dialectics of anthropological emergence there have not been frequent heresies, variations upon a major theme of discourse. No matter how allegedly unscientific or 'soft' or 'thick' or 'deep' any particular anthropologist may fancy him/herself becoming in the perennial peregrinations mental meandering through the flower gardens, almost always some kind of debt is acknowledged in the name of general, respectable science, that anthropology must remain true to scientific discovery, to formalized fieldwork methodologies of one brand or another, to more or less formalized principles of general organization and praxis which defines any discipline as a science.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that anthropology has shaped itself in the name and image of science, it has come to share certain definitive affinities which characterize all sciences. Its normal dialectic is carried on in a characteristic idiom of professionals which requires years of education to master and which is mostly inaccessible to the untrained or outside its own borders. Its community is comparatively small and well circumscribed within academia. The primary forum of the professionals are journals which are highly technical and remote--inaccessible to the average reading public.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…A number of characteristics for membership in a professional scientific group must already be strikingly clear, the scientists must, for example, be concerned to solve problems about the behavior of nature. In addition, though his concern may be global in its extent, the problems on which he works must be problems of detail. More important, the solution that satisfy him may not be merely personal but instead be accepted as solutions by many. The group that shares them may not however be drawn at random from society as a whole, but is rather the well defined community of the scientists' professional compeers. One of the strongest, if still unwritten, rules of scientific like is the prohibition of appeals to heads of state or to populace at large in matters scientific. Recognition of the existence of a uniquely competent professional group and acceptance of its role as the exclusive arbiter of professional achievement has further implications. The group's members, as individuals and by virtue of their shared training and experience must be seen as ????????(MISSING SENTENCE)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(MISSING SENTENCE) solution. But it is highly questionable for in reality whether the kind of reality anthropology addresses can be thusly explained away at all, whether anthropology can sort out what is merely unknown from what is ultimately unknowable.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"<font SIZE="3">A paradigm is what the members of a scientific community share, <u>and</u> conversely a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm…" (Kuhn)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that anthropological praxis defines as normal science, then it makes sense to think of anthropological praxis in a Kuhnian sense as being paradigmatic. As much as anthropology is or can become scientific, in its character structure, to that same extent it might also be correctly regarded as paradigmatic into the extent that anthropologists share in a common consensus of how anthropological praxis scientific, then to the same extent they share in a paradigmatic organization. To the extent that the boundaries of scientific anthropology are non-discrete, ill defined, shading off into the realm of the unknowable, then to the same extent its paradigmatic character will also be problematical.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like everything else in anthropologia, whether 'social sciences' like anthropology are actually 'authentically' paradigmatic has been the subject of a heated, ongoing debate. The position adopted by the anthropologist in this matter seems to a large extent to depend on that anthropologists professional position within the realm. It is suggested that those closer to the academic armchair would be more likely to regard anthropology as essentially non-paradigmatic in character, because it seems completely lacking in consensus of what about itself is supposed to be paradigmatic. Again the former is a closer ' insider's viewpoint', the latter a distant 'outsider's perspective'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are sciences whose 'paradigms' blocks of theoretical precepts and precedent that define the orthodoxy of what Thomas Kuhn calls 'normal science' maintain a frozen immobility until their underpinnings are melted by the heat and pressure of accumulated evidence and a plate tectonic revolution results. Anthropology is not one of these. As a discipline, a history that, indeed manifests a certain logic or order (which is discusses in Chapter 6). For all the unanimity it commands, however, this flux of ideation might as well be described as a pure dialectic, a play of exposition (and denial) by desperate voices or an electic accretion of all and sundry into textbooks. What is remarkable about this is not so much the persistence of theoretical fossils (a persistence that is the stock in trade of academic tradition) but the failure of anthropology to institutionalize this persistence, or indeed, to institutionalize a consensus at all…(Wagner)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Thomas Kuhn at least implied that the social sciences were paradigmatic though he characterizes them at perhaps a pre-paradigmatic state--in which its central normal features are not completely resolved its central groundwork or paradigmatic foundation has not yet been laid--"during which individuals practice science, but in which the results of their enterprise do not add up to science as we know it…" (page 163)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"…in parts of the social sciences they may well be occurring today"…to a very great extent the term science is reserved for fields that do progress in obvious ways. Nowhere does this show more clearly than in the recurrent debates about whether one or another of the contemporary social sciences is really a science. These debates have parallels in the pre-paradigm periods of fields that are today unhesitatingly labeled science. Their ostensible issue throughout is a definition of that vexing term. Men argue that psychology, for example, is a science because it possesses such and such characteristics. Others counter that those characteristics are either unnecessary or not sufficient to make a field a science. Often great energy is invested, great passion aroused, and the outsider is at a loss to know why. Can very much depend upon a <u>definition</u> of 'science'? Can a definition tell a man whether he is a scientist or not?…These are not, however, questions that could respond to an agreement or definition. Furthermore, if precedent from the natural sciences serves, they will cease to be a source of concern not when a definition is found, but when the groups that now doubt their status achieve consensus about their past and present accomplishments…(Kuhn: 160-161)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">others primarily insiders have referred to anthropology as being fully paradigmatic and even 'poly-paradigmatic' in the sense that anthropologia shares several overall communities which look to separate realms, in different directions and contain their own scientific praxis--at most these communities overlap and often conflict.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This view sees anthropological praxis as being fully mature in its own self recognition as a science--this would mean that the field has progresses remarkably and is in a post paradigmatic period of greater breadth and specialization. Something like this seems to have been happening in anthropology. There exist separate communities, each sharing in a broad paradigm of science, but also not sharing their own special case versions of the paradigm.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"Though science surely grows in depth, it may not grow in breadth as well. If it does so, that breadth is manifest mainly in the proliferation of scientific specialties, not in the scope of any single specialty alone." (Kuhn: 170)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The notion of progress somehow informs a science of its own identity and being or becoming pre-paradigmatic implies some form of progressive evolution if not toward some future word vision, at least in a retrospective sense, of the separation of the significant from the trivial, unknown from the unknowable, the emergence of the known from the unknown, of from the firmless, of choate mind primordial inchoate. Progress is equated by paradigmatic in the sense that scientific knowledge is cumulative, deepening, more exact, specialized.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…We must learn to recognize as causes what have ordinarily been taken to be effects. If we can do that, the phrases 'scientific progress' and even 'scientific objectivity' may come to be seen in part redundant…Does a field make progress because it is a science or is it a science because it makes progress?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…Viewed from within any single community, however, whether of scientists or of non-scientists, the result of successful creative work <u>is </u>progress. How could it be anything else? …No creative school recognizes a category of work that is, on the one hand, a creative success, but is not, on the other hand, an addition to the collective achievement of the group. If we doubt, as many do, that non-scientific fields make progress, that cannot be because individual schools make none. Rather, it must be because there are always competing schools, each of which constantly questions the very foundations of the others. The man who argues that philosophy, for example, has made no progress emphasizes that there are still Aristotelians, not that Aristotelianism has failed to progress. (Kuhn: 162-163)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Of course, seen from the outside, so may anthropological schools are not necessarily mutually antagonistic to one another except perhaps in as much as one might deny the theoretical foundations of another as pseudo scientific, proclaiming 'there is no such thing as social evolution' thereby denying the foundations of most of cultural biology and another might just as well declare 'all culture is adaptation' thereby destroying the preeminent procreativity of the human mind. Actually, what is to be seen is the contradiction and dialectic of overlapping, competing and often mutually complementary schools, or communities, each pursuing its own direction, each regarding a different aspect of human reality, each occupying a separate niche in the evolutionary ecology of the anthropological mind. When these perspectives are considered together they form a pretty coherent body of knowledge. In anthropological dialectics there is quite a bit of overlap and interplay between the old and the new, the right and the left. One is then led to wonder about the inherent dialectical structure which is focused upon argumentative schismogenesis in the development of the discipline, and to what extent this form of development might not be recapitalize in the ontogenic unfolding of the anthropological mind itself. What is of value is that certain notions do finally become discarded as patently false, untenable and unrealistic prejudice, or as dangerous, or merely fall by the wayside as trivia--notions of race, enlightenment, social Darwinism, notions of the fossilized primitive, etc. In the course of their dialectical development anthropologists do eventually move on to bigger and better questions, refining and re-defining their arguments, eventually learning something more about anthropological reality, if not exactly human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is my central thesis regarding the structural character of anthropological praxis is that it is best thought of in terms of being 'semi-scientific' and in terms of being thus 'quasi-paradigmatic'. Kuhn's original conception of what is paradigmatic was much broader based then the single case which he so aptly illustrated in the natural sciences. Something similar to what he construed as the process of scientific paradigmatics is probably going on in most fields of organized social endeavor. The real issue if concern is not really whether or not anthropology is good science, but how and why anthropology is good anthropology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…It may, for example, be significant that economists argue less about whether their field is a science than do practitioners of some other fields of social science. Is that because economists know what science is? Or is rather economics about which they argue?</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that different anthropologists can share the same scientific paradigms, believe and behave something like science, and strive to create for themselves some kind of scientific frame of mind, then anthropology has at least and perhaps at best only approximates the paradigmatic character of the natural sciences, and thus must be construed as being of a similar, analogous character as science, but still it is not precisely the same thing. It shares certain family resemblances in terms of functions of its paradigmatic character, but it also has distinctive traits all of its own which differentiates it as something other than strictly natural science. If anthropology is indeed paradigmatic, then it is still not paradigmatic in the strict sense. If anthropology is really scientific, then it is perhaps so in a sense that is not strictly paradigmatic as Kuhn applied it to the social sciences.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whether construed as scientific or not, the structural character of anthropology is a little different than say biological praxis or the praxis of the physical sciences or of chemistry. The nature of the unknown which anthropology confronts is different than the nature of the unknown which informs the meaning of biology, chemistry or physics. The form of knowing which delineates the unknown is of a different character in anthropology than it is in other sciences. The ways of knowing whether ethnographic, ethnological research or anthropological discourse and dialectic is distinctive from a biological way of knowing. To the extent that biological science informs anthropology about the physical nature of human reality, then perhaps anthropology shares in a similar scientific paradigm, say evolution, genetics, etc., which is inherently biological in character. In a similar way, scientific psychology and social science informs anthropology at least in part of what is essentially psychological or social in character about human reality. In a similar way anthropological praxis informs paradigmatically other fields of intellectual discourse. What is important then is to elucidate a bit more carefully exactly what the structural character of the anthropological paradigm really is. If there can be identified any central characteristic of the anthropological paradigm, it must be that it is distinctively <u>problematical</u> in nature. Exactly how and why this is remains to be explained, but it is important that at the outset the radical problematicalness of the anthropological paradigm be emphasized. All sciences, no matter how hard or exact, share in some measure a problematical character, at least to the extent that the nature of the unknown they confront informs and misinforms and creates paradigmatic process in peculiar ways. The measure and nature of problematicalness is intrinsic to the understanding of the paradigmatic process of delineating the known and the unknown, the knowable and the unknowable, the significant and the trivial.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The divisiveness of anthropology as total paradigmatic praxis reveals its control aspect of being 'problematic' in the sense that it poses different and similar problems for solutions, looks for 'puzzle like' problems to solve, and creates problems which need solution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">General anthropology is an extremely 'problematic' subject to broach. The fact of this radical problematics is intrinsic to anthropology in general. Its problematic nature is inescapable, in alienable at times, at times very confusing and sometimes highly rewarding. As one field of inquiry into human reality, its problematics are its greatest weakness and also, paradoxically, its greatest strength.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Practically everything about the general subject of anthropology is problematic from beginning to end. No single name, concept, theory or myth that is entertained within anthropology is free from problematic connotation or immune from multiple reinterpretation. Everything from the definition of culture and human nature to the ethnographic description of a particular rite or custom to the elaboration of general theories about human evolution, mythological structure, political, economic or religious process to theoretical and philosophical discussions about anthropology itself is fraught with highly problematic difficulties. Even the inherent problematic character of general anthropology is itself a subject of intense problematic debate.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This intense and extensive problematical nature is the key to understanding the unusual beauty and sublime power of anthropology as a <u>PAPL science</u>. Its problematics is its greatest vice and greatest virtue--keeping it comparatively clean from programmatic ritualization and bureaucratic institutionalization which is an ever threatening academic trap. Yet it is not entirely 'auto immune' to its own problematical self contradictions or to the dishonest egos of its own practitioners. It tends to be so often self contradicting, diffuse, and indeterminate--so fractionated and disparate as a systematic discipline, that sound and timely programmatic initiative is often thwarted and general theoretical comprehension precluded.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Only an insecure egoist in dire need of simplicity would deny this difficult yet enlightening face of unforegoable and automatic problematics about anthropological reality. But being fundamentally by and 'irreducibly' problematic does not by any measure deny a general comprehension of anthropological problematics as itself an isolatable <u>phenomenon of existential anthropological reality</u>, capable of being to some extent accurately modeled within a reductionist theoretical framework.