Current Trends in Cultural Particularism: The Problem Does Seem to Lie With Anthropology

Abstract

Anthropology is too broad a field for the generalizations in the Beller et al. (BBM) paper (2012) to apply across the board. Furthermore, BBM's suggestion that “anthropologists tend to concentrate on one specific group” (p. 348) is easy to dismiss. Thus, the commentary by Barrett et al. (2012) notes both the discipline's rich and productive history of cross-cultural comparisons and the fact that some anthropologists continue to develop and test theories about cognitive universals today. However, the research interests of individual anthropologists do not necessarily reflect disciplinary emphases, and I would argue that North American anthropology, at any rate, is indeed currently focusing on cultural particulars and minimizing, if not rejecting, its traditionally concomitant emphasis on comparative, cross-cultural research. For example, while anthropologists interested in cross-cultural work often participate in small, multidisciplinary organizations such as the Society for Cross-Cultural Research, their work appears to be dramatically underrepresented in annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the discipline's largest and most important organization (particularly for cultural anthropology). Online programs for the 2009 and 2010 meetings list papers for over 550 and 800 multiple paper sessions, respectively. However, the term “cross-cultural” is found in titles or abstracts of only 47 papers in 2009 and 70 in 2010. More recent full programs are not yet available online, but the list of paper titles for 2011 and 2012 suggests the same pattern. Another indication of the trend toward the particular are definitions of anthropology found on the web pages of anthropology departments of the first 100 “Top North American universities 2011–2012” listed by Times Higher Education (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk). This list ranks schools on the basis of “teaching,” “international outlook,” “industry income,” “research,” and “citations,” and so presumably includes the institutions most well known to potential collaborators in other disciplines, as well as most of the best anthropology departments. Seven of the 100 universities listed lack anthropology departments and/or web pages, and 12 others lack a definition of the discipline in their web pages. Of the 81 available definitions, 28 do not relate to the issue (typically, variants of “Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present”), but 53 focus on the exploration of diversity (34), variety (5), or difference(s) (14). Only 16 of these also discuss similarities or its synonyms (unity, commonalities, universals), and none discuss only similarities. Thus, almost half of the departmental website definitions of anthropology describe only diversity as the subject matter for disciplinary exploration. Examples include the following: “Anthropology involves the study of human biological and cultural diversity, across time and space”; “At the heart of anthropology research, theory and practice lies a shared appreciation of and commitment to understanding all aspects of human difference” and “The goal of anthropology is to understand and interpret cultural and biological differences among human societies, both past and present.” Even when the term “comparative” is part of a department's definition of the discipline (21), it is rarely (4) associated with the goal of exploring similarities. Department web page materials, although obviously brief, are typically agreed upon by faculty, and so likely consist of uncontroversial statements about disciplinary pursuits and teaching priorities. And they suggest that anthropology is currently defined as primarily interested in exploring human cultural and biological diversity. It is therefore not surprising that this view is reflected in the BBM paper and some of its commentaries (e.g., Levinson, 2012). But, of course, cultures exhibit some combination of cognitively driven similarities and differences that anthropology has productively explored for a very long time, with theory and methods that are of particular relevance to cognitive science. Cognitive science does need anthropology but, given current trends, it seems unlikely that many anthropologists will be contributing to future research in this field.