Method & Theory…

A recent post from my colleague over at Middle Savagery reminds me that for some of us…it physically makes us happy to read theory…I agree…Like Levi Straussian myths, for me some theory is “good to think.”

At the same time I am reminded by one of my current students who is taking a “Method and Theory in Archaeology” class that many of his colleagues in the program simply have not been exposed to, and are not comfortable talking about “theory.”…many of these folks see theory as strange, alien, and “not useful.”

I have encountered these two groups of people my whole academic career. At the University of Memphis and the University of Arkansas, I was the frustrated “theory guy” in heavily method-oriented programs…However, when I went to the University of Texas at Austin, although I was finally satisfied with the rich theoretical program there, I also began to realize the importance of the connections between methods and theory…and I felt that some of my colleagues at UT may be very theoretically sophisticated, but not very fluent in good archaeological methods.

I do not see these two entities as diametrically opposed opposites…I see them as inextricably connected…Obviously this should not be a radical idea (praxis anyone?), but time and again one meets “theory” people and “dirt archaeologists.” Close friends and colleagues even mistakenly stereotyped my long-time collaborator James Davidson and myself–he was the method guy and I was the theorist…this woefully underestimates Davidson’s theoretical savvy and (I think) my practical background.

I am a “dirt archaeologist”…I have years and years of contract archaeology underneath my belt (and over 20 “technical reports”), but I am also proud of my theoretical engagement…and I firmly believe that there is no such thing as “non-theoretical” archaeology…only archaeologists who do not acknowledge what theoretical interests they serve.

Part of the problem is a lack of great examples that connect archaeological methods and theories in a solid (and easily accessible) way…How many books have you read (especially in historical archaeology) that have an eloquent theoretical section weakly linked to the actual artifacts and excavated contexts…they read like two unrelated monographs. I long to see more work that is sound in both its methods and theories.

I’ll close by pointing to one literary model I think we should look at…Check out Larry McMurtry’s book Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen…If the rootsy, plain-spoken western writer can draw sophisticated connections between Bejamin, storytelling and the West Texas community hub known as the Dairy Queen…theory can be accessible to anyone.

Four-Field Anthropology & the Superdisciplinary Approach

Nancy over at Savage Minds has followed up on an earlier post regarding her frustration with the four-field approach to “Introduction to Anthropology” courses (see my post on “Must I Side With or Against My Section?” for a bit about tensions between our subdisciplines).

At any rate, Nancy has found a way to make the course work and it hits along the same lines as my own approach to integrating subdisciplines in anthropology courses…Nancy is integrating the four fields at every step. Instead of spending chunks of the course focusing on one field at a time, she goes through the course focusing on topics. In each topic she examines the contributions of the various subfields.

This is not unlike the way I have described my work which integrates elements of historical archaeology, prehistoric archaeology, cultural anthropology, bioarchaeology and cultural studies to colleagues when they ask about my teaching style. I’d like to develop topical courses on race, gender, households, landscapes, or whatever… and examine sources that cross-cut the traditional “pidgin holes” of our discipline. When taught in this way students will be able to see the interconnections (and disjunctures) between different subdisciplines (and even sub-subdisciplines) of our field.

This, of course, is not an original idea….I’ll credit my version to some of the writings of Critical Theorists (Horkhiemer, Adorno, etc.) who took as a part of their project to build a superdisciplinary understanding of culture…

“Superdisciplinary” is not merely “interdisciplinary”…”interdisciplinary” implies that groups of individuals from various disciplines work together collectively to develop theories… “Superdisciplinary” work, on the other hand, does its best to traverse and undermine the traditional boundaries between disciplines (and, instead, stresses the interconnections between philosophy, economics, politics, biology, etc.)…

That’s my credo & I’m sticking to it….

Must I Side With or Against My Section?

A recent post by Rex on Savage Minds connects the American Civil War with the American Anthropological Association (AAA). He reflects that…

In the years leading up to the civil war, sectionalism meant the divisive need to commit to either the South or the North hence Robert E. Lee’s reluctant decision to serve the South, despite his own dislike of slavery and secession: “I must side,” he wrote, “either with or against my section.” In the context of the economics of AAA journals, on the other hand, I’m rapidly learning that understanding sectionalism is also very important.

His article is about how important AAA section journals are, but his Civil War analogy may be more appropriate to the newest AAA Newsletter which takes up the question whether the “union” of anthropological subfields should be “torn asunder.”

For those of you who aren’t “in the know” about our angst, some practitioners believe that anthropology has grown so diverse that little holds us together–specifically there is little in common between the interests and approaches of cultural anthropology and biological anthropology.

This diverse and interesting set of brief articles come at the issue from a variety of angles. Mary Shek examines departments that have split (e.g., Duke, Stanford, Harvard) and those that work toward a holistic anthropology (e.g., Emory, University of Florida and Arizona State University’s new School of Human Evolution and Social Change), Eric Alden Smith pleds for reconciliation, while Sylvia Yanagisko and Dan Segal state that:

To date, we have seen little evidence that the so-called “biological synthesis” offers cultural-social anthropology a useful tool. To the contrary, rather than contributing to interesting work in cultural-social anthropology, the various forms “synthesis” seem most often to have been designed to control and limit cultural-social anthropology, making it less rather than more interesting….

Other articles include Fran Mascia-Lees “Can Biological and Cultural Anthropology Coexist?” and Andrea Wiley’s look at how some anthropologists (in her case nutritional anthropologists) feel that they need both approaches and their work is being hindered by the binary opposition of cultural and biological approaches.

Speaking of which……Some archaeologists, like myself, who are both grounded in some form of “science” and want to engage culturally-oriented topics (my fav-o-rites inlcude cultural memory, modernity, race construction, power relations, identity, etc.) feel a little like the state of Missouri in this anthropological civil war (although I admit I have problems sustaining a conversation with primate morphologists). Note: archaeologists ended up in both departments at Stanford depending on their theoretical approach.

Whatever your current stance on the topic, however, this issue of the Anthropology News is a good open debate.

Academic Hubris

My wife is currently enrolled in an upper division “Social Theory” course in Sociology. The book used for this course ends with a four page self-indulgent rant about the book’s author and the important “grand theories” he has provided to the discipline. This rant takes up more space than the text devoted to Walter Benjamin or any single feminist theorist!

Now, don’t get me wrong. . . I can be as self-indulgent and the next person (I mean, I AM writing a blog, eh?). But one should not go around trumpeting one’s own contributions as if they were the word handed down from on high. . . it’s bad form. . . You should at least have your graduate students do that sort of thing for you

At any rate, I’ve been noticing this sort of behavior often lately at conferences and the like. My own colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin recently held a symposium on “The Austin School” of political engagement at a recent AAA meeting. I have all of the respect in the world for these colleagues (I mean I REALLY admire many of their works), but I just think that you don’t proclaim yourself “a school” (like the Frankfurt School or the Chicago School), that’s something that OTHER PEOPLE proclaim once your contributions to methodology or theoretical positioning have been recognized. . . Otherwise (I think ) you just look like you have delusions of grandeur.

maybe I’m just too southern. . . .(I’ll knock that stereotype down later).

jamie