radical anthropology - what is it?

[butchersapron]

No it's not. I expect idris, who is a proper anthropologist, will do his - by now - customary destruction of it later.

 

[TruXta]

Does it need destroying? It's transparently nuts.

 

[toblerone3]

They probably explain it better than I do

http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/old/pub_wikipedia_entry.pdf

There's quite a lot of other information on their website

http://www.radicalanthropologygroup.org/new/RAG.html

 

[butchersapron]

Does it need destroying? It's transparently nuts.

Yes, destroy the nuts.

 

[TruXta]

I'll leave it to the expert(s).

 

[butchersapron]

Rarely the right option

 

[invisibleplanet]

Is this a well-regarded theory in anthro then? Sounds fucking loony bin to me.

No, it isn't a well-regarded theory in anth/arch. His theories are generally unregarded.
Although it's highly likely that CK managed to persuade some of those who were wowed by his theory to join him & his inner circle for to test the theory with re-enactment orgy-praxis.

 

[toblerone3]

Does it need destroying? It's transparently nuts.

Which bit of it do you disagree with?

 

[butchersapron]

No, it isn't a well-regarded theory in anth/arch. His theories are generally unregarded.
Although it's highly likely that CK managed to persuade some of those who were wowed by his theory to join him & his inner circle for to test the theory with re-enactment orgy-praxis.

Highly likely eh? Highly likely.

 

[TruXta]

Rarely the right option

I'm lazy today.

No, it isn't a well-regarded theory in anth/arch. His theories are generally unregarded.
Although it's highly likely that CK managed to persuade some of those who were wowed by his theory to join him & his inner circle for to test the theory with re-enactment orgy-praxis.

That sounds like just the ticket. Damned horny anthropologists, always on about shagging.

Is there a Reichian inspiration behind this then?

 

[invisibleplanet]

Which bit of it do you disagree with?

All of it.

 

[TruXta]

Which bit of it do you disagree with?

The bit where they purport to "test" the theory using highly subjective data on rock art is one. The very idea that you can "prove" that a sex-strike kickstarted symbolic culture is another.

 

[toblerone3]

No, it isn't a well-regarded theory in anth/arch. His theories are generally unregarded.

To be fair there are some fairly impressive and heavyweight academic names coming out in support of his theory.

http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/category/reviews/

 

[invisibleplanet]

To be fair there are some fairly impressive and heavyweight academic names coming out in support of his theory.

Such as?

 

[toblerone3]

Such as?

Chris Stringer for one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Stringer

 

[invisibleplanet]

It's a review. I wouldn't claim that this review equates to Stringer 'coming out in support' of Knight's theory and I'm not sure why you are. Unless you have something more concrete than this review which Stringer wrote?

Can you explain how/why Stringer's review equates to support for Knight's theory? I began laughing inwardly when I read 'far-fetched' and burst out laughing when I got to the 'grand theory' part

 

[butchersapron]

Have you read Knight's book IP? (I haven't)

 

[invisibleplanet]

Have you read Knight's book IP? (I haven't)

Yes.

 

[toblerone3]

It's a review. I wouldn't claim that this review equates to Stringer 'coming out in support' of Knight's theory and I'm not sure why you are. Unless you have something more concrete than this review which Stringer wrote?

Can you explain how/why Stringer's review equates to support for Knight's theory? I began laughing inwardly when I read 'far-fetched' and burst out laughing when I got to the 'grand theory' part

He's spoken several times at the Radical Anthropology Group meetings.

 

[butchersapron]

Yes.

You're ideally placed to offer bit of Non Black and white. Non Left and Right. Non On and Off. Non Worldview saturated by dualism - reduction to basic symbolic oppositions type substantive criticism then. Aren't you? Going to?

 

[invisibleplanet]

He's spoken several times at the Radical Anthropology Group meetings.

He's spoken more than several times at various universities and arch/anth groups across the country.
I'll ask you again: How does Stringer's review equate to support for Knight's grand theory?

 

[invisibleplanet]

You're ideally placed to offer bit of Non Black and white. Non Left and Right. Non On and Off. Non Worldview saturated by dualism - reduction to basic symbolic oppositions type substantive criticism then. Aren't you?

True

Going to?

Maybe after I've finished transplanting out the Romaine lettuce, darling. I'm not promising anything right now, as it's my day off.

 

[Idris2002]

Or they're massive imperial racists. Swings and roundabouts.

Not always. We had Kathleen Gough, who was a Stalinist.

My supervisor once said to me (this is an exact quote), 'I say, isn't it capital what's going on in Zimbabwe. The expropriation of the expropriaters!'

 

[Idris2002]

They don't call me Franz for nothing.

butchersapron, yesterday:

 

[Idris2002]

OK, regarding Chris Knight's theory of human origins. I read the book Blood Relations about 15 years ago, and I wanted it to be true. . . but while I wouldn't go as far as to say, along with Truxta, that it is 'transparently nuts', I do think that it's just another 'just so' story.

For example, a vital part of his argument is the alleged ability of the female of the human species to synchronise their menstrual cycles (hey, what can I tell you, women are a mystery). This is supposed evidence, built into the warp and woof of human biology itself, that the earliest human society was communist. This synchronisation of menstruation is putative evidence of early sexual trade unionism, in which women collectively denied sexual relations to alpha males, revolutionising the social life of our earliest ancestors.

The thing is though, that there's no real hard evidence for menstrual synchrony.

Many people have heard the curious claim that women who live together menstruate together.

The idea dates at least to 1971, when Dr. Martha K. McClintock, an experimental psychologist, published a study showing that the menstrual cycles of women living in a college dormitory tended to synchronize over time. Dr. McClintock and other scientists suggested it might have something to do with pheromones, chemicals that send messages by smell.

Over the years, studies have added weight to the findings, suggesting that it occurs in other animals, and proposed various evolutionary reasons for it. But there is considerable debate over whether the phenomenon really exists, and many studies have produced findings suggesting it does not.

Some scientists argue, for example, that synchrony cannot be possible because women often have cycles of different lengths. Other scientists who looked closer argued that many studies of the phenomenon — including the original one — suffered from statistical and methodological flaws.

A study published last year in the journal Human Nature looked at 186 women living in dorms for a full year and found no evidence for synchrony. The authors also reviewed the original 1971 study and argued that its findings were due to chance.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The jury is still out on menstrual synchrony.

I'm afraid that Dr. Knight must have lost the run of himself. He does tend to divide opinion among those of us in the trade. I've seen people denounce him as 'evil' which I thought was going a bit far, even by the standards of debate among anthros.

 

[Idris2002]

Have you ever seen an anthropologist?

I jest of course.

There's always been an implicit radical streak in anthropology (Radcliffe-Brown was a self-styled anarchist, after all) but most anthropologists default to a vague liberal-left consensus - often very vague.

Or they're massive imperial racists. Swings and roundabouts.

'A little from column A, a little from column B'.

 

[TruXta]

I stand by my earlier judgment that it is in fact nuts. It's not an evil theory, quite the opposite, but it's blatantly wishful thinking.

 

[Idris2002]

To be fair there are some fairly impressive and heavyweight academic names coming out in support of his theory.

http://www.chrisknight.co.uk/category/reviews/

Were you dropped on your head as a child?

 

[Idris2002]

In Soviet Russia, menstrual cycles synchronise YOU!

 

[invisibleplanet]

Yes! We're all Dividual!