A.J. Faas

A few months ago, a commission of scholars produced a report titled “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences.”  The authors find little grounds for the popular, largely right-wing argument that the humanities and social sciences have been captured by political ideology that distorts research findings and diminishes scholarly rigor, except for anthropology.  I have written that, besides neglecting the rigor whose alleged loss they bemoan, the authors fail to appreciate the importance of applied research and testing common sense against evidence in anthropology.  Our discipline remains evidence-based, accountable, transparent, and a space of open disagreement, as many of the responses indicate.

Gustaaf Houtman of Anthropology Today and Michael Perez of the University of Memphis argue that the report is biased in selecting evidence and presents it misleadingly.  Perez reviews the cited authors, finding overwhelming evidence that “Rigor and validity” and “[d]ata and analysis” still walk among us anthropologists.  Princeton biological anthropologist Augustin Fuentes wrote a tour de force takedown of the report’s claim that anthropologists overstate how “settled” science is while rejecting the science of sexual difference, orienting readers to ongoing debates and evidence within biological anthropology.

Conrad Kottak of the University of Michigan (emeritus) critiqued the report’s empirical merits (see parts I, II, and III) and argues that racism, colonialism, and other inequalities remain legitimate and important anthropological topics, even as he laments that some of the discussion is lost in “postmodern gobbledygook.” James Holland Jones of Stanford, a self-described scientific “causality weenie,” sees plenty to critique in “postmodern” cultural anthropology.  Yet he argues that cultural anthropology’s core remit is to “question, with empirical evidence, beliefs that have been naturalized for ideological or other reasons.”  He also argues that the seeming rift between scientific and humanistic anthropologists reflects a yawning gap between work at elite universities and everywhere else. 

American Anthropological Association President Carolyn Rouse likewise pointed to the report’s specious claims and tortured logics, arguing that positionality and reflexivity are hospitable to empirical facts and are themselves factual and fundamental to careful research with human subjects.  Rouse rightfully skewers the report for speaking out of both sides of its mouth: decrying a lack of ideological diversity while “conflating intellectual disagreement with intellectual decline.”  

Furthermore, Rouse and Kottak both convey how we need many voices to develop a robust understanding of human experience.  Rouse argues that the authors have much to learn from anthropologists, who made “talking with the people they are writing about” central to our methodology.  Kottak argues that anthropology and its subdisciplines have grown so far apart that no one anthropologist—including the “State of Scholarship” report’s lone anthropologist contributor—can reasonably speak for the entire discipline.  Instead, he invites ethnographies of anthropology, already a lively tradition.

More broadly, no matter if someone studies literature, philosophy, or anthropology, we all have a vested interest in pursuing our work using evidence and sound reasoning, lest we cave to the extortionary threats to academic freedom and critical inquiry in America today.  In anthropology, generalizable truth claims are important, but so too is critically examining the sociocultural worlds that sustain certain beliefs and practices and move people to action.  Sometimes cultural anthropologists use hard-to-understand language because we’re trying to set aside our own biases when conducting research, and all our subdisciplines use jargon because we rarely have time or word count to explain everything from a foundational level.  I don’t care to build mountains out of molehills of near difference, so I’m thankful for productive, good-faith debates with colleagues—something I can count on the anthropologists and fellow travelers cited here for.

Contributor:

A.J. Faas

A.J. Faas is the President of the Society for Applied Anthropology (2025-2027) and Professor of Anthropology at San José State University.