In a recent post I suggested that those promoting traditional forms of knowledge should not seek to claim scientific legitimacy, but instead should generally educate people better about the basis of scientific knowledge, thus displacing the exalted status we give to Science (with a capital “S”). These ideas are approached from a very different angle in an intriguing post by labor activist and prolific blogger Nathan Newman, who in a recent post about the Scopes trial points out that the actual history and context of the trial was somewhat different than the theatrical version we get from Inherit the Wind.
It turns out that, although populist presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan conflated the two and brought religion into the equation as well, much of his anger was actually directed at eugenics, not evolution:
The book that Scopes used was A Civic Biology Presented in Problems, by George William Hunter. The book, published in 1914, had been used in Tennessee for some years. The book presents standard biological facts about cells, muscles, respiration and such topics; but it also teaches eugenics.
The title Civic Biology is similar to one of the phrases used to refer to eugenics, “social biology.” In a front page of the book, facing the title page, there is a mild but clear piece of propaganda. There are two photographs, a city street and a country lane. The caption: “Compare the unfavorable artificial environment of a crowded city with the more favorable environment of the country.”
Chapter 14 includes the material on evolution, with protozoa, worms, insects, reptiles, birds and mammals. Man is grouped with the apelike mammals. Hunter writes that “there is an immense mental gap between monkey and man” [emphasis added]. He adds that monkeys “seem to have many of the mental attributes of man,” and this “justifies his inclusion with man in a separate mental genus.” Hunter states that “early man must have been little better than one of the lower animals.” The chapter concludes with a claim of white supremacy.
Later in the book, in chapter 17, Hunter returns to the subject of eugenics. “If the stock of domesticated animals can be improved upon, it is not unfair to ask if the health and vigor of the future generations of men and women on the earth might not be improved by applying to them the laws of selection.”
In marriage, Hunter says, there are some things that “the individual as well as the race should demand.” To have children with tuberculosis, syphilis, epilepsy or feeble-mindedness is “not only unfair but criminal.”
He reviews the Jukes and Kallikaks stories, the family trees that were supposed to show the need for eugenics (see chapter 3), and says that there are hundreds of families like them. He calls them “true parasites,” and says, “If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading.”
The book would not be acceptable in any school system in the United States today, because of the things that it says about the poor, blacks, and people with disabilities.
(Emphasis added.)
This is one of the big problems with (big-S) Science. While small-s science is essential to helping us disprove theories like eugenics, the fact is that often what states, institutions, and corporations are defending is not a set of practices for determining the truth of the material world, but rather a set of beliefs through which they seek to legitimate the status quo. In fact, much of what is being done in the name of Science is not scientific at all.
Dina Mehta has an interesting post about the rural vs. urban divide in contemporary India, and how that is represented in popular culture. I think that, as anthropologists, we need to be very careful about orientalizing religious conservatism in America as simply backward and ignorant. Yes, it is being manipulated by cynical politicians, but at the same time, there are often genuine populist concerns which lead people to support such politics. It isn’t enough to simply defend Science, or even science, we need to also better understand these concerns.
I find it interesting that many of the same people who insist we need to understand the motivations of the 9/11 bombers are completely uninterested in understanding the motivations of America’s religious conservatives. It is true that we need to be aware of cynical attempts to label Darwin as racist. Yet, on the other hand, we can’t stop America from turning into a theocracy simply by telling a sizable portion of the country that they are ignorant.
I guess I’m arguing that what we need is a good anthropological account of American religious conservatism. Anyone have any suggestions for a reading list?
Essential reading for understanding the historical roots of modern fundamentalism, including the historical context surrounding the Scopes trial and Bryan’s campaigns, would have to include George Marsden’s Fundamentalism and American Culture.
“.