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Like an artist stepping back from his canvas, if we are able to distance ourselves enough to acquire at least a quasi-objective if not an optimum view of general anthropological problematics, then we might be capable of noticing a general outline of the whole of anthropological problematics, not unproblematical in and of itself, but referentially figured against a large yet more obscure background--a more general 'paradigmatic framework'--and once we have convinced ourselves of its broad and most general outlines, perhaps in the process also revealing heretofore unnoticed shapes and unusual 'moiré' patternings, then once again we might move in closer to refocus our attention upon at least some of its more prominent features and its more apparent problematical particularities. The purpose of this work is to discuss a few of the many important problems of anthropology in a generalist manner, in order to demonstrate clearly that although generally problematic, anthropology is not without an inherent general order and ostensible 'table of organization' which is generally comprehensible--albeit problematically.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology is a <u>problematic paradigm</u> as both the starting and finishing point in a general discussion of anthropology as theory and reality, fact and fiction. This work also is a <u>generalist</u> approach, such that no necessary boundaries between its many varied sub-disciplines are recognized as being anything more than convenient methodological programs and labels within which to frame a disparate and competing theories about various particular anthropological data and themata. It recognizes anthropology as a primarily <u>paradigmatic</u> in the general <u>Kuhnian </u>sense that as a general phenomenon of social discourse and instruction, it is as susceptible to the labels and ego limited prejudices as it is actually grounded in sound empirical reality, which any 'normal' delimited 'science' is supposed to demarcate and define. Like any other social paradigm, anthropology is as subject to the same vicissitudes and constraints which hinders and promote scientific realization and advance finally this work approaches general anthropological problematics as if these are <u>existential problems</u> of <u>human reality</u> distinct and unusual perhaps, but nevertheless ongoing concerns relevant and realistic to everyday human existence both within and outside anthropological praxis--and not as primarily an esoteric academic concern mystified by professional and technical jargon and commonly nonsensical double talk.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In approaching the problematics of anthropology as a general problem in and of itself, in some vague sense isolatable from its multifaceted particulars, and somehow relatable to the more general problems of existential human reality, it is crucial to recognize that anthropology is most generally concerned with comprehending human reality but not just any and every portion of the whole of human reality, which is universal, but more specifically and importantly that general portion in which human beings look earnestly and honestly at their brothers and sisters and at themselves through other's eyes, as unique and different individuals and as more than mere reflections of their own ego identity, in order to see more clearly the meaning of their own 'human beingness the purposes and reasons and functions for their behaviors, in whichever made or fashion or level it is manifest and to be formally defined.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The perpetual condition of anthropological problematics is the source and symptom of a peculiar kind of <u>paradoxicality</u> about general anthropology as an existential humanistically oriented science seeking to comprehend existential human reality through the greater and better realization of human possibility. This paradoxicality gives anthropology its distinctive and characteristic flavor and is true cutting edge in the investigation of an inherently paradoxical human reality. This essential anthropological paradoxicality is a 'meat-phenomenon'--at once the control subjective problem to 'objective' anthropological investigation and simultaneously the central problematical objective of general anthropological investigation. This paradoxicality arises from the problematic character of the innate and immanent meaning of being 'human' itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The inherent problematic and paradoxical nature of general anthropology poses a kind of minimum theoretical paradigmatic threshold--a social hurdle and a barrier of communication to any person seeking to enter and comprehend general anthropology. Those people incapable of dealing with its intrinsic problematic paradoxicality or who seek to reduce its problematic nature to a simplified, essentially unproblematic, metaphysical version of reality are merely dishonest anthropological egotists lacking the intellectual integrity to partake of its enlightening communion. From the general anthropological point of view we are all possible anthropologists, some more than most, a few irretrievably so.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Finally, it, is not really worthwhile arguing for or against the professional neutrality of anthropology as a 'scientific' discipline. It must at least feign a guarded neutrality at all times in order to protect its professional integrity as a legitimate 'objective' discipline, like any other honest science, but putative and superficially purported 'scientific neutrality' does not necessarily imply reneging moral responsibility or automatically preclude humanistic commitment to a better human reality--the realization of greater and improved human possibility of being and meaning. In such beliefs in moral neutrality exist only a naïve and irresponsible self rationalization allowing anthropologists to hide from reality behind their professional raiment and officiality and allowing anthropology to become a dangerous instrument of any state in the oppression of its own and other people.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Such 'Truths' ought to be 'self evident' enough to require no further mention except where this general ethical issues plays upon the general problematics of anthropology. If the many unique and important insights to be found within the anthropological realm cannot be broadly disseminated to all of humanity by general yet relatively unbiased and open interpretation, if not hopefully to effect in some esoteric kind of manner changes for the better somewhere and somehow in someone's lifetime, then at least to make a valiant effort toward such realization of higher humanistic and naturalistic ideals, then the general purpose of anthropology is self defeating. Anthropology must become something more than an ornate and exclusively academic paradigm as an end in itself--it must be made the practical and teleological means to the salvation of a humanity from its own seemingly inevitable species suicide and ineluctable mass biological extinction. The realization of its fullest humanistic potential demands just such a general humanological movement in order to counter and overcome the worldwide stranglehold of the 'civilized' tyranny of nuclear terror and the menacing modern threat of global holocaust.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are many interrelated reasons why anthropological praxis is radically problematical. Where to begin unraveling this Gordon knot composed of so many diverse threads of logic is well neigh impossible to determine, so perhaps it is best to just slice cleanly and through the heart of the matter and examine some of its more central interconnections.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropological praxis and mentality is dialectical in character, in the sense that it is composed of ongoing question and answer thesis and antithetical discourse between different acting anthropologists. This is, in and of itself one of the normal modes of anthropological praxis, but it must be seen as a continuous, never ending dialectic which revolves and resolves itself perpetually about certain central issues, issues which together make up the distinctive features of the anthropological paradigm, both similar and analogous to other paradigms and yet in its own idiomatic organization different from many others.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There occurred throughout history of both western and eastern philosophy a very similar dialectical emergence, a movement which balances itself in its movement, gains its centeredness about a single axis of human reality. Here it is important only to recognize that the dialectical structure of philosophy which is usually found within the humanities and is regarded as above and beyond the normal structure of a scientific paradigm, in the sense of dealing with 'knowable' questions, is very much akin to the dialectical structure of anthropology. "But there is always some men who cling to one or another of the older views, and they are simply weed out of the profession which thereafter ignores their work. The new paradigm implies a new and more frigid definition of the field. Those unwilling or unable to accommodate their work to it must proceed in isolation or attach themselves to some other group. Historically they have often simply stayed in the departments of philosophy from which so many of the special sciences have been spawned." (Kuhn: 19)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We have already seen, however, that one of the things as scientific community acquires with a paradigm is a criterion for choosing problems that, while the paradigm is taken for granted, can be assumed to have solutions. To a great extent these are the only problems that the community will admit as scientific or encourage its members to undertake. Other problems, including many that had previously been standard, are rejected as metaphysical, as the concern of another discipline, or sometimes as just too problematic to be worth the time. A paradigm can, for that matter, even insulate the community from those socially important problems that are not reducible to the puzzle form, because they cannot be stated in terms of the conceptual and instrumental tools the paradigm supplies. Such problems can be a distraction, a lesson brilliantly illustrated by several facets of seventeenth century Baconianism and by some of the contemporary social sciences. One of the reasons why normal science seems to progress so rapidly is that is practitioners concentrate on problems that only their lack of ingenuity should keep them from solving. (Kuhn: 37)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology has something of a schizoid nature of a split personality, a double identity that speaks of its uncertain place somewhere between the sciences and the humanities, of its crossed and confused and often contradictory loyalties.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Eric Wolfe once responded to the question of what is anthropology with the provocative statement that it is "the most scientific of the humanities, the most humanist of the sciences" (1974: 88). Anthropology is, he said, "in part history, part literature, in part natural science, part social science…" it represents both a manner of looking at man and a vision of man (ibid). this dual orientation of anthropology, somewhere between or at the margins of the sciences and the humanities, is a source of inspiration and of paradox. (Wessman: 1)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that the sciences and the humanities have become more or less entrenched and segregated into two coexisting worlds, founded upon fundamentally different world views implicit to each, there is very little interchange or cross over between them. History, religion, philosophy, literature and philology are part of the culture of the humanities.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that anthropology is tied to history for a diachronic dimension of human reality, and to the extent that it falls back upon philosophy for formal legitimation, its center of gravity pulls it away from being narrowly and strictly in the scientific camp to occupy a more interstitial position in the academic realm.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To define anthropology as simply being "What anthropologists do" is merely to beg the question with a self evident tautology, but in its tautological truth such an answer is not far removed from anthropological reality. To give the whole body of anthropological action a sound hearing in a few brief pages is almost (but not quite) an absurdity from an insider's standpoint. And as far as most acting anthropologists are concerned it is the insider's frame of reference which matters most (but not completely).</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Ultimately, anthropology is a tautology. In its own action, its self definition, its delineation of its domain, in its total praxis, its actors recreates its everyday reality as something significant, nontrivial, meaningful and important. As an anthropologist, there really is no going outside of its own parameters of praxis, of thinking outside its own frame of mind, or of speaking outside of its own distinctive idiom.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Consideration of the problematic nature inherent to anthropology as a central characteristic and of its underlying paradoxicality, leads to consideration of the nature of anthropological paradoxicality as a central characteristic itself of anthropological discourse of human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Whatever the ultimate origin of this essential paradoxicality of human reality, it takes essentially two defined forms in general anthropological discourse, neither of which are necessarily a priori to the human reality which anthropology seeks to comprehend, but both of which are centered, a posteriori and after the fact, if you get yourself consciously, upon the derived meanings about human reality. Anthropology faces in its deepest philosophical sense, certain fundamental questions about the human reality which are existentially universal to all humankind and which seem universally essential to the meaning of being human. These are essentially unanswerable antinomies of the human condition. The first of these antinomies is derived directly from anthropological praxis, as inherent to the theoretical and dialectical structure of this praxis and concerns the dichotomization of human reality in terms of 'universality/particularity'. This forms the fundamental rational 'scientificity of anthropological praxis, the quest for fundamental, irreducible universal 'law' of human nature which explains all variety of human 'behavioral' phenomena, and which supposedly will render the unfolding of human history predictable in at least some probabilistic sense. If these are not the stated explicit goals of scientific anthropologists, they remain philosophically their implicit purposes, which cannot be denied, or gotten away from. The second basic antinomy is derived indirectly from the first to the extent that 'normal' anthropological discourse is construed as basically scientific, that the central dialectical themes around which anthropological definitions of meaning revolve and resolves themselves as normal science is the dichotomy of nature and culture. There are two other sets of dichotomies by which the anthropological dialectic informs itself as normal science, these are the subject/object or self/other dichotomy, the mind/body or real/ideal dichotomy which becomes linked to the national/relative duality and finally the male/female dichotomy--there is also the time/space duality. Each of these dichotomies will be considered in turn, and then the overarching characteristics of anthropological praxis must be construed as normally scientific in character, made up by these dichotomies have further implications for the comprehension of anthropology as praxis.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It must be reiterated that none of these dichotomies nor the kind of scientific mentality by which they are framed are a priori or in and of themselves inherently necessary to a formal, general comprehension of human reality, but they do form the point of departure and the ultimate point of return for most of what is idiomatically characteristically distinctive about anthropological discourse. They are the problems of which end of the egg to break, of Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, of the hen or the egg in anthropological dialectics, only when seen together as a dialectical system of the anthropological mind as inseparable elements of an irreducible unity, can the character of the inherent paradoxicality of anthropological problematics be better understood.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">General anthropology and anthropology in general, a major position of its spirit, its motivation, its tonality, and its justifications is founded upon the belief in the reality of some kind or form of irreducible human universality--something isolatable which can be sifted out from the superfluous and noisy myriad of triviality and made to stand alone as the essential core, the original cause, the ultimate reason, the fundamental atom, the primary element of all anthropological theory. The problematic of universality, in whichever manner, shape or form of its conception, has long been perhaps the single most important and most perplexing unifying principle of the anthropological paradigm. It and its opposite organizational conception of empirical or phenomenal or historical particularity have been the overarching governing metaphors of reductionistic atomism framing the anthropological mentality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are several redefining characteristics which mark out anthropology as a distinctive paradigm--sharing family resemblances with some of the sciences and with humanities. 1. First, it is distinctively what I refer to as inherently problematic in character. 