Anthropology's Science Wars : Insights from a New Survey

Authors

Mark Horowitz, Seton Hall University
William Yaworsky, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Kenneth Kickham, University of Central Oklahoma

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2019

Abstract

In recent decades the field of anthropology has been characterized as sharply divided between proscience and antiscience factions. The aim of this study is to empirically evaluate that characterization. We survey anthropologists in graduate programs in the United States regarding their views of science and advocacy, moral and epistemic relativism, and the merits of evolutionary biological explanations. We examine anthropologists’ views in concert with their varying appraisals of major controversies in the discipline (Chagnon/Tierney, Mead/Freeman, and Menchú/Stoll). We find that disciplinary specialization and especially gender and political orientation are significant predictors of anthropologists’ views. We interpret our findings through the lens of an intuitionist social psychology that helps explain the dynamics of such controversies as well as ongoing ideological divisions in the field.

Comments

© 2019 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Original published version available at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/705409.

Recommended Citation

Horowitz, M., Yaworsky, W., & Kickham, K. (2019). Anthropology’s Science Wars: Insights from a New Survey. Current Anthropology, 60(5), 674–698. https://doi.org/10.1086/705409

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

First Page

674

Last Page

698

Publication Title

Current Anthropology

DOI

10.1086/705409