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"There's a Chinese curse that says, 'May you live in interesting times,'" says Robin Fox, an evolutionary anthropologist at Rutgers University. "And, unfortunately, I'm afraid that's what's happening now in anthropology." What Fox means is that the field is in turmoil, no longer certain that it can, as it has in the past, straddle both the sciences and the humanities. Some contend that the longstanding schism--which is intensified by economic pressures--has never been as bitter as it is today. "There always was a certain amount of divisiveness," says Clifford R. Barnett, a Stanford University medical anthropologist, "but now it's like Yugoslavia."
Anthropology has always been divided among those who use biological theories to illuminate the behavior of human societies, and those who take a more interpretive and descriptive approach. But the divide has become much more pronounced as biological anthropologists have become deeply involved with the latest tools of molecular biology and theories of evolutionary ecology, while many cultural anthropologists have become caught up in the wave of deconstructionist thinking that has been sweeping the humanities. Resource shortages have intensified the strife--cultural anthropologists, in line with tradition, continue to rule the roost in academia as hiring of new faculty falls off, while those with a biological perspective, faced both with inadequate equipment and colleagues' opprobrium, are escaping into biology departments.
This is not the way it used to be. David Givens of the 15,000-member American Anthropological Association (AAA) explains that U.S. anthropology has always been defined by its "four-field approach," the fields being cultural anthropology, physical/biological anthropology, archeology, and linguistics. Now, some anthropology departments are breaking apart, while others are limiting themselves to two or three fields--the AAA calculates that only 28% of university departments currently have faculty in all four. That's disastrous for the profession, says Givens. "If you split it up ... then you've lost that good, round understanding of what our species is all about." The AAA has grown so concerned that it plans to have a special session on anthropology's continuing fissions at its annual meeting in November.
THE GREAT RIFT. The roots of the divide go back to the 1920s. But the latest manifestation erupted in the late 1970s when some anthropologists began applying W.D. Hamilton and E.O. Wilson's theory...