2. Second, it defines itself as a science, being a science it shares many affinities with most other sciences. Being a science, it is tied to an empirical domain of human reality. To the extent that it redefines itself as science, it functions more or less along the lines of Kuhn's notion of paradigm. From a paradigmatic point of view it informs itself dialectically about human reality in terms of several central rational dichotomies. These dichotomies are universality/particularity, nature/culture, etic/emic, self/other, ideal/real, male/female, time/space. These dichotomies are not strict, but operate in a loose metaphorical way and are posited as systematic analogies, these analogies make up a polythetic class sharing a set of attributes. They confer meaning which is considered 'truth' in anthropological discourse. Seeing human reality analytically means dichotomizing it along lines of one or several of these dualities which have their origin in the existential paradoxicality of human reality. Emphasis upon one of these dualities, upon one side or the other of a dichotomy, leads to reification or anthropomorphism, or to idealization or overemphasis of one to the under emphasis of the other--it results in a distorted perception of human reality, no longer whole but fractured, split down the middle. This is the basis for all 'explanation' within anthropology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The terms etic and emic, derived from the words <u>phonetic</u> and <u>phonemic</u> were introduced and became popular in anthropological literature. Etic, from phonetic (a standardized system of recording voice communication understandable to anyone trained in its use) signified a scientific judgment that can be verified by any other trained observer. An emic point of view (from phoneme, a sound unit meaningful only to speakers of a particular language) is one from within a particular culture--the view of the culture actor in terms of his conceptual categories. (Grabarino; 1982)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The definitions may be separated into two major categories: <u>realist</u> and <u>idealist</u>. The realist approach is through observed manifestations, behavior and the products of behavior. The idealist approach is through the researcher's interpretations of the culture bearer's ideas of societal values and norms. In brief, by one definition, culture is observable, by the other, inferred.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Is culture real or merely an abstraction from reality? Does it exist or is it only in the mind? The ethnographer's definition of culture affects the way he does his fieldwork and interprets his data later. For the idealist, culture is the ideal of an artifact, but not the artifact itself; it is the design or mental code for proper behavior. It has been argued that culture by the idealist definition is practically impossible to verify since it is ascertained not by observation, but only by inference. On the other hand, observed patterns are always filtered through the observer's own enculturated perception and thereby distorted…(page 49-50)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There are two other basic dichotomies by which anthropology redefines itself as a science, the first preceding from the second. Broadly the first dichotomy is that between self as subject knower and other as objective knowledge or alternatively defined as etic-emic. This dichotomy within anthropologia is a form of self identification is more apparent then real. Etic and emic, self and other, are largely methodological/theoretical issues within the realm of anthropological praxis. Largely it becomes an issue of participant observation in which either participant or observer roles are stressed. They are based upon a deeper philosophical dichotomization between subjective and objective knowledge, or between mind/body, or ideal/real, which will be dealt with later. But anthropology as praxis will be interpreted on the basis of self/other dichotomy now.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A valid outsider's perspective goes beyond merely an anti-anthropological critique from the humanistic standpoint. A humanist anti-anthropology only goes partially outside of scientific anthropology, because the self definition of anthropology is as much as it is a denial of its own rootedness in discourse, incomplete as a science. It is in itself a biased criticism which fails to go beyond the boundaries of its own academic embeddedness.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that anthropology as total scientific praxis process as 'normal science' within academia, it is amenable to a Kuhnian conventionalist interpretation as being paradigmatic. To the extent that its self denial of its rootedness to the humanities as an essentially non-paradigmatic form of knowledge, it is rendered as one professional has described it 'poly-paradigmatic' from an insider's perspective.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropology construes itself reflexively within the realm of science--it strives to gain recognition as a formal and respectable scientific discipline. Thus it interprets itself generalistically and programs itself in terms of its everyday praxis to the philosophy of science, whether positivistic, realistic, empirical or Kuhnian.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The nature/culture dichotomy is the essential problematic which frames the anthropological mind as being 'scientific' in a human sense. Whatever else it may or may not be or attempt to achieve, anthropology is in the first and final analysis informed by a fundamental schism between nature and culture. On one hand we have physical or biological anthropology which sees itself as being strictly positivistic, methodologically the most scientific of the sub-disciplines. On the other extreme is the broad discipline of socio-cultural anthropology which again tends from one extreme of socio-biology, ecological anthropology and social evolutionary theory to the other extreme of symbolic anthropology and cultural history. Even on the other extreme it can be shown that most anthropologists seek either some form of biological reductionism, Victor Turner's or Levi-Strauss's brains, or admit some form of superior super organic analogy still rooted in a naturalistic, biological substrate. As key organizing metaphors the notions of human culture and human nature are fundamental to any understanding of human reality, but nobody has, nor ever will, a bottom line upon their redefinition--they are theoretical baseline models.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Nature is usually construed as the antecedent, and culture as the manmade, consequent, a posteriori.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The notion of progress somehow informs a science of its own identity and being, for becoming paradigmatic implies some form of progressive evolution, if not toward some future vision, at least in a retrospective sense of separation of the unknown from the unknowable, the signification of the important from the trivial the emergence of the known from the unknown, of form from the formless, the choate intellect from the primordial inchoate. Progress is equated with being paradigmatic in the sense that scientific knowledge is cumulative, deepening, more exact, specializing, diversifying.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The etic/emic dichotomy is the starting point for such a comprehension. In the self identification process of anthropology, etic-emic is largely misconstrued as inimical complementarities of anthropological methodological fieldwork. This has implication both for ethnographic fieldwork and ethnological textuality derived from such fieldwork. An insider's point of view, even when self aware and self reflexive of the world outside the boundaries of the academic castle, as a bit different from an insider's point of view looking in.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">More and more, with my acquaintance with an insider's perspective and an outsider's perspective with anthropology it impresses me how much anthropological praxis, of what it studies and how, can be turned upon the study of anthropology itself as a sort of an anthropology of anthropology, or the ultimate anthropological, reflexive anthropology. But this does not really go beyond the anthropological maze of mirrors, self neurotic onaticism. More than just 'observes observed' by another anthropologist the observing participants participant observer, but we must reverse the entire relationship in order to get some idea of a non-anthropological view of anthropology--of an observer participant. I can only partially accomplish this, as I am partially new to academic professionalism, but it is most interesting to take into consideration 'outsider's' accounts of anthropology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">From the outside looking in etic/emic are rather complementary rather than seen as inherently inimical standpoints. The methodology of participant/observation 'in the field' is viewed as the dialectical methodology overcoming this dichotomy. It is interesting that 'in the field' is construed as the outside realm of anthropologia, as distinct from the academic armchair. Etic defines the attempt to define the unknowable other. To the extent that anthropology is scientific it is thought to render emic objectively knowable, hence etic, in its scientific analysis of human reality. They are the poles of a single dialectical continuum with participant observation being the praxis ranging between them, integrating, mediating the dialectic. Etic is distance in time and space--ultimately the horizon. Etic is close, familiar, well mapped out, some would say culturally reconstructed.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The open and closing criticisms of an authentic anthropology is an ethical question which so far anthropology has by and large failed to deal with. To the extent of this failure being related to the notion of scientific neutrality and objectivity, as it defines itself in the cloisters of academia, it is rendered safe, non-threatening. Renewing anthropology scientifically 'non-relative' has not changed the inherent ethical issue of anthropological praxis. To what extent is this praxis determined in form and function by the state, and even as antithesis, to what extent does this become only state co-option an internal segregation of potential threatening elements--antithetical themes, confined to the extremes of anti-structure. It is OK to be a self proclaimed Marxist in academia. A certain percentage of academicians are expected to be, as representatives of 'human reality' one which is in theory supposed to be politically varied and in theory and practice democratic. Being a Marxist within academia does not affect the upper middle class positioning or the paycheck, as long as Marxist attitude is compartmentalized and safely 'encapsulated' within academia from the rest of behavioral reality and not brought into the marketplace except through the mediums of speech, publication, etc. The other side of the anthropological coin is the criticism of the studied other. The criticism of the 'observed' goes something like this--"you use us for your own professional profit, but what good does this really do for us."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">By bureaucratic compartmentalization, a potentially dangerous threat is rendered neutral, safe, controlled. Thus we see the role of scientization in anthropologia a bit more clearly. It merely renders anthropologists hypocrites and anthropologia a realm of hypocrisy. No one really believes a hypocrite. No one in the 'real world' pays much attention to what anthropologists are about in their ivory towers, except when they themselves become the objects of anthropological power--when they are put under the anthropological lens of the magnifying glass.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Specialized knowledge is the eminent domain of the state. Professors, sanctioned by the state, become the high priests in charge of such knowledge. Knowledge eventually translates into state power, appropriated by academia and controlled by the state. To the extent that professors successfully compartmentalize private and public lives, they can foster 'anti-structural' values in academia and standard middle class values at home. But to the extent of being existentially dependent upon jobs, their conventional values behaviorally contain any other 'anti-structural' values they may entertain. Much of the existential insecurity underlying their personal lives becomes worked into their academic performances in terms of the 'scientization' of normal anthropology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The question of anthropology as a science is rarely indirectly addressed by anthropologists themselves, it becomes subsumed away as a given, left as unfit problems for philosophers hounds to fight over. Being conveniently discarded as trivial or irrelevant, the question of the substantiality of human reality is itself unaddressed as well, even though this question is crucial to the scientificity of anthropological praxis--it is assumed to be enough in the confrontation of the anthropological unknown to merely solve the unknown as if it were a set of puzzles awaiting the proper, correct pieces of information solicited by the right questions. But philosophically, this naïve presumption of human reality is highly questionable itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Distinguishing between description and explanation or between primary phenomena of reality and secondary phenomena of rationality, is to fallaciously promulgate an unnecessary dichotomization of human reality by which our anthropological dialect can begin. No such dichotomy preexists but is only the residuum of the dialectic itself. Thus the possibility of the inversion of the order exists, between primary and secondary, between perceptual and conceptual and though not construed as 'normal' order of 'events' their analysis remains an alternative and necessary reordering.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Its semi-paradigmatic structure as a social phenomena of 'science' as social scientific praxis, is never quite complete in its being fractionated by competing 'sub-paradigms' with each striving against one another for dialectical preeminence as an authentic 'science'. This renders it dialectically 'paradigmatic/non-paradigmatic' as normal praxis. What remains is a dialectical struggle of two competing, essentially complementary world views within academic anthropologia, the 'paradigmatic' and the 'non-paradigmatic'. These are the general differences between scientific anthropology and anti-scientific, humanistic anthropology, which in its most extreme form constitutes an 'anti-anthropology' as critical polemic against anthropological activity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But always, by one's sub-paradigm or another, there is a self defeating drive towards predominance of some form of scientific normality. Scientific normalization always remaining incomplete, turns into neurotic self perseveration.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But being partially self determined as a normal science, we must construe anthropologia within a semi-paradigmatic framework, not only in its embeddedness as a system of social praxis within academia but in a wider academic context embedded in a larger framework.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Franz Boas (1940: 468) and Stith Thompson (1929: xiii) observed long ago that there seems to be almost no 'true creation myths' in North America by which they apparently meant origin myths on the metaphysical model of Genesis I, John I and for that matter, Aristotle's <u>Metaphysics</u>. But Boas did note that there are in Northern California, myths in which 'creation by will' takes place (1940: 468) when we reread the Maidu and Kato versions of these myths, it turns out that there are two creators, male and female, and that they are present in a world that already has physical existence at the very beginning of the story. (Thompson 1929: 24-37) The changes that then take place in the world cam about when this man and woman engage in a dialogue--there is no solitary male nude saying "let there be this and that." A similar dialogue is at work in the Popul Vuh, and it constitutes the Popul Vuh's profound rejection of Genesis (Tedlock; 1979). To argue that 'underneath the veneer' of myths such as these lie the workings of a single universal logos is to cast a vote for the western metaphysic and against dialogue. But the Popul Vuh ask to be approached dialogically, and the way to write about the Popul Vuh might be to set down the opening words, <u>Are uxe oher tzih varal Quiche ubi, </u>and then to go from there quoting and questioning all along the way.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">(Dennis Tedlock; "The Analogical Transition and the Emergence of a Dialogical Anthropology" in <u>Journal of Anthropological Research</u>; Vol. 35, #4, 1979.)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">HUMPTY DUMPTY THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS STRANGELY</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">On relearning to reconstruct destructionism, ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseaum</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paradox of the <u>mise en abyme</u> is the following: without the production of some scheme, some 'icon' there can be no glimpse of the abyss, no vertigo of the underlying nothingness. Any such scheme, however, both opens the chasm, creates it or reveals it, and at the same time fills it up, covers it over by naming it, gives the groundless a ground, the bottomless a bottom. Any such schema almost instantaneously becomes a trivial mechanism, an artifice. It becomes something merely made, confected, therefore all too human and rational…(Miller)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Two Wild Geese</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">There: wild geese, swimming side by side,</p> <p>Staring up at the sky!</p> <p>White feathers against a deep blue,</p> <p>Red feet burning in great waves.