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Anthropology and Eurocentrism
Mar. 30th, 2014 04:40 pmAnthropologists generally assume, with good reason, that the differences between societies reflect differences between their environments, histories, and so forth rather than differences between their people.
This doesn’t mean everyone is the same. There are important differences between genders, personalities, neurotypes, and so on in each society. There are more differences between genders, personalities, neurotypes, and also within genetic variation, within each society, than there are between societies, and unless we have Amazons or Gargarians, that’s not about to change. This starting assumption actually challenges racism.
Anthropology as an academic field began from Eurocentric perspectives though, and it’s worth asking whether it can go beyond these perspectives. I don’t know how to put this, really. I mean, first off, it is inherently interdisciplinary, it associated with history, and with other human sciences, and second it is incredibly diverse, with historical materialism, cultural materialism, and structuralism, all in the same field.
One of the big controversies has been over the roles of cross-cultural comparison and cultural particularism, and how to bring them together.
Another of the big controversies has been over studying contemporary gatherer-hunter societies to study different past gatherer-hunter societies, and over similar analogies.
Anyway, I am kinda foggy-headed right now. I am concerned that the dismissal of anthropology as racist undermines what has been and could continue to be anti-racist.
Now, I am more familiar with the European and Mediterranean past, I have an easier time finding sources on it, I have an easier time contextualizing work on it, so for me, it is a touchstone for understanding claims about the rest of the past. I don’t know if that is Eurocentric. If someone says that certain Native American traditional chronologies go back for thousands of years, I’m going to doubt that reliable histories go back that far because, for example, many European late ancient and early medieval legends suffered significant alterations, chronological distortions, etc. in a few hundred years by the time of mid-medieval interpretations thereof.
http://ananiujitha.tumblr.com/post/81217394480/anthropology-and-eurocentrism
This doesn’t mean everyone is the same. There are important differences between genders, personalities, neurotypes, and so on in each society. There are more differences between genders, personalities, neurotypes, and also within genetic variation, within each society, than there are between societies, and unless we have Amazons or Gargarians, that’s not about to change. This starting assumption actually challenges racism.
Anthropology as an academic field began from Eurocentric perspectives though, and it’s worth asking whether it can go beyond these perspectives. I don’t know how to put this, really. I mean, first off, it is inherently interdisciplinary, it associated with history, and with other human sciences, and second it is incredibly diverse, with historical materialism, cultural materialism, and structuralism, all in the same field.
One of the big controversies has been over the roles of cross-cultural comparison and cultural particularism, and how to bring them together.
Another of the big controversies has been over studying contemporary gatherer-hunter societies to study different past gatherer-hunter societies, and over similar analogies.
Anyway, I am kinda foggy-headed right now. I am concerned that the dismissal of anthropology as racist undermines what has been and could continue to be anti-racist.
Now, I am more familiar with the European and Mediterranean past, I have an easier time finding sources on it, I have an easier time contextualizing work on it, so for me, it is a touchstone for understanding claims about the rest of the past. I don’t know if that is Eurocentric. If someone says that certain Native American traditional chronologies go back for thousands of years, I’m going to doubt that reliable histories go back that far because, for example, many European late ancient and early medieval legends suffered significant alterations, chronological distortions, etc. in a few hundred years by the time of mid-medieval interpretations thereof.
http://ananiujitha.tumblr.com/post/81217394480/anthropology-and-eurocentrism
