Chapter 2: Claims and Critiques of Anthropological Knowledge © 2014 Mark Moberg

Postmodern critics cite instances where anthropologists studying the same community reached divergent conclusions: Tepotzlan, Mexico (Redfield vs. Lewis), Samoa (Mead vs. Freeman). Posthumous publication of Malinowski’s field diary revealed his intense dislike of Trobrianders, despite the “objective” tone adopted in his publications. Such cases call into question anthropological claims of scientific objectivity. Clifford Geertz: traditional ethnographies were constructed to convey both the anthropologist’s competence as a reporter (sprinkling the text with native terms, even when the anthropologist had little knowledge of the language) and objectivity (use of the 3rd rather than 1st person pronoun). Postmodernists claim that scientific approaches privilege the anthropologist’s knowledge over that of local people, discounting their reasons for behavior. Related to Michel Foucault’s argument that bureaucracies and corporations adopt scientific discourse to “silence” and delegitmate their opponents. © 2014 Mark Moberg

Science-oriented anthropologists raise major concerns about the postmodern “celebration” of “many voices” (i.e. claims to knowledge). Among these are epistemological relativism: rival claims to knowledge cannot be evaluated as true or false because they involve differing assumptions about the world. While many equally valid readings are possible in the realm of literary criticism, scientific anthropologists claim that epistemological relativism poses grave problems when applied to the analysis of culture. We are documenting peoples’ lives in often oppressive and unjust circumstances, and what we say about such circumstances cannot simply be a matter of aesthetic judgment. Scientific anthropologists assert that if our ethnographic description is but one among many, why should anyone pay attention to our documentation of oppression and suffering? Moreover, should our “celebration” of many voices not compel us to recognize noxious claims, such as the genetic inferiority of minorities and women, the claim that the Holocaust was a hoax, and so on? © 2014 Mark Moberg