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>Lie Chieu and Do Phap Thuan</p> <p> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">A critique of anthropology can come from many different angles within academia--from philosophy, from history, from hermeneutics, from sociology, from literary criticism. Not the least important contributors to such a critique are the people whom anthropologists have traditionally studied, but whom, outside of anthropologia has not had a voice of their own to stand up with against the scientific measurements made by western anthropologists. There can be no doubt that with the best of intentions and the most careful of efforts, anthropologists have been guilty of repeated misrepresenting or 'inappropriately' misappropriating the specimen other. Key informants and friends in the filed and fictive kinship and appointed official or semi-official representatives do not necessarily stand as the best or only voices possible or available in the ethnographic description and ethnological explanation of entire cultures, traditions or even smaller groupings. The voice of anthropology has always been a partial and imperfectly selected and limited voice--it has been more of a whimper or a whisper that a loud scream or call to a common humanity. All too often, anthropologists have become the self appointed spokesperson for voiceless, peoples whose lives before the anthropologist arrived to save the day, were effectively outside of history. A critique of anthropology can also come from those who are the potential or virtual audience--the readership and consumers of anthropological industries. Also, perhaps most important, the critique of anthropology may come from within academic anthropologia itself, the voice of informed anthropologists who raise a polemic against the voice of anthropologia. Importantly too, it is useful to notice where the critique of anthropology does not come from. A critique of anthropologia must necessarily extend beyond the narrow boundaries of its many fields and becomes by extension a critique of academician which it is situated and a critique of the cultural tradition in which it is embedded, and a critique of the structure which underlies it and ties it into a larger socio-structural framework.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The critique of anthropologia does not come from those preachers, practitioners and power managers of anthropologia who remain for the most part silent and unquestioning of their own activities, as well as not coming from the many students who fill out its ranks in every department, as these are the many who are in the least advantageous position in which to proffer a valid attack.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The critique of anthropologia begins and ends upon its academic doorsteps as one is just about to enter and exit its never never land of human reality, as one looks both backwards and forwards at what one has left behind and what is one headed for. At this moment, the critical moment, anthropologia opens upon a wider and simultaneously becomes reflexive in its transition to human reality to paper human reality. During this brief but important moment of transformation, the would be anthropologist has the opportunity to see anthropologia in the light of day, framed by its passage way, reference against a larger world of the outside. Seen against a larger reality, the interior of anthropologia seems small indeed. It becomes like the entrance to Disneyland down main street, in which there is a progressive scaling down of perspectival dimensionally to create an illusion of being 'larger than life' of being more distant than it really is. This is a part of the abstractive process of anthropologia when it recreates its make believe realities through the words and voices of its master story tellers and in the ears and imaginations of its gullible students, who, like Gulliver are intent upon exploring strange new worlds. In abstracting the 'essence' of different human realities, it leaves behind the substance of that reality--the result are the fragmentary remains of many artifacts ripped from their provenience in time and space--the Tokenism of reality behind a sterile display case in an anthropological museum. The original crafters, users, artists are all, for the most part lost or forgotten--these artifacts fashioned by anonymous hands, the jetsam and flotsam of voiceless history. Unlike a Van Gogh, whose surviving works are and reanimated and empowered, vested with value via the mythology of the creator's life, the anonymous artifacts of anthropologia remain but token fossils, fossilized remnants, forgotten fragments with the only animation coming from cultural mythology of the anthropologia itself. Anthropologists are continuously attempting to convince themselves and each other and their general audiences that these 'things' have some kind of life and living 'outside of their own'--recreation of this life where anthropologiastic mythology begins and finally ends.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We are dealing with a mythology of culture--the stereotype of archetype of an ideal baseline of what a culture is as a 'thing' or body of 'things and their interrelations' which is apart from both history and our history of its understanding. Culture becomes an independent entity, a sense of unity, a thing of its own which must therefore have some kind of life of its own which is desirable, having definite limits, etc. This mythologization of the cultural other is unavoidable as long as the anthropological self must define itself as being 'cultural' as well. Culture whether it is the material antefacts themselves, or the essence which is only 'to be inferred' from the presence of such artifacts, takes on a nefarious existence of its own--it is presumed to preexist a priori to its discovery by the anthropologist. This taken for granted life of culture stands outside of history proper--it is largely a historical without beginning or end, in its own mythological realm without real time. The people behind the artifice of culture, become the anti-structural projections and reflections of the anthropologists themselves, they are the embodiments, the agents, the actors, the carriers, the servants, the prisoners, the wearers of 'culture' just as the anthropologist is the wearer and bearer of the mantle of cultural authority themselves. They are no longer just people caught up existentially in their throes of their historical birth and death--they become token representatives of the mythology of culture, bound to reenact it, to realize, materialize, to enliven its mythological prophecy.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All groups of people, all communities, which are organized around a central core 'thing' have a mythology about that thing in which they are busily acting out--it helps them to make 'sense' of their shared history. The community of anthropologia is not to be discounted from this process of mythologization of their own reality. Mythologization is one of the distinctive features of being human which marks us off as sharing a common humanity--giving us social identity to a world wide community of humankind, and which distinguishes us as different from all other forms of life on earth. It renders us unique and special, as well as dangerous in a way that no king of the jungle can hope to be.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The mythologization behind anthropologia is the reification of 'culture' with an upper class, capital 'C' as a rational ideal, as a noumenal, categorical archetype--"all humans have culture'. This is a common dialectical proclivity of the western rationalistic mentality and materialistic value orientation. It leads s to a search for cultural El Dorado, the hermetic utopia, the paradise upon earth. It leads us to hypothesis and hypostatize the ideal cultural type, the universal rules, structure, reasons, meaning of culture which can become summarized in so many words in a pat dictionary type, positivistic definition. This misleads us into believing the humans must have and share a culture into in order to be considered human. Against this positivistic quest for the presumed, a priori, hypothetical 'culture', this noumenal reality of the rational ideal logos of culture, like the logos of nature, all the empirical manifestations become minor versions, imperfect and temporary versus absolute and eternal, and thus relativistic versions of 'cultures' many little cultures in the lower case sense which are but partial and imperfect approximations and manifestations of culture. It is a concept employed somewhat similarly to the biological concept of species and genus--species for boundaries beyond which its members cannot evolutionarily stray and have distinctive features--there is thus a species holotype against which all variations are referenced against a common theme. Similarly too, with culture and many small cultures, each of which is presumed to have a species archetype. These are arranged taxonomically into a tree which is supposed to reconstruct the evolution of cultures, and from this tree of culture the mechanism of cultural evolution, of culturation, can be inferred, and its functional rules of operation explicitly defined--thus 'culture' can be then scientifically defined as a universal set of propositions. Part of this positivistic mythology is to put all 'cultures' in the relativistic sense into a pan human framework of cross cultural comparison from which the scientific evolutionary tree of culturation can be derived, and 'culture' can ultimately be explained.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is in this mythological dialectic two sets of interacting dualities or analytical dichotomies of human reality--one is the rational-relative dichotomy underlying rationalistic dialectical discourse of the western mentality with its spiritualistic/materialistic value orientation, and the other is the culture/nature dialectic. 'Culture' is the ideal/type sense is held to be the dialectic of antithesis of nature--'human nature' is held to be somehow underlying culture. Human reality is the dialectical synthesis of this dichotomy. Culture becomes nature through the organic analogy and the naturalistic fallacy--culture takes on the characteristics of nature--it evolves like nature, it speciates, it has a taxonomy of differences and boundaries. It functions according to certain organiismic principles.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Behind the ideal of 'culture' there are to be seen numerous little 'culture' of the garden type variety--and if we even look a bit more closely to the fabric of history, our mythological veil of Maya dissolves even further, the molecule of culture dissolves into a group of people, the atoms of human realities, which in themselves are reconstructable into the subatomic 'things and interrelationships'. All we find are people frozen in an instant moment of time, a photography from history, interacting in seemingly typical form.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The mythology of culture in anthropologia becomes translated into the ideology of true, or positivistic scientology in its ritualistic, the methodological praxis. There is a modicum of ritualized magic--incantation of special numerological formulas, the carrying out of specific social ritual performances of interviews, questionnaires and surveys--statistics becomes the religious language of positivistic anthropologia which 'witnesses' or proves its own mythological prophecies. It should be reiterated that this mythological reality is a <u>paper</u> reality only--the natives of the triple canopy forests are paper creatures of the anthropologist's imagination, living in a paper wonderland of anthropologia.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This process of mythologization of human history and humanity is carried to its absurd extreme in the biologization of human reality--biologism and the fallacy of biological reductionism seeks to explain all culture as purely the epi-phenomenal byproduct of human nature which is merely anthropomorphize. Human nature follows the legal-jural dictates of Mother Nature. But behind this façade of biologism is the ugly reality of social racism and of perpetuation of capitalistic exploitation--mythology has an anchor in human history, but not the same one in which engaging in it would lead us to believe. It is mode of misinformation in reinforcement of a capitalistic mode of production. It divides and conquers by creating a mythology of 'survival of the fittest' and the anarchic law of the jungle 'all against all'. It is a mythological vision of Malthusian world of limited good, a zero sum game in which one person's gain is another's loss. This game justifies social nomothetic systems of hierarchization and rank order of social value in the form of achievement and intelligence tests.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the process of normalization or 'paradigmaticization' of anthropologia, of a consensus of consciousness, of common senseness, there should be predicted a trend toward progressive biologization of anthropologia, people who are preoccupied with social power and hierarchy will promote their own narrowly defined self interests via anthropologia in the form of the 'naturalization' of mankind. These people will tend to predominate in many departments of anthropologia, and will begin defining and redefining the standards of anthropological discourse, the norms and success ethics of belief and behavior in anthropologia. Thus anthropologia will crystallize and hyper-compartmentalize into a pyramidal hierarchy of social structural relations with a broad family platform in the fantasy paper gardens of bio-culturalogy, and its heads in the computer driven illusions of mentalization of nature.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The anthropological mythologization of humankind and the historical stream of humanity has no other course set for itself as long as it continues to define and belong to a larger system of civilization which insists upon the domination , control and destruction of nature by the means of cultural creation. This is the future of the dialectic of anthropologia as it learns to define itself more paradigmatically as a science. But the circle of its own ideology of belief and behavioral belonging will not be broken as long as the history of its own making has been denied.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As long as anthropologia leaves itself no other alternative avenues for being and becoming anthropological it will have no on other possibility than this process of bureaucratic 'banalization'. There will be several characteristics of this banalization process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There will be a growing complex of fear and fear motivated routine behaviors, which amounts to little more than a form of magic in the name of science. This fear will be the result of the cultural repression of fear--being afraid of fear, to admit and show fear. Fear is a natural response to change, a trigger for adaptive response. Fear which becomes repressed because in the competition, the social war of all against all, one cannot allow oneself to show one's enemies that one is afraid, because then one will admit defeat. Courage then is not longer learning to live with fear and overcome it by creative adjustments, but becomes a fear complex, the neurotic Angst which is the Geist of being modern and making it modern in a modern sense, it becomes the hubris of ego and ethnocentrism--the demonstration of superiority that one is genuinely not afraid of one's competitors--courage becomes the servant and master of fear--the complex of fear. It is no longer the courage to face one's fears and admit one is genuinely afraid, but becomes the disguise and cause of fear, the superficial mask of repression, hidden fears. Fear of death, fear of loss, failure, become the fear of the unknown, become the masters of life, the preoccupation with success, the Weberian dissonance that one is 'chosen' naturally and supernaturally in one's 'calling'. The complex of fear results in a pathology of social relations, a complex of control of fear--a false ego consciousness, and collective conscience, in which people become channels, controlled by the invisible marionette strings of the existential anxieties. People become very expectable, predictable, manipulable when they can be played upon and managed by their overriding fears. The result of this fear complex and its social crystallization is the destructiveness of an overemphasis upon critical deconstructivism of the significant other--a wish to destroy the humpty-dumpty other who sits upon one's own territorial fence. It becomes the frustration and resistance of genuine creativity and creativeness, the discouragement of creative activities because it is a sign of genuine courage and strength which cannot be controlled by existential fears, rather than a token acknowledgment of weakness and fear, a ritual act of submission to the authority of fear and its dominance. Certain authoritarian, sadomasochistic archetypes of hierarchy become 'empowered' and enacted in the demonstration, repetitive obsessive compulsive demonstration of its activities. There is an unconscious fascination of the tokenism of death and dying, the destructiveness of dissectivism, heurisci Haruspication of internal dynamics in order to divine the truth. Thus the magical of anthropological mythologization turns into the black magic of witchcraft and its divination.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There occurs in the development of this fear complex a hyper-compartmentalization of the self, of the individual personality, a radical dichotomic monopolarization between the public and private domains--there is something of a split personality, a double alter ego of the 'participant-observer', between the domains of the private and the public. The individual becomes his own traitor, his own double agent, the spy upon his own soul. This double hyphenated identity is essentially paranoia. Guilt and blame go hand in hand, the fear of control and the control of fear, form the basis of the manipulation of guilt and dependency in neurotic interrelationships which become essentially paranoia. It is not abnormal to become paranoid in a paranoid society. The paranoiac and the culture of the cult of paranoia, become the bounds of anthropologia, who screws and then murders his informers, in the battle between good and evil. In our ethics we become preoccupied with the exorcism of evil, the battle between God and the Devil, and in its exorcism, we fail to come to terms with the ethical, existential possibility of our own evil, of the devil who is hidden within, the monster of our own self. In the compartmentalization between public and private, there is a dichotomization between 'professional' and personal--there is a disintegration between work and play, between front region of masks and illusions of power and a back region of secret fantasies and play. Our children, our students, become somehow strangely, the mythical recreation of our own unconscious, the embodiment of the anthropologist as much as the adult anthropologist behaves as a 'child' of the people he/she is studying. In rebellion and reaction, 'children' evince the devilish play which is repressed and denied within ourselves. They become the enactment, the living embodiment, of the antithesis of out own positivistic mythologization of our realities. They realize the alternative, opposite possibility within us, and by their reaction, are not better than us. They are neurotically attached in ties of psychological, unconscious, mythological dependency. The prophecy of mythologization comes full circle in its realization.