People snicker when you say you are going for a BA instead of a BS at university; they assume that you will either try to become a professor at some academic insitution (of which very few jobs actually exist), or will live with your parents until you are in your 30s because you can't get a "real job," and that your entire scholastic endeavour was a monumental waste of time and money. Little do these people know that the social sciences are training people to analyze people, social structures, all things that we take as innate aspects of functioning in a human world.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, the social science trifecta consists of psychology (the study of the individual), sociology (the study of societal systems and structures, eg the education system), and my personal favorite anthropology (the study of people past, present, and future). In the US, only psychology has achieved a mild level of mainstream acceptance, primarily due to the national superiority complex and obsession with the individual. Sociology and anthopology have been largely ignored because of our cultural aversion to the idea that something other than our own agency affects our decision making processes. Some people argue that geography, economics and philosophy are also social sciences, but would argue that they fit under the aforementioned three.
As I was trained in anthropology, I will really only focus on it as that is where my experience lies. Most people really have no idea what an anthropologist does; some poor ignorant fools even think they study dinosaurs... It is the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities. To get a BA in anth, you receive one of the most interdisciplinary trainings out there - other than someone who triple majors or takes BIS (bachelor's in integerated studies, which is basically two minors with some classes to help you make them coalesce). Economics, agriculture, biology, geology, history, art, physiology and anatomy. Decision making models, natural resource management, political science, medicine, folklore, architecture and design. You name it and it applies to anth because anth studies all things human. Anthropology also instills a sense of scale to time, in that a decision today affects others for generations, as anthropologists study humans in the past and present to gain a perspective on the future.
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| Fasilidas' Bath, circa 17th century, Ethiopia |
What makes people really unconfortable about anthropology is two-fold: Darwin's natural selection, and the implications of the concept of the other. As I've already covered Darwin thoroughly in another post, I will focus on the other, the us vs them that asks the difficult questions about our cultural biases.
The all scary OTHER, also known as orientalism. Briefly, anyone not of your culture is weird and different and wrong and therefore most often considered inferior. This is also known as "the west versus the rest" mentality. As these others are so clearly different from you and your way of thinking, and since you are generally right because your way of thinking has worked so well for your people for a long time, then the others clearly must be wrong. This is a very dangerous concept for many reasons, not the least of which is the rise of "my way or the highway" autocrats. Part of what makes this concept so difficult for people to understand is that it forces us to acknowledge our own culture, something that Americans seem loathed to do. We pride ourselves on our heritage of immigrants and our tenacity, but the reality is that we give new immigrants a cold shoulder unless they are the best and brightest. This battle between us and them has been going on for centuries. It has driven us to wars, to eugenics, to genocides, to colonialism, but also to knowledge exchange, food exchange, learning and growth. The other affects how people react to conflict in that it forces is to behave in a way that maintains our difference but allows us to change as needed.
Lately it has come to my attention that unless you are trained in the social sciences you generally feel that they are worthless, especially in the country. The result of this short-sightedness is the collapse of our civilization. You are probably thinking that I'm exaggerating but alas I am not. Let me explain:
People snicker when you say you are going for a BA instead of a BS at university; they assume that you will either try to become a professor at some academic insitution (of which very few jobs actually exist), or will live with your parents until you are in your 30s because you can't get a "real job," and that your entire scholastic endeavour was a monumental waste of time and money. Little do these people know that the social sciences are training people to analyze people, social structures, all things that we take as innate aspects of functioning in a human world.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, the social science trifecta consists of psychology (the study of the individual), sociology (the study of societal systems and structures, eg the education system), and my personal favorite anthropology (the study of people past, present, and future). In the US, only psychology has achieved a mild level of mainstream acceptance, primarily due to the national superiority complex and obsession with the individual. Sociology and anthopology have been largely ignored due to our cultural aversion to the idea that something other than our own agency affects our decision making processes.
As I was trained in anthropology, I will really only focus on it as that is where my experience lies. Most people really have no idea what an anthropologist does; some poor ignorant fools even think they study dinosaurs... To get a BA in anth, you receive one of the most interdisciplinary trainings out there - other than someone who takes BIS (bachelor's in integerated studies, which is basically two minors with some classes to help you make them coalesce). Economics, agriculture, biology, geology, history, art, physiology and anatomy. Decision making models, natural resource management, political science, medicine, folklore, architecture and design. You name it and it applies to anth because anth studies all things human.
Now, how does lack of recognition for all of this lead to the collapse of our civilization? By refusing the legitimize the social sciences and how they allow us to analyze ourselves and the people from other cultures that we interact with and how we interact with them, we refuse to admit the plethora of learning oppurtunities that surround us - such as from history, from the other, from prehistory. This leads to tunnelvision, which in turn leads to short sighted decisions. Once you've made too many short sighted decisions it becomes too hard to change or adapt with emerging problems. When you fail to adapt, you fail to survive. Simple.
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| Broken heiroglyics from a fallen civilization |
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