The Great Debate

Hello, sorry fo the short break. I'm going to look at debates this week, starting with an article in 'Social Anthropologist':
What Shapiro and McKinnon are all about, and why kinship still needs anthropologists, by Robert Parkin.

The article summerises a running debate (2005 - present) between McKinnon (a social anthropologist) and Shapiro (an evolutionary psychologist) in to the best way to look at kinship - either biologically or socially. Although Parkin is slightly more sympathetic towards McKinnon's argument - as he admits - overall the article is pretty well balanced. He concludes that anthropologists from both sides have good and bad points and that they need to work better together! McKinnon's argument is basically common to all anthropologists against evolutionists, that it is positivist, reductionist but more specifically, that Shapiro just ignores cultural involvement. Shapiro's retaliation is that such an argument is meaningless and that McKinnon prioritises that west over the rest.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love a good debate but this one really tried my patience. Most of the debate focusses on how the other determines kinship terminology - I know that its important, of course how one classifies kin is integral to ones behaviour but there was just so much of it and for the most part the differences are so small. Shapiro and McKinnon are looking at the same thing, they have the same aims! Yet they have both taken up such unmovable and quite extreme opposing positions. Biology and culture are not mutually exclusive, of course our evolution has played a role in our behaviour, but so does our culture. If these two forgot their differences and worked together, they could accomplish so so much.

*and relax..* God that got me quite worked up actually - its a pet peeve of mine that anthropologists are obsessed with seeing their discipline as being in a crisis, yet if they just took a step back for a second and surveyed anthropology as a whole rather than their own little sub section, they would see that there are so many paths choose from.