I am an anthropology grad student in the Midwest working primarily in archaeology and cognitive science but also ethnohistory. The anthropologist in this episode is the same sort of incoherent ethnographer that makes me hang my head in shame. All he does is play rhetorical games . . . and his analysis and theoretical framework is so simplistic.

Ouch!...incoherent, rhetorical and simplistic....those are fighting words. Though to be fair, being both "incoherent" and "simplistic," and mixing in there rhetorical is an odd characterization of someone's argument.

I thought Eric actually supported his position rather well, so I would say you should feel no shame for your anthropology brethren. Indeed, his discussion of the tension between physical and cultural anthropology speaks to your negative sentiments. Your discipline would seem to have very different tools, modes of thinking, and ways of doing research, that render communication between different anthroplogies very difficult. And as your comment highlights, even an understanding and appreciation of what other anthropologists do, seems to be a tall order for your guys.

I'm an archaeologist. I share some of the disappointment with this conversation that Robert Mahaney expressed, but would add that, in addition to being totally mystifying, his petulant, wholesale condemnation of ethnographers does neither he nor our discipline any credit. Way to NOT make an intelligent contribution to this discussion!

I personally don't think the furor over the proposed changes was warranted. Its only real purpose thus far seems to have been to give those who fancy themselves martyrs to science another imagined cross to bear. During the Science Wars of the 90s, to which the current crisis owes much of its inanity, many of my archaeologist and bioarchaeologist colleagues maintained that postmodern critics of science simply didn't understand--or were willfully misunderstanding for political reasons--the very concepts and theories they were criticizing. Yet many of those same colleagues were both unwilling and unable to explain or defend those concepts themselves (talk about incoherent!) That kind of stupidity and conceit is one of the reasons that organizations like the AAA have shied away from saying that 'science' is THE defining characteristic of anthropology.