The Anthropologist and the was s/he writes

[Ajtz'ihb]

I have a question for those of you in cultural anthro and related fields.

 

Why is it that writing in the social sciences--especially those that skew towards the humanities--so often uses definite articles with singular nouns or nouns derived from adjectives? As in "the anthropological," "the hipster," etc.

 

My instinct is to assume that this is an artifact of translation from French, which like the other Romance languages loves to use definite articles, that was then picked up by scholars working from those translations. This style of writing certainly seems to be most prevalent in circles that draw heavily from mid-20th Century Continental philosophy (like Foucault and friends).

 

The only other idea I've come up with is that this is a way of illustrating monolithic abstract concepts, that it's somehow a shorthand criticism for the way we essentialize things that are inherently plural by subsuming them in abstract, normative categories. Although that seems a tad too deliberate for something most people seem to default into.

 

Anybody have some insight on this one?

[smg]

In Post-Kantian Continental thought the thing-in-itself is not knowable, we are always limited by our historically situated human perspective.  Thus, the focus on "illustrating monolithic concepts" and "abstract, normative categories" which dominate our vision, worldview, whatever.  The "inherently plural" world is inherently inaccessible in some ways it's objects are never fully graspable. Nonetheless, "the hipster" as some kind of useful abstraction is fucking stupid.   Is archaeology so absorbed by the hard sciences that it doesn't engage with social theory? I often forget how different archaeology and physical anthropology can be from cultural/social anthro. 

[jujubea]

I edit the "the"'s out of all of the my clients' writing because the it annoys the poop out of the me! 

 

People use unnecessary "the"'s all the time. Also unnecessary "that"'s. 

 

 Just to be a stinker (really, this is in jest): 

 

"Why is it that writing in the social sciences--especially those that skew towards the humanities--so often uses definite articles with singular nouns or nouns derived from adjectives? As in "the anthropological," "the hipster," etc.

My instinct is to assume that this is an artifact of translation from French, which like the other Romance languages loves to use definite articles, that was then picked up by scholars working from those translations."

[Ajtz'ihb]

 Is archaeology so absorbed by the hard sciences that it doesn't engage with social theory? I often forget how different archaeology and physical anthropology can be from cultural/social anthro. 

 

No. We engage with existing social theory and generate our own, which is generally ignored by non-archaeologists. I find this particularly ironic given how popular "materiality," material culture, and object-oriented ontologies have become, given that archaeologists have been wrestling with those concepts in sophisticated ways for a long time. 

 

Given the nature of the material we study and the questions we (tend to) ask, archaeologists often engage with different social theorists than do cultural anthropologists. And much like cultural anthropology, there are different branches of archaeology that either love or hate certain theorists. Some people still cite Leslie White and Julian Steward admiringly, others love Heidegger and Kant. Bourdieu and Giddens are very popular--if not always read as carefully as they should be--because practice and structuration are useful for thinking about how societies change over the long term. 

 

That said, archaeology does tend more towards empiricism than cultural anthropology does. Or rather, the archaeologist tends more toward the empirical than does the cultural anthropologist...

[jujubea]

 

 

That said, archaeology does tend more towards empiricism than cultural anthropology does. Or rather, the archaeologist tends more toward the empirical than does the cultural anthropologist...

 

Now you've got it!

[Ajtz'ihb]

BTW I just noticed I have a typo in the title. That's embarrassing. 

[jmu]

No. We engage with existing social theory and generate our own, which is generally ignored by non-archaeologists. I find this particularly ironic given how popular "materiality," material culture, and object-oriented ontologies have become, given that archaeologists have been wrestling with those concepts in sophisticated ways for a long time. 

 

Given the nature of the material we study and the questions we (tend to) ask, archaeologists often engage with different social theorists than do cultural anthropologists. And much like cultural anthropology, there are different branches of archaeology that either love or hate certain theorists. Some people still cite Leslie White and Julian Steward admiringly, others love Heidegger and Kant. Bourdieu and Giddens are very popular--if not always read as carefully as they should be--because practice and structuration are useful for thinking about how societies change over the long term. 

 

That said, archaeology does tend more towards empiricism than cultural anthropology does. Or rather, the archaeologist tends more toward the empirical than does the cultural anthropologist...

 

A lot of people interested in "new" materialities read archaeological theory, it just doesn't get cited as often because there isn't as much of it published in standalone form (like Hodder's Entangled.) Truthfully though everyone gets caught up in their own literature and misses out on a lot of work that has already directly addressed their interests. For example, "anthropologists of space" who don't read any geography.

[Ajtz'ihb]

Truthfully though everyone gets caught up in their own literature and misses out on a lot of work that has already directly addressed their interests. For example, "anthropologists of space" who don't read any geography.

 

True that.