[Air-L] anthropology is not a science?

[Jankowski]

Dear Andrew:

Thanks very much for your considered reply on whether anthropology is 
or is not a science. I agree, like you, that the topic is relevant to 
this list, at least with regard to the intersection with Internet 
research. Let me add a couple of caveats to your comments.

Whether a discipline is or is not a 'science' has been a concern for 
many niches of specialization, and one with which many of us on this 
list are familiar is the area of  communication and the media. Some 
university departments, particularly in Europe, identify themselves 
as concerned with 'Communication Science' and, in so doing, take a 
stance on what constitutes suitable questions and methods to study 
those questions. Other departments concentrate on what they term ' 
communication studies' or 'media studies', and these departments 
usually embrace a broader set of scholarly concerns and modes of 
study. Similar approaches are evident with regard to exploring the 
Internet: there are (divisions of) departments dealing with 'Internet 
Studies' and others prefer the label 'Internet Science' and the 
implied scholarly focus and related research methodologies.

A parallel dichotomy is present in an area that I have been working, 
sometimes called
e-science and sometimes termed - especially in the U.S. - 
cyberinfrastructure. For a JCMC theme issue related to that 
development (published about this time last year), we used the term 
e-science and eventually came to regret employment of it because of 
the constrictive and limiting associations. In the follow-up volume 
to that theme issue, which we are now preparing, we use and argue for 
a more embracing term, e-research, that is more amenable to 
disciplines in the humanities and to disciplines in the social 
sciences less 'tainted' by a positivistic approach to scholarship. 
Ultimately, I argue in the introduction to that volume, it is 
understanding achieved through a diversity of scholarly approaches 
that is important rather than application of a particular set of 
'scientific' procedures labeled the 'scientific method' that are all 
too often deemed superior to qualitative or interpretative approaches 
to scholarship.

A parallel argument could - I would say 'should' - be applied to 
study of the Internet: understanding is fundamentally more important 
than adherence to what may be considered science or the scientific 
method, and such understanding is achieved through a variety of ways 
of knowing, which most certainly includes anthropology.

Thanks again, Andrew, for your reflections.

Nick Jankowski
Visiting Fellow
Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Amsterdam, Netherlands
www.virtualknowledgestudio.nl



At 04:26 AM 1/9/2008, you wrote:

>As for the disagreement at hand, about whether anthropology is a "science,"
>I'm skeptical that there is a compelling argument for why it is not, but
>it's an interesting topic for respectful disagreement in any case. The
>assertion that anthropology is "not a science" (whatever that means)
>probably doesn't sit well with many anthropologists who study Internet use,
>or with other Internet researchers who employ methods that originated in
>anthropology, as well as with others on the list who'd simply like to be
>enlightened as to what the standards are that are used to judge whether
>their research is scientific. Many philosophers of science characterize
>scientific theories as highly formalized arguments, and the purpose of
>scientific inquiry as efforts not to prove that such arguments are right,
>but rather to systematically demonstrate weaknesses and limitations in
>claims to the contrary. Based on that presumption of the purpose of science,
>I think it would be easy enough to show that such contributions are made by
>anthropologists all the time. As to the fact that the objects and conditions
>of analysis that anthropologists choose to study are often not replicable
>and may not lend themselves easily to the statistical measurement of
>regularities and explained variance, this does not disqualify anthropology
>as "science," unless we are prepared to say the same about the work of many
>astronomers, geologists and other natural scientists.
>
>
>Andrew Calabrese
>School of Journalism and Mass Communication
>University of Colorado
>http://spot.colorado.edu/~calabres/