(December 12, 2021 at 4:55 am)Oldandeasilyconfused Wrote: Anthropologists do not usually pass judgement. Their task is to learn the meanings within a culture. They are as objective as they can be in the circumstances.
Yes, I think this is a hard-won battle. The myth of progress and the natural tendency for people to assume that their way is the best way are not easy to overcome.
There's a splendid new book by the late David Graeber called The Dawn of Everything, that addresses several of the prejudices still remaining (allegedly) in anthropology. It's a wonderfully optimistic book in that many of the things we are told are inevitable about our unequal society turn out to be not as necessary as maybe we thought.
As always, the tendency for questions of epistemology, metaphysics, etc. etc. to turn into ideological issues is constant. You don't have to be a Foucault fan to see that accusations of irrationality often have to do with who runs things.
