A New Report Gets Anthropology Wrong
A major April 2026 report on scholarship in the humanities gets some things right. Its critique of relativism is sound, and its warning about federal overreach is honest. But when it turns to anthropology, it commits the very fallacy it criticizes in others: cherry-picking extreme examples. It ignores three of four subfields, misrepresents a discipline with a century of rigorous science behind it, and mistakes the worst statements from one corner of cultural anthropology for the whole. An anthropologist responds.
As a humanist, I'd basically forgotten these other subfields of anthropology even existed; one you don't mention, but which certainly was once very influential in the humanities (perhaps it is now extinct?), is social anthropology. In any case, the part of anthropology that speaks to/has any relationship with the humanities is basically just the cultural wing at this point, and that it, uniquely among the various sub-disciplines of anthro, is so steeped in the same theoretical stew as the broader humanities is a strong point in favor of this view, I think. It may be right to say that this report gets anthro wrong (I'll need to actually go read it to see), but my sense from your discussion here is that the rest of the field is so separate from the cultural wing that it might make more sense to simply think of them as separate disciplines that only happen to share a disciplinary name due to history.
Thanks Conrad. Your defense In terms of old-time American four-field anthropology is important. Can the current alienation between “the other three” and current cultural anthropology be healed? Specialization and
YES! The rise of post-modernism in cultural anthropology was (and apparently still is is) an unfortunate turn. As an example I sat on a PhD committee many years ago and listened to a student defend an exam essay about the historical roots of cultural anthropology theory. The student clearly didn’t know anything about major theories, how they emerged and morphed over time, and who first formulated them. When challenged by the committee, her response was that she did not have to know anything of that because her reality was the only thing that mattered and the history of theory was unimportant. The student did not pass the exam, as you might guess, and left the department in a huff and transferred to another university’s anthropology department instead.
Interesting, but if she flunked out wouldn’t that suggest anthropology’s professional guardrails are still working? Did her next department let her through?
As a humanist, I'd basically forgotten these other subfields of anthropology even existed; one you don't mention, but which certainly was once very influential in the humanities (perhaps it is now extinct?), is social anthropology. In any case, the part of anthropology that speaks to/has any relationship with the humanities is basically just the cultural wing at this point, and that it, uniquely among the various sub-disciplines of anthro, is so steeped in the same theoretical stew as the broader humanities is a strong point in favor of this view, I think. It may be right to say that this report gets anthro wrong (I'll need to actually go read it to see), but my sense from your discussion here is that the rest of the field is so separate from the cultural wing that it might make more sense to simply think of them as separate disciplines that only happen to share a disciplinary name due to history.
Thanks Conrad. Your defense In terms of old-time American four-field anthropology is important. Can the current alienation between “the other three” and current cultural anthropology be healed? Specialization and
That is a question to be pondered.
Good response to this study and Post-Modernism continues to poison Anthropology.
YES! The rise of post-modernism in cultural anthropology was (and apparently still is is) an unfortunate turn. As an example I sat on a PhD committee many years ago and listened to a student defend an exam essay about the historical roots of cultural anthropology theory. The student clearly didn’t know anything about major theories, how they emerged and morphed over time, and who first formulated them. When challenged by the committee, her response was that she did not have to know anything of that because her reality was the only thing that mattered and the history of theory was unimportant. The student did not pass the exam, as you might guess, and left the department in a huff and transferred to another university’s anthropology department instead.
Interesting, but if she flunked out wouldn’t that suggest anthropology’s professional guardrails are still working? Did her next department let her through?
I wonder if they gave her a degree.
Interesting, but your comment got truncated. I’m eager to see the rest!
good job. thanks! epd