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Creative integration involves making work play and play work, it involves a growing up to accept the adult responsibility for one's own existential uncertainty. It no longer involves an attack and defense against the threat of the Unknown, but learn and explore and live within the twilight realm between the light of the known and the darkness of the 'before unapprehended relationship between things'. It involves the loss of innocence and of ignorance. Creative integration involves learning how to genuinely play and genuinely work--work is no longer a task to make money, a dirty job to be gotten through--it becomes playful, enjoyable. There is no longer a split in the personality between professional and personal, front or back, face and hidden, public and private--there is one self, one integrity, which goes everywhere, which presents one genuine person. It involves honestly and sincerely the weaknesses and fears within the self and the strengths and courage of the other. This is done creatively, recreatively through fostering and expression of creativity. There is no longer a dichotomy between independence/dependence or self/other, but becomes an integrity of interrelationship, interdependency, of we, of us, of many egos.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">To the extent that anthropologia is a function of this fear complex, the mythologization of culture, and its own cultural anthropologia, will tend to be ingenuine and spurious--a preoccupation with making money to secure mythological security against existential uncertainty. It will tend towards spurious, ingenuine, inauthentic presentations of self and social relations with a mythologized significant other, with social relations based upon usefulness, convenience, to be manipulated, and relations of hierarchy--parent-child kinds of interaction of fictive kinship, of mutual but uneven reciprocity and obligation. Such spuriousness of its culture will lead to a promotion of anthropologia, a separate way of life of its own in which its relationships with the outside world are privileged and usurped in specially defined ways.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Anthropologia and its cultural mythologization becomes a part of a larger culture of narcissism, of selfish childishness which cannot see beyond itself, which is only reflective of its own system of believe and belonging. It is tied to itself. It cannot know what lies beyond its own image, its narrow circular horizon. The other becomes a reflection of the self, a reflection and projection of one's own existential needs, of one's own mythological consciousness. The other becomes a token vehicle only for the realization, the materialization of one's own utilitarian happiness and success. The culture of the narcissism is self reflective but not reflexive, it does not apperceptively recognize or apprehend its own self in relation to others and to a wider reality. The media fosters this narcissism of self, of promotion of self interest at any cost, of becoming 'better' and being the 'best'--we become so busy at being good that we forget how to be real people. The mythological other stands as the aggrandizement, the apotheosis, of the anthropological self who is caught up in its own narcissistic charade. It becomes like children who fight over nonsensical things while playing silly games of make believe. We are all children of history. The narcissistic self cannot move beyond an I-it relationship of self love--cannot genuinely love, nor therefore understand the other in any but purely, practically spurious and ingenuine way. In being unable to genuinely relate to or understand another human being, the narcissistic ego cannot extend its realm of knowledge beyond itself, it is a lonely, isolated self surrounded by a vast unknown realm. Beyond the mirror or narcissistic consciousness is only the silence, the emptiness of meaning beyond one's own becoming, believing and belonging. We remain as children who fail to grow up in the face of the possibility of making it and losing it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is an important language of the narcissistic ego which is entirely self reflexive--it achieves no communication with other in any genuine sense, but communicates only ameaningful, spurious trivia which is regarded by the ego as important, critical information of mythological significance. There is effective a boundary maintenance mechanism of the instrumentalization of language to create mythological space and distance between the self and the other. One of the mechanisms of language employed is jargon of professionalese, which marks off the boundary of conscious identity between insider and outsider. Another mechanism is that of euphemism--the deployment of an arsenal of words without any precise definition, words whose meanings are kept hidden, presumed only, connotational, words which mean everything and anything in general but nothing in particular or specifically. Culture is a euphemism of anthropologia, there are many more such euphemisms. Such words are left up to the prerogative of the user to define as it seems fit. These are framing metaphors, or organizational metaphors which provide a sense of closure to an otherwise disjoint mythological reality--they allow inter-translation between ideal and real, between inside and outside, as well as being the mechanism of information control-selective 'passing'. Language is deployed non-verbally as well--things not said, people who are deliberately, consciously ignored or spoken to, people who are denied entry by silence, or who are spoken about behind one's back or at a distance--the connotation is always present and immediate, but the direct determination, the direct denotation, admission of the other, is always 'absent'. A sign of a problem, is never being able to look one directly in the eyes while talking or of never being able to give one a direct response or answer to a question. Narcissistic defenses are up. There are other non-verbal body languages--scape-goating, witch hunting, systematic exclusion, signs of dominance submission--putting one's feet upon the table to show that the other's presence is not important,, butting into private conversations, brushing deliberately past another, sitting facing away from another person. I have experienced, all of these childish reactions from many adult like 'professionals' in my year in this department. Echosim is another trick, using another only as a sounding board of one's own monologue, only hearing and not really listening to the responses of the other, misconstruing this in one's own frame of reference. Professional pontification is another mechanism, tried and true tradition of academia. Information becomes dictated from professor to the students as a set of unquestioned propositions which are reinforced by rhetorical verbiage.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This critique of the culture of narcissism with an archetype of the narcissistic child, is the beginning basis of departure for a critique of anthropologia but this critique begins here, but does not end here, except when it comes full circle in the exercise of its own restrictive imagination. But the critique of anthropologia does not step outside of the mythological circle of anthropological consciousness, it is only in this sense spurious itself. But it does provide an important dialectical stepping stone, a chunk of leverage, from which one might swing oneself, passing out of the realm of anthropologia, to firmer, more secure ground just beyond the horizon. The critique of anthropologia carries us to the borders of its realm and forces us to look back with a critical eye, but it fails to encompass beyond this realm and to enter or engage in a new kind of dialectic. At the edge of anthropologia, it becomes self entrapped, in a never ending regress of meaning, a labyrinth of mirrors, in which the self becomes so schizoidally fragmented that there is no longer any center at all. The path beyond anthropologia does not necessarily lead indirectly away or against it, but leads through it and around it.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The reflectiveness of the narcissistic ego is not the same as the reflexiveness of the critique of anthropologia--one begins as antithesis of the other, where the other leaves off. There occurs in the critique of anthropologia a critical dialectic between scientific and anti-scientific humanistic anthropologia, and between reflective and reflexive forms of anthropological dialogue.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'Reflective' is a related but distinguishable term, referring also to a kind of thinking about ourselves, showing ourselves to ourselves, but without the requirement of explicit awareness of the implications of our display. With the acute understanding the detachment from the process in which one is engaged, reflexivity does not occur. Merely holding up a single mirror is not adequate to achieve this attitude. The mirrors must be doubled, creating the endless regress of possibilities, opening out into infinity, dissolving the clear boundaries of a 'real world'. Babcock refers to this as 'identity with a difference'. (ibid.:2)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Narcissus tragedy then is that he is not narcissistic enough, or rather that he does not reflect long enough to effect a transformation. He is reflection, but he is not reflexive--that is, he is conscious of himself as an other, but he is not conscious of being self conscious of himself as an other and hence not able to detach himself from, understand, survive, or even laugh at the initial experience of alienation. (Ruby; 1982: 3)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As a critique of the narcissism of un-reflexive anthropologia, reflexive anthropology moves beyond the initial self reflectiveness of the anthropologically defined relationship. It is defined as the basis of understanding the other engaged in a reflexive dialogue with the self:</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Though reflexivity takes on different shades in various disciplines and contexts, a core is detectable. Reflexive, as we use it, describes the capacity of any system of signification to turn back upon itself, to make itself its own object be referring to itself; subject and object fuse. A long tradition exists in which thought has been distinguished from unconscious experience; where life is not merely lived naively without being pondered but regarded with detachment, crating an awareness that finally separates the one who lives from his history, society, from other people. Within the self, detachment occurs between self and experience, self and other, witness and actor, hero and hero's story. We become at once both subject and object. Reflexive knowledge, then, contains not only messages, but also information as to how it came into being, the process by which it was obtained. It demonstrates the human capacity to generate second order symbols or meta-levels--significations about signification. The withdrawal from the world, a bending back toward thought process itself, is necessary for what we consider a fully reflexive mode of thought. To paraphrase Babcock (1980), in order to know itself, to constitute itself, as an object for itself, the self must be absent from itself; it must be a sign. Once this operation of consciousness has been made, consciousness itself is altered; a person or society thinks about itself differently merely by seeing itself in this light. (Ruby; 1982: 3)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The reflexive critique stems from the apperceptive recognition of the before unapprehended self reflectivity of the anthropological system of mythologization. It stems from the realization of the inherent potentiality of any human system of signification to be tautological, to close upon itself, the inherent, inescapableness of the tautological basis of any language which defines itself in its own terms. But the reflexive critique does not go beyond this recognition. It deconstructs Humpty Dumpty but is unable to put the fragile reality of Humpty Dumpty back together again. Reflexive deconstruction is attached to the very thing it destroys, the self, thus inevitably results in the self destruction of the infinite regress, the fall into the meaningless chasm of the mise enabyme. It suggests an infinity of alternative possibilities but provides none. Reflexive criticism is the first antithetical step outside the anthropological thesis, but it does not by itself constitute an alternative version, or a new synthesis. Thus it becomes what it denies, its strength becomes its own greatest weakness. It interposes, in its criticism a barrier of reflexiveness which itself it cannot then overcome--there is then an absolute distance between self and other, in which the other and self are reduced to a solipsistic nothingness, to meaningless. There can be no communication beyond self communication.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">An alternative system goes beyond reflexive critique in two ways. First it becomes a system of seeing alternative possibilities vis-à-vis the self/other relationship--it does this through focuses introspection, retrospection, prospection, extrospection in the sense of an artist who paints a self portrait or a portrait of another in which there is always a reminder, a hint of the face of the creator. This way goes beyond the mere use of light and lens and mirrors, and becomes a system of context independent interpretation or translation, created by the artist. It is not a mere photography, it is a creation. It is a system of coming to know, of learning how to understand self/other in reference to one another which transcends and in the process, integrates the reflective and the reflexive into a new re-synthesis of Humpty Dumpty, of human reality, a new reconstruction, which utilizing both, goes beyond them, beyond the limits of either. It simultaneously involves a momentary suspension of the system of credibility, of unbelief in the system. The whole system becomes suspended, opening its doors and windows to a wider larger reality outside, such that what remains or becomes exclusive finds re-entry into the system and runs into the pattern, disrupting it. This is the process of frame elicitation, frame disruption, frame reevaluation which centrally underlie genuine anthropological praxis. The integration of the two become the vehicle for its own systems transcendence and suspension, the leftover fragments of the system are not discarded, but are reincorporated into a new sense of order. Reconstruction takes place which is no longer tied to the old contextual framework, but is itself relatively context independent. At this point the old language, taken so seriously and personally, becomes merely a world play, a language game, which becomes seriously played--the seriousness is no longer invested in the products, the results, but in the process itself. There is a delight in apparent disorder which then yields itself to a new sense of order, an alternative arrangement. The old relationship, surviving rearrangement, withstands the test of time, and become more genuine in the most human of senses possible--in terms of the greater realization of human possibility.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Introspection, or retrospection transcends mere reflexive reflections or apperceptive recognition in using this as a vehicle, a means, for a search for a new reality, a new reconstruction from the leftover fragments of the deconstruction. It involves a lapse of reality, a replacement of old for new, a suspension of a system of belief, behavior and belonging, in order to reconsider the genuine reality behind such a system. It is the artist who learns not egotistical self conceit through the painting of numerous self portraits, but realizes the many alternative faces of his own humanness of being, the many possibilities of humanness within the self and the other--it can be, in all its vicariousness, a trading place with another, a momentary stepping into another's shoes, seeing things through another's eyes, an understanding of walking a short distance in another's path. It is another self and another other, an alternative other hitherto unapprehended, unrecognized. Through such self portraiture the artist comes upon deeper wisdom of understanding, greater insight into human reality, and learns a greater humility of the self in relation to the divine unknown. The self, in growing, shrinks in relation to the whole, and the paradox of both opening and closing the door of the mise abyme become clearer and more mysterious. Real existential reality in all its greyness of local color, is not embraced, but not denied or obfuscated or clarified but is embraced more fully. The ego bows to the human responsibility of history and knowledge.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ALICE LOST AND FOUND IN THE ACADEMIC WILDERNESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">on relearning the humanities in meta-anthropologia reconsidered</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The paramount themes of this work has been that anthropologia has somehow stood outside of human history. It seems fitting in the reconstruction of the Humpty Dumpty of anthropologically defined human reality to define how anthropologia can be brought back into history, or how the history of humanity as process and event can be brought back into the realm of anthropologia, in the process bringing into the mainstream of history as well those portions of humanity which have been represented almost exclusively by an anthropological voice. Also it is important to take a step back from the details of anthropologia to see the broadest strokes of anthropology as embodying implicit a form of philosophy about human reality. By and large anthropology as remained both a historical and a philosophical in its theory and praxis. Anthropologia stands in need of reification vis-à-vis the humanities of philosophy and history--as long as it continues to define itself paradigmatically as a science this will have certain implications towards its relation to these fields of inquiry into human reality.