Date: Wed, 03 Apr 1996 15:58:25 -0600
Subject:  social theory, science, anthropology


Part of my interest in both science and social science comes from my
peculiar situation in anthropology, in the war zone between between
the two, it seems.  Coming from biology, and applying evolutionary
ecology to human behavior, I think we're taking a sophisticated and
supportable shot at taking tackling certain puzzles, and getting
interesting, insightful results.  We're not even trying to take on
the social totality all at once, I think there is a place for
piecemeal and proud.

This is not at all the all-encompassing study of "culture", the thick
description of ethnography, the study of symbolic meanings for the
PQRs, or "what it's like to be an XYZ", etc.  And I'm often
surrounded by people telling me that I must be totally wrong-headed,
and swallowed up by scienceISM, because I'm _not_ into semiotics [the
study of meaning?] and I'm not psyched up about "consciousness" and
"intentionality" and so on.

So, I'm puzzled about this stuff.  And I'd like to continue to learn
about what the hell they think they are talking about, if, where and
how they have a point, and how to put things together into a larger
picture.

I've been discussing evolutionary ecological anthropology and social
systems theory with Terrence McDonnell who I met on Pen-l for a few
weeks, and he says he'll join us here in about 2 more weeks.  He's
just challenged me to reconcile some point I made with _marxism_, so
I may forward some of that stuff over here some time.  I suspect some
of you may be interested, whether in explaining to me the error of my
ways, fighting against Terry's assertion of the autonomy of ideology,
or just watching for fun.

My kind of anthro explicitly uses things like game theory and
addresses foraging in terms of collective action problems, with free
riders and such, so some people think it is anathema to any social
theory and especially marxism.  I'm not sure how to put it together
with marxism, but I'm sure that it is applicable to non-capitalists,
and I think it is one way to approach a social theory.  To look at
the interactions between the individuals _is_ to examine the ways in
which they may assemble themselves into groups, or not.  

Lisa



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