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In order to embrace and reawaken to the consciousness of humanity, anthropology must go beyond itself, transcend itself, to become a meta-anthropological dialectic which comprehends philosophy, history, religion and the arts, not just western philosophy or history or art but all forms of philosophy and all histories of humanity. History is the collective consciousness of humanity. Anthropology must come to terms with its own historical dialectic, its own stream of historical consciousness such that it can better understand itself as a part of a larger framework of humanity. But it is argued that this is the project and purpose of true science--science transcends its own history in the making--science steps outside of the reiteration of time and embraces timeless eternity--physical natural laws stand forever--universally valid. This presumption of universality of science is really quite bold and unproven for a field of sub-conscious endeavor barely a few centuries in age. But science has come to stand for something else, something more fundamentally evil and problematic. It has stood for those forces of humankind which have attempted to put humanity outside of nature, to predominate and control nature--through understanding its principles of functioning to attempt to predict and master it, in the name of human civilization. It would seem than that the real dialectic of humankind is a fundamental dialectic between human history and nature. In the past twenty thousand years or more, nature has experienced a mass, global extinction, a dying off, at the hands of human culture. Culture has rapidly come to transgress and supplant nature. The historical pace, the tempo of this mass extinction process of nature has been quickening in pace up until the very present, and there have been very few in the way of braking actions applied to halt or reverse the overall tempo trend--in fact it is only accelerating much more rapidly today than it has at any time in the past. This leads me to a very pessimistic prospect of the role and future of humankind in relation to its natural substratum and to a highly skeptical place of anthropologia in such a process as a 'science of mankind'. The pure scientists standing apart from the mainstream of history, acknowledge in their criticism the work and misdeeds of the applied scientists, and yet they do not share immunity or impunity in the overall process by their insulation in their laboratories. We are confronting here in contemporary times a most central and fundamental existential issue of the predicament of humankind, one which should not be allowed to be naively pass to the winds. If humankind indeed represents an evolutionary aberration of natural process one which is essentially 'anti-life' then it seems that the only destiny reserved for human history is that of eventual extinction. The human species has become the most 'biologically successful' species probably unparalleled in the annals of evolutionary history--its proliferates upon the shrinking globe today as no mammalian species has done in the past, in the process displacing, replacing and destroying a great proportion of the natural habitat. And there is a certain kind of irreversibility of this process of the mainstream of human history--not so much coming from the irreversibility of the temporal process itself, as much as from a certain kind of <u>historical momentum</u> of the mainstream currents, always converging towards a common central ground which has gained such force and power that it becomes well nigh impossible to stop or change its course. This momentum has both centrifugal and centripetal forces, pulling in and throwing off. This is indeed, the historical structure of the long run which humankind today, in all its pride and hubris of its modern scientific technological civilization tend to forget. Once set in motion and allowed to gather enough speed, this kind of momentum takes on a life force of its own (or a death force) which both promises to propel humankind towards the stars, and to eject it into the empty oblivion of space. Or does human history represent a new epoch in the natural evolutionary history of the earth--a new kind of creature which is no longer just a mammalian animal, but the new representatives of a whole new expansive biological radiation on earth. In this view, culture is not so much antithetical to nature as an adaptive extension of nature, the human epi-phenomenon of natural forces--in Spencerian evolutionism terms the new, natural, highest expression of the universal principle of evolution.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It would seem as if the real answer lies somewhere in the indeterminate middle ground between these two extremes of paradise on earth or apocalypse. It is indeed difficult to pay attention to the many epi-cycles of historical development and not to expect their recursive reiteration into the long term future. Cities rise and fall, civilizations come and go, cultures flourish and perish, all to become eventually forgotten beneath the sands of time. We, the children of history, with out proud new science, attempt to reverse this irreversible process, to stand outside of the circle of history and yet is all this in vain to our future glory. Will our science learn how to solve all of the problems created by our history, to remedy all of the ills and growing pains of the civilization of humanity as it has come to conquer nature and upon spaceship earth, or are we not sowing the seeds of our own fate.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The process of evolution is itself circumscribe in natural history--it exhibits in the structure of the long run a fortuitous blindness of chance which belies the diagnostic explanation of evolutionary theory and the logos of biological principles. There is a proclivity to search for an order or pattern of evolutionary process, a sense of progressive purpose behind its developmental cycles, a process of reason which somehow defies entropy and creates the symmetrical designs replete in natural manifestations. We expect a rationality of evolutionary process, only to find evolution itself framed within a larger sense of history.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">History, in its envisioning and enactment, in the understanding of it, is always and only mythological. But historical process itself, of the unfolding of Chaonos, is in the making always blind and fortuitous, without reason, without purpose, without myth. The only way we can understand our experience of history is mythologically, but out experience itself, existentially and phenomenological confronted, remains always un-mythical. How then are we able to overcome this paradox of human understanding in the dialectic between history and nature, between history in the past tense, and history in the making in the present tense. This opens the chasm of the mise enabyme, the groundless ground of our own phenomenal existentiality. History in the making is the unexpected collocation, the perchance fortuitousness of the blind collision of eve forces, the convergence of events with unpredictable and unintended consequences. Convergency explains historical momentousness and emergency--it is the paradox of two 'thing' occupying the same space simultaneously--it is the synchronicity of history which explains the mythological paradox of the groundless ground--of simultaneous being and non-being of more than one future ward possibility. History is the collision of streams of events phenomenal streams of events and the mythological consciousness of their apperceptive recognition--a class of opinions, interests, interference patterns which creates its own moiré' effect--it is collocation of arrangement of discontinuous beings, the collocation of the dialectic of opposites which results--there occurs a synthesis of history of historical process--the making of history, which arises from the collisiveness of its convergent tendencies.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This is the meta-logic of historical process which in the differences forces into being new identities. Divergent histories lead t a disintegrative process--a process of differentiation which eventuates in a culture sac, a petering out of historical momentum. History slows to a stop, no longer being living history, but the natural history of the dead. Differentiation and assimilation are the two dialectical meta-themes of history, being the processual forces of divergence on one hand and convergence on the other. Divergence is based upon the principle of entropy while convergence is the principle of anti-entropy. Change, destructive and constructive is the epi-phenomenal manifestation and experience of these dialectical processes. These processes are metalogical because they stand beyond, before, outside of the logic of humanity, outside of the power of human logic to comprehend them. They must be, therefore, taken upon the grounds of a grand leap of faith, the will to believe in their priori synthetic existence--our a posteriori analytic dichotomization of reality between similarities and differences is the only manner in which we may rationally, logically apprehend this initial unity of opposites--the undifferentiated whole, the dao of the universe of human reality. But they are understood mythologically, as a posteriori history, as a resynthesis of the whole. Phenomenal change, possible, unpredictable, inevitable, is our experience of historical process. The human consciousness, in its historical dialectic, must analytically tear apart in order to build back again--the process of defining and naming is the first analytical step in this dialectic of historical consciousness. But before this exists the first undifferentiated experience of this phenomena, in which we experience this change as ourselves belonging to the historical process itself, is always an intuitive kind of understanding which evades description and defies adequate explanation. It comes from being a part of the overall process, from immersion within it unselfconsciously, unself reflectively. It is the process of full involvement, complete commitment to the existential experience of historical process. Our act of naming, out first act of conscious recognition of experience, of perceptual reflection, is the first act of alienation from historical process, deliberate rehabilitation of dichotomized reality, of conceptual simplification, is the synthetic explanation which mythological reattaches our identity to historical process, but it becomes 'identity with a critical difference', a mythological difference. Our consciousness of history comes full circle as we come to 'reunderstand' and reknow history in the 'way we remember it'. This is an important second step in the process of mythological alienation from history--in the distantiation from its essence of phenomenal experience. This is the point at which consciousness, purely perceptively reflective of reality, becomes conceptual reflexive about (??????????????)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">We become transcendentally aware of history and its process, as if we were apart from it, as if it were no longer purely subjective involvement within it, but becomes objective relation, or distanciation, outside of it. But this becomes hypothetical only, because we become aware of our own possibilities for deception, for perpetration of a false history which stems from the recognition of alternative possibilities for historical becoming. With the recognition of the possibility of the false history, the misdeeds, the lie, the accident, comes also the concomitant acknowledgment of the possibility for a true history which is not mistaken, which is 'proven' which is intended and deliberate--purposive is a deliberate, conscious sense--a sense of diachronic order which is 'meant' historically. Thus, in the awakening of our mythological historical consciousness, we are no longer merely the innocent, ignorant children of history, but become adult like agents with existential responsibility and guilt for 'making history happen' or not. And once our consciousness has been historically awakened as to its possibilities, in a collective way, there is no simple way of reversing its momentum--we cannot simply take flight from history and return to naked innocence. We become bearers of the burden of history, no matter how unwillingly or illusionistically. And yet we can return to the embrace of history by our surrender and spiritual emancipation from our own existential predicament within it--we can become again childlike not childish in arrogance or irresponsibility, but childlike in the complete involvement, the genuine engrossment of the <u>primary experience</u> of historical process, as members of the human community. This is the only road to our salvation as both children of history and adults of out own history. It is the only clear middle way between paradise and paradox, between utopia and oblivion. This involves no less than the spiritual rehumanization of history, and the descientization of the world. It lies through philosophical enlightenment of the existential predicament of humanity in the center of historical process.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The pessimistic prospect of an aberrant humanity which has embraced evil in the form of a science which is inherently 'anti-life' and therefore self destructive in its own neurotic fulfillment, is not an acceptably adequate answer to human history. The momentum of the wheel of history are great indeed, and probably unstoppable,. But this does not abnegate a higher sense of responsibility, of rational purpose, to affect a change in historical directionality which may prevent the fulfillment of our own collective mythology. We need new models of humanity and humankind, new ideal archetypes to help us to act to resolve this pressing paradox. In part, anthropology can provide an important part of this new model for understanding of humanity, but it must in itself be carried beyond the boundaries of its own historical consciousness as it has become the brainchild of science. Genuine science, is not the solution to humankind's predicament, it is a part of the problem. Science poses the basic questions which it is unable to satisfactorily answer. Standing upon the existential edge of history, we feed the winds of time blowing into our faces. In the twilight of our horizon, we cannot yet be sure whether we are witnessing a sunset or a sunrise to a new age of humanity. We are still left with a final choice, however small, or however much reduced, but which in the cumulativeness of its common collectivity, can become a turning point a decisive moment in history. We must more fully come to apprehend our possibilities for becoming. If we slam the breaks upon the wheels of progress, it will still be too late to save many things from happening, and in the process we will suffer a severe shock of sudden reversal, of sudden immobilization. We have the understanding of what and how to do this, but not the wisdom to make it happen, we lack the immediacy and the sense of involvement in the entire process--we have become existentially alienated from the responsibility of our own involvement in historical process. To stop the clocks is to affect a radical revolution in reverse--progress to a higher plane of technological civilization from which we will regain our ultimate salvation is not the correct nor most adaptable response to the long term history, but it is the most likely. There needs to be a dramatic return to basics, a grassroots resistance to the conspiracy of artificial, contrived developmental change. our strivings must become day to day instead of year to year, our luxuries must be found in the genuine experience of phenomenological nature rather then in the convenience of an all consuming materialism. Poverty must not be any longer seen as the existential plight from which to seek vicarious escape, but as a necessity of survival, a law of nature, from which the only escape is spiritual not material. We do not need a brave new world through which to reach a plane of ameaningful existence, but we need the revitalization of a courageous old word in which highs and lows are sought after for their tragi-comic sense of high drama. Poverty is like an unwanted orphan child of history, a stray kitten, that no matter how far it is taken to be gotten rid off, always manages to find its way home again. The model of home must be revitalized with original conception. The orphan of history, the children of history who have become the refugees, have to find again a home, a sense of home, a sense of common family in a common humankind. Home is more genuine in a slum, in a homeless family that remains together, than in a mansion upon a hill. The home cannot be a castle, a fort from which to seek refuge and build defenses from the existential vagaries of the world, but a harbor, a haven, a house open to a neighborhood which has its own little world gemeinschaft community feeling. We must learn to realize the project of humanity on earth is not building a bigger more grandiose city on the hill, but to build a safer, more stable home upon the earth, a pioneer settlement in the wilds of nature, upon firmer more common existential ground, however poor.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SOME FINAL REFLECTIONS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">on learning to fall gracefully from anthropologia</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>'I engage with the Snark--every night after dark--</p> <p>In a dreamy delirious fight;</p> <p>I serve it with greens in these shadowy scenes</p> <p>And I use it for striking a light;</p> <p>'But if I ever met with a Boojou, that day,</p> <p>In a moment (of this I am sure),</p> <p>I shall softly and suddenly vanish away--</p> <p>And the notion I cannot endure!'</p> <p>…Zen presupposes that the ordinary person caught up in a maze of crisscrossing ideas, theories, reflections, prejudices, feelings and emotions such that his every experience is cut up into a variety of segments. These segments are then taken as parts of experience which can be synthesized into a whole. Thus the ordinary person does not really experience reality, but only the network of ideas and feelings he has about reality. These ideas and feelings always stand between the individual and the reality he confronts, mediating the experience…(Koller; 1970: 184)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">As the absolutely first principle of existence, <u>Tao</u> is completely without characteristics. It is itself uncharacterized, being the very source and condition of all characteristics. In this sense is non-being. But it is not simply nothing, for it is the source of everything. It is a priori to all the existing things, giving them life and function, constituting the oneness underlying all the diversity and multiplicity of the world. Lao Tzu says, "The <u>Tao</u> that can be told of is not the eternal <u>Tao</u>; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the named is the mother of all things."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The reason <u>Tao</u> cannot be named is that it is without divisions, distinctions or characteristics. It is unified, like an uncarved block, being without change, knowing neither beginning nor end. But if <u>Tao</u> cannot be named, what is named, what is named by 'Tao'? Lao Tzu's point in saying that the <u>Tao </u>is beyond all names is that the fundamental source and principle cannot be named, for it is the very source of names and descriptions. Consequently, 'Tao' is a non-name; it does not refer to any one thing. Rather it points to what which enables things to be what they are; it is that which gives them existence and allows them to pass into nonexistence. When it is said that <u>Tao</u> is the source of all being, and non-being, the word '<u>Tao</u>' functions very much like the word 'that' when is said the 'that' from which being and non-being proceed.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The importance of <u>Tao </u>lies in the recognition that there is something which is prior and anterior to the various particular things that exist in the world, something which gives unity to all the existing things and which determined the very existence and function of everything that exists. What that something is cannot, of course, be said, for whatever can be talked about is limited and determined, for it is the very condition of limits and determinations. (Koller; 1970: 236)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">In the grey way of anthropology there is no preoccupation with differences of black and white, these are differences which make no difference. There is only afield of in-between grey made up of many colors.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I have long felt a need to face as directly as possible some of the issues I have dealt to be critical disparities to the realm of anthropologia. These are things which are not clearly visible from the outside unless one is already well enough informed about the inside. They are things felt and experienced from the insider but rarely if ever brought to conscious recognition--it is trying to find the outlines of the forest by looking amidst its many trees. Only an 'informed' outsider can be reasonably expected to honestly face and trace its boundary observing participation, which yet does not lack in the insider's intuitive sense of real life understanding. For the realm of anthropologia does not have a critical boundary which demarcates its territory as exclusive for a privileged few, and this boundary, though rarely admitted but always evident, serves to separate and isolate the realm of anthropologia from the rest of the human reality and humanity. The real inspite of the fact that the realm of anthropologia has as its central raison d'être the study and understanding of the wider human reality of humanity. This places anthropology squarely between the horns of a disconcerting dilemma. For the same distanciation which anthropology requires for the objective study of human reality, creates the very barriers which anthropologists require of themselves in order to be authentic and legitimate become the same set of social distancing mechanisms which they must then somehow theoretically and methodologically break down in order to get closer to the source of their primary interest. In setting themselves apart as a community of scholars with a privilege authority of knowledge about the rest of humanity, they also fall prey a sense of false consciousness which prejudices their understanding about humanity.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This dilemma, this disparity between the ideal and the real, fosters a need to prove themselves vis-à-vis significant others. The need to prove oneself begins with the individual ego identity, and leads all the way up to a positivistic science of anthropology.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is one archetype which I have not previously elucidated, which stems from a related separate culture tradition--the academic tradition itself--and in its image presents us with a different philosophical origin of being the model for becoming, a different kind of value orientation which has much or more bearing upon the understanding of academic anthropologia than the previous archetypes which are embedded within the socio-cultural matrix which contextualizes American Academia. This is the archetype of the Intellectual Scholar. This is a very implicit and explicit model behind the professionalization process of becoming an anthropologist--it is the other side of the coin of academic anthropological socialization. In a sense this archetype contains a contradiction of the previous one, and in its contradiction could be seen as comprising a reputation of what this critical polemic against anthropology is all about. Its idealistic argument goes something like this--"Students of Academia are learning how to be intellectual scholars of high caliber--this is a process which is justifiable in its own rights." This is granted. But it is important to see the community of intellectual scholars as an ideal membership-role model which is complementary and mutually reinforcing the others seemingly superficially contradicting models of the American Hero, and as, in some sense itself being a kind of model which in the fullest of its implications and process of realization, leaves a bit to be desired. The reality lying behind the model does not necessarily, rarely ever, lives up to the standards and idealistic value orientations set by the model itself--indeed to attempt to resurrect such a model in one's professional career may amount to a kind of academic suicide as realities undercutting and crosscutting its realization would undermine and render maladaptive any design on its behalf.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Part of this problem with such an ideal role model is its instillation of a false sense of perfectionism which is symptomatic of low self esteem. This kind of deficiency motivation is adaptively neurotic and becomes a self-frustrating vicious cycle as one is inevitably unable to live up to or match the set of standards one sets for oneself in terms of academic performance and progress. It leads to an unconscious pattern of 'choking'--of carrying a project to near completion and then, out of frustration, leaving it without complete or final closure upon it. This type of problem catches up people in the waiting up stage of their socialization process--when what they and do will become seen and recognized and possibly criticized by significant others. Choking behavior leads to creative blocks, a track record of projects near finished, begun but left unfinished, and of virtual 'failures' because they were never allowed to succeed in the first place.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The other side of this Janus face model of the intellectual scholar are those infrequent exceptions to the rule who do perchance achieve high visibility within and without their own community. The myth behind these are their veritable, proven, unquestioned 'perfection'--they become models of emulation--something of a secular academic apotheosis of a human being in an unusual set of circumstances into an unusual human being in a normal surroundings. Our naïve, ideologically rewritten histories are full of such Hero-myths of the professions. It becomes important to see Kant or Nietsche or Sartre not as men of real history, who perhaps made the most of their times, but as somehow isolated in a vacuum of history--internally only in the sense of their philosophical contributions--their nationalistic 'coherence' and not how these philosophers were the by-product of a human being within a very particular historical epoch. This is done with the naïve apotheosis of a Margaret Mead of a Bronislaw Malinowski--it becomes a shame with the 'other' side of their lives becomes 'exposed' they are anthropological heroes 'fallen from grace' and thus suffering the nemesis of fallen idols. But it is important to recognize that this happens only because they are allowed to become false, superhuman idols in the first place. There is always an 'anti-type' for any archetype. And those who fall from grace do so, not because they were just human beings like other people, but because, as with the pantheon of Greek Gods and Goddess, they had 'internal' character flaws which become their destiny. The more normal, rule bound expression of this myth is the young field researcher who aims to fly so bear to the sun, that the wax of their makeshift feathers melt, falling to their doom in a vast anonymous sea.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But in order to see this kind of archetype as mutually complementary in function with the American Hero Archetype it is important to see if in function as a convenient and misleading system of rationalization, an ideology of false consciousness, if one pays more attention to what the academics say they are doing than to what they are actually doing, which becomes by and large trying to convince and prove to themselves that they really are doing what they say they are. It complements the other archetypes because it symbolically reifies and therefore justifies the promotion of a privilege way of life--it serves as the vehicle of true truth--the basis of proof. This is why anthropology is full to the gills with rhetorical verbiage but has few definite answers.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Even more important though, it is necessary to see the deeper underlying process, one which I have used as the fundamental thematic thesis of this polemic against academic anthropologia, is that it involves an artificial but prerequisite dichotomization of human reality--analytically and a subsequent need to synthetically reintegrate the reality, which accounts for the sense of fundamental disparity and dilemma which belies the perpetuation of the myth. In the possibility for progress, for truth, perfection, lies also the possibility for ideological falsification, weakness, failure. This dichotomization is that of the objective-subjective bifurcation of reality. It is the prerequisite sense of objectivity which the anthropological scholar must bring to his presentation of self via professional vehicles of expression and symbols, which entails the deployment of distancing mechanisms and distanciation from the subjective--especially as the subjective is embodied or represented by the significant other. It becomes necessary to separate ourselves from the field to 'write up' the thesis 'objectively' it becomes necessary to separate ourselves academically in our ivory tower armchair from our wider audience of the history of humanity--the privilege of this contrived separation is a concomitant bifurcation of reality--in our thinking, belief systems and systems of behavior.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">All objectification requires distanciation--automatically implying some sense of distancing. Distancing is, it is my central thesis, based upon the <u>emphasis of differences</u> and the <u>ignorance of similarities</u>. It results in social and spatial boundaries of all sorts. In the dichotomization of human reality between self and other--there is in effect the creation of two separate realities which articulate and interrelated in very controlled and limited ways. Anthropologists have a fundamentally split personality--part of the neurosis of their condition. They live in two worlds which are artificially separated, and only synthetically reintegrated in 'biological' or mythological ways. It is necessary to do this, because this is being what it is all about being an intellectual scholar. It is the need to maintain the sense of objective difference, the consciously significant difference which fosters and gives birth to academic reality in the first place.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Objectification/subjectification of human reality leads to an overemphasis upon the former and an under emphasis upon the latter. The consequences are both positive and negative, good and bad, progressive and regressive, if seen in the wider circle of its historical development, both personally and culturally. But in the need to reintegrate the larger reality, to achieve a sense of closure, there is a tendency to misconstrue the one for the other. We look at successful scholarship in a very objective sense of internal coherence, as truth separated from reality in a platonic rational ideal or Kantian noumenal sense, so we see systems of theory very--as products of universally held standards of internal order, which are but arbitrary and simple minded, rules of belief and behavior, ignoring human creativity--failing to see them as the historical byproduct-epiphenomena of human activity, or else we see their human makers, originators as 'natural' talents, geniuses, differences which are subjectively innate, ignoring historical preconditioning, circumstances, etc.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is created then, two separate realities. The first is the reality of primary experience--the reality of feelings, perceptions, of history. It is the existential reality of everyday human experience. The second reality is in a sense parallel and coincidental with the first--it is a propositional reality of the anthropological mentality. This reality takes its life in dialogical discourse between those who identify themselves as anthropologists and the other. This dialogical discourse is characteristically in an anthropological idiom made up of 'jargot' and professionalese--the former being loosely defined, context independent in terms and meanings, like 'culture', 'nature', 'universal', 'particular' which are used as organizational metaphors--significant boundary markers framing 'differences'--identification metaphors framing meaning in a general anthropological sense. This looser idiom of anthropological jargot is a boundary maintenance mechanism, its knowledge and fluency forms a threshold in passing between the ranks and the whole--forming a boundary between the anthropologists and the significant/insignificant others. This second reality becomes more restrictively defined in anthropological professionalese. Its function is similar to the first, but it is concerned with more internal cohesion than with boundary maintenance from without--a descriptive language matching names and meanings in a definitive sense to things and relations in a 'different' sense. Through academic literature, especially journals, this professionalese precipitates a reification of the first, or proto reality of human experience--the 'really realistic ' model--a sense of anthropological realism which anthropologically symbolizes the first reality via the second. Anthropological realism has its artificial existence in the first reality in terms of the literature generated in the dialogical discourse. It has concrete form in the first reality but it derives its meaning ultimately from the second. This precipitated reality is a 'cultural' reality distilled from a 'natural' reality and has grown in the volume and reams of its literature. It is a paper reality, and in the structure of academic anthropologia fosters obtuseness and sophistry of names and meanings which serve as boundary maintenance mechanisms. This 'concretized' anthropological reality overlays the former and legitimates the latter, but it remains a context dependent reality. This context dependency has, as a social basis, self sustaining and self perpetuating and self determining implications--in the sense that 'all distancing is self distancing' which is largely independent from the primary reality, anchored to it only via methodological praxis of belief and behavior. There is a cybernetic feedback between the two realities--a positive regenerative or negative degenerative cycle which are between the first and the second realities which are complementary and interdependent upon one another for their expression and growth or inhibition. The two realities form complex interactive dialectical cycle which precipitates anthropologia as a reified, semi-paradigmatic scientific reality. This reality has become a cultural historical reality upon a particular 'subjective/objective' dimensionally of human reality. Its central concerns are boundary maintenance, self identification and internal cohesiveness and external legitimization and consistency within its own community as it becomes dialectically determined along this central dimension.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Emphasis upon differences entails ignoring similarities. Ignoring similarities is a simple process of selective perception--of choosing to see as important, as significant, what we want to see. Emphasis upon differences is based upon a dialectical dichotomization of reality--it is analytical and a posteriori, based upon the principle of opposites or non-identification--for any single entity there is an hypothetical non-entity which is its dialectical antithesis--whether there are any 'in fact' they are an implicit principle necessary for the system to work. It translates scientifically into a system of biological falsification and verification--'either a or not a'--the dichotomic logic of the excluded middle ground underlying western rationalism.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">So what is seen as the enlightened march of progress of a semi-paradigmatic science of humankind, becomes an ongoing toward paradigmatic closure with a certain dimensionally of human reality, becomes actually an historical dialectic of development about a central dualism of human reality set of dualisms about human reality. As it develops it accumulates in its wisdom, theories become replaced by other theories, only to come full circle to replace those theories in a modified form. And this is essential for paradigmatic progress of anthropologia.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is important to recognize beneath this traditional academic archetype a traditional alternative possibility--education as a form of social mobility across class and socio structural boundaries. For myself, a large part of the academic socialization experience has had to do with coming to terms with the social implications of my own class position, and of learning how to re-negotiate this identity in order to facilitate crossing thresholds, boundaries of others perception. Prejudice, discrimination, structural bias, are all base upon simple ignorance which is based upon repression of self and projection of certain 'social models' or archetypes. In a sense we are dealing with 'class models or archetypes' which serve to position people vis-à-vis others. These models form the <u>bottom line</u> and the baseline of social reinforced vale orientations and systems of signification. They are the historical horizon of our preconscious pre-understandings, beyond which we cannot see. They 'frame' our reality and can be found to be rooted in our language, everyday dialectical language as a social system of signification or communication, especially of social differences. We can speak in a sense of a kind of 'class subconscious' which preconditions, predetermines and 'structures' or 'frames' our social interactions with others. It is the implicit preconception of the status of another, which forms the baseline of meaning behind anything and everything said of that person. It determines that whether we over or under emphasize social difference, it will make no difference. It is a bank teller, knowing how low your bank account is, who already has a preset stereotype in which you are framed, who says to you, "if your checks bounce, we know where to find you", however friendly and smiling. People 'frame' other people--pigeon holing them while not knowing or ignoring who these people really are--by and large class difference is a false difference--artificial ranking of social race. Once 'framed' by someone else who remains ignorant in either an innocent sense or a deliberate sense of 'choosing to ignore' then no matter what one may do, it is difficult to break out of this pre-conceptual framework of understanding. Differences which do not fit the framework are interpreted negatively because they threaten the coherent reality of the other, no matter how false or contrived or ignorant. Part of education is learning how to re-negotiate this 'frame' pre-conceptioning with socially significant others. But it must be remembered that this works both ways. Failure to re-negotiate one's personal frame, or context, in academia will result in failed social mobility in the larger world, but success in academia does not guarantee success in the larger world--this success depends upon other bases of social class position. Academic successes who fail to achieve social mobility because of low class background, 'fall from grace' within academia, as having 'personal flaws' which are defined outside of the academic system itself.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">'In the field' one's bottom baseline of social class, which may show like a see through garment, like the King's new apparel, no matter how nice we dress--we carry it around upon our shoulders, heads and faces like an invisible aura people sense and feel but fail to recognize--largely via the nuances of language, including nonverbal body language we do not consciously recognize. In the field, this framework falls away in reference our counter reference to a significantly different system of framing. The anthropologist, in the anti-structure of the field, can enact myths, vicarious fantasies, realize dreams in the field, which become a subconscious driving force in the field 'a dumping ground' for one's repressed wish, neurotic hang-ups. This 'framework' is re-negotiated in someone else's terms. But this is, vis-à-vis, one's own structural framework, dialectical 'anti-structure' it is a privileged 'becoming the other'. When one returns from the field, to academia, one's previous structural framework, one' class position, becomes 'reinstated' in albeit a transformed way. Snobbery results when one's expectations of transformation are not met with by the realization of one's actual baseline class status--the way you tend to be publicly treated in a stereotypical fashion by others 'of your own kind'. In academia, one does not escape the implications of one's status identity like one can in the field by reconstruction. These implications of status identity, the bottom line of one's ego, forms also the horizon of one's ability to understand and to tolerate others who come within your academic purview of signification. They become the unseen and unquestioned preconditions, preconceptions, the boundaries, limitations of one's ego consciousness within academic anthropologia, which one can then only escape by 'going to the field' or going home 'on holiday'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Re-negotiating the framework in the field, allow us to re-negotiate the framework in academia, if we allow ourselves to step outside of it enough, to shed our 'American' clothes and to 'go native' or become 'un-American'. It allows us to better objectify what before we could only understand subjectively, and thus allows us to redefine it upon another set of terms. But this does not always happen, as some people go to the field like foreign diplomats upon a mission of scientific importance or of mercy for the downtrodden other, or as a tourist upon an ethnographic sightseeing tour. But they do not shed that American veil, those clothes of their own value orientations. They experience alternative social structures, but only an 'anti-structure' of their own academic American home base. In essence, it makes little difference whether one is in the field or in academia, or still sees in a way preconceptual, selective way in which one existentially chooses to see in. Thus in this, dialectic between self and counter reference other and academia as structure and field as 'anti-structure' rite of passage 'to be endured' they are differences which make no essential difference. They mutually reinforce the fulfillment of an ideology, very American and very academia, but in a genuine sense very un-anthropological. One gets what one wants, and the mythological models become fulfilled in the acting out--they become the differences which make no difference, instead of the non-differences which should make a difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I think back, at the end of this work, to reconsider the reasons which motivates me to do this in the first place--no matter how hard I may have tried, I have consistently failed to re-negotiate my own lower class status--this has made further academic progress difficult if not impossible, where it remains relative facile and flexible for different peoples with better class backgrounds. Academia does not escape class differences, it reinforces and perpetuates them, but in its comparison between the name and the thing, the symbol and the substance behind the symbol--it both fails and succeed in its designs and functions.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This study was done because of a growing sense of dissatisfaction, existentially based, between what is 'passed' as 'genuine' in name and what seems to myself more genuine in substance. Anthropology is no longer the 'science' it was once for me, which promised so much but delivered so little. It was my own fault for putting most of my eggs in one basket and I blame no one else. I have subsequently moved on, for what is for me at least, bigger and better things.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But history is directing me to continue to define my ego reality academically as an 'anthropologist' and so I must take a critical look back upon the world I left behind, to see if I can salvage from my own personal experience of it, anything of genuine value which might assist me in my reentry into anthropologia. If it is a marriage, it is not a whole hearted one, or one embraced freely with full commitment. If it will continue to be a marriage, it will not be a smooth one, but will always be very rocky. If others can recognize in their own personal experiences anything with anthropologia anything similar to my own, then maybe this study has some residual social value. I will always continue to define my anthropological ego identity as long as I continue to choose to do so, very skeptically and self critically. I will always be as cautious of academic 'professionalism' and authoritarianism as much as I have learned to be cautious with any kind of 'ism' or authority. I cannot, any longer, be an anthropological true believer. But in giving up my anthropological naiveté's and human innocence, I may have gained something even more valuable--and that is perhaps a sense of self respect in other people's eyes, and a sense of the dignity of others in my own eyes.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The projective power of anthropology has a history linked to the western expansion and dominion of the entire globe. This can be awe aspiring in its scope and power but it can be blinding and frightening in its blindness. 'Anthropological blindness' is what I have been and will continue to be, concerned with, as long as I must call myself an anthropologist. Anthropology could not have come into being as it is now today unless it had the money and power via its relation to a first world power structure. Money makes the difference. It creates the constitutions which makes 'field work' possible. Our 'field' is another's home. Our backyard for play is another's front yard for respect. Our front yard for laboratory work, is another's sanctum of tranquillity. But this does not mean that anthropology cannot possibly become something else altogether--a bridge or path to a new humanity and a new history. As long as I remain attached to anthropology as some kind of basis for my social status and ego identity, I will remain critical, I will as a 'humanistic anthropologist' always remain skeptical of the anthropological mission as long as it strives to define itself paradigmatically as a 'science of mankind'.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">It is indeed difficult to do an 'anthropology of anthropology' if only because, as I sincerely believe, the anthropological community is not entirely open and receptive to other anthropologists studying them as they expect others to be. If I were a newspaper reporter wanting to interview a community of anthropologists, I am certain that 90% of the doors would be wide open and the welcome mats would be out. But as an anthropologist among anthropologists it is difficult to remain open about it--the doors are closed, the 'busy' signs is out--'please do not disturb'--they look at their watches. One cannot find the walls of academia because wherever one reaches for them, they fall away very conveniently for the person behind. One cannot hook onto the gossip network, because the gossip always flow around you and about you, but never to you or through you. One ends y up choosing between doing nothing important at all or becoming a spy, and in a sense, a double spy, treasonous and treacherous, among one's own kind. You become a policeman among police--a Gestapo agent, a squealer. One must bug or plant a bugs or ears to hear what is said. Anthropologists well informed of your presence, know what you are about, and erect the appropriate mechanisms to put and keep you under control. Making the anthropological academic 'home' the field, bring the field too close to home, is violating the taboos of separating personal from professional life, polluting the purity of the public self with the impurities of the private other 'alter ego'. 'Something might be revealed.' 'Something might be seen'--it opens up these possibilities. Where one sees smoke there is usually a fire. This is a privilege of private protection which we rarely, if ever, <u>completely and absolutely extend to the other in the field</u>. What we extend to them is token but empty gesture of brotherhood and friendship--protection in name only. We give beads and trinkets for truth and wisdom. We decide to pay in cash or kind, in pots and pans for help, for what we want the other to give us, but not the other way around. We set the terms, make and eventually break the contract with the other in the field which they have not existential option but to accept or reject, a set of terms which we must negotiate in academia. You make a contract to study other anthropologists, which you cannot break without some kind of retributive karma.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">But like Nargarjuna, who saw his karma in battle with his own kind, I must strive for a higher ethical wisdom which transcends the 'ethos' and 'pathos' of the everyday existential existence in anthropologia. I never intended to drag reputations through the mud, or to sling mud in professional faces. I set out to see anthropology for what it really seems to be, rather than merely what it claims to be. If egos get dirtied in the process, there is always the possibility that they were meant to be. It is hard to clean laundry which is not dirty. It is impossible to clean linen which is not dirty. I seek to understand in my own alternative way this existential reality of academic anthropology, not to emphasize differences which make no important difference. I do not seek to change things which are beyond my means or ability to change. I seek merely to learn to live within my own means to cope with these things. No one needs to read this who might be adversely affected by it. It is the higher ethical wisdom, that in the historical structure of the long run, differences will make no net difference.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">There is a need to see anthropology as ultimately a form and function, philosophy and praxis, a humanistic system of belief and behavior, of human history. History has its own human dialectic which no science can divine. History has its own karma which no human which stands outside of its stream can predict. Embracing history is the only of bringing anthropology back to the ground.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I do not know why there is no focus of critical attention of the reflexive lens of the anthropological panopitic eye, upon the essentially creative task of writing anthropology. For as with the writing and rewriting of history it has its own dialectical logic which science cannot understand. It would be great to formalize the process, to come up with a cookbook recipe or a secret special formula "How to Write Anthropology'. A few have actually tried! But like a book on how to paint or how to make a table, the results will inevitably be mundane and as mediocre as any cookie cutter can produce. Now we are busily preoccupied with making the ideal computer program that will solve this 'puzzle'. The field is only a place to gather data and defecate. Anthropology is made in the academic think tank. Unfortunately for many, but not for myself, all these efforts and expectations are doomed to failure. To be buried by history. Fortunately for myself, human creativity and the historical, existential fact of human creation, remains a divine mystery. Good luck, boys, when you can figure this one out without in the process destroying it. Human history is born from human creativity. Fortunately I am a fairly creative person, so there is still a little hope left for me.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">I wake up at night with two conflicting visions. The first is one in which anthropologia suddenly perishes in the splinters of modern civilization and then being miraculously reborn in the ashes and embers in a new configuration. The second sees a paradise on earth, a world full of amateur anthropologists too busy studying one another to be concerned with destroying each other, trying to understand one another, to make sense of each other. Somehow, neither vision seems to fit my own understanding of anthropology. Scientific and humanistic anthropology are engaged in perpetual dialectical combat--from this struggle perhaps a new set of dialectical struggles will begin.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">…It is temptingly easy for man to mistake the world he has created in his knowledge which is merely a world of names and forms, for reality itself. When he succumbs to the temptation he fixes on the name and form self, that he has created in his knowledge, as his own self. He identifies his own being with this construction of name and form. Then the real self, burdened by the ignorance resulting from mistaking the self of the real world, gets overlooked in the struggle that ensues between the false self of name and the false world of name and form. The resulting bifurcation which underlies this inauthentic existence, in this inauthentic world, is responsible for the disease--the <u>Dukkha</u>--that Buddhism wishes to overcome.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Distinguishing between reality and views of reality, Nagarjuna apparently desired to show the dangers inherent in regarding any one's view of reality as being absolutely true. Views are conceptual constructions of name and form, and to claim any view as absolutely true is to refuse to recognize the insights of other views and thus to rule out possible avenues of illumination. (Kollar; 1970: 167-8)</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"There is a Thingamabob shouting!" the Bellman said,</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"He is shouting like mad, only hark!"</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">He has certainly found a Snark!</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">"It's a Snark!" was the sound that first came to their ears,</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">And seemed almost too good to be true</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers;</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Then the ominous words, "It's a Boo--"</p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="3"> <p> </p> <p> </p> </font> <font FACE="Arial"> <font FACE="Times,Times New Roman" SIZE="2"> <p> </p> <hr> <p><a name="Copyright">Blanket Copyright</a>, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.</p> <p>Last Updated: 08/25/06 </p> <hr> <p> </p> </font> <p> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> <p align="center"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> s="na";c="na";j="na";f=""+escape(document.referrer) </script> <script language="javascript1.2" type="text/javascript"> s=screen.width;v=navigator.appName if (v != "Netscape") {c=screen.colorDepth} else {c=screen.pixelDepth} j=navigator.javaEnabled() </script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> function pr(n) {document.write(n,"\n");} NS2Ch=0 if (navigator.appName == "Netscape" && navigator.appVersion.charAt(0) == "2") {NS2Ch=1} if (NS2Ch == 0) { r="&size="+s+"&colors="+c+"&referer="+f+"&java="+j+"" pr("<A HREF=\"http://www.TheCounter.com\" TARGET=\"_top\"><IMG"+ " BORDER=0 SRC=\"http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383"+r+"\"><\/A>")} </script> <NOSCRIPT> <a HREF="http://www.TheCounter.com" TARGET="_top"><img SRC="http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383" ALT="TC" BORDER="0" width="88" height="31"></a> </NOSCRIPT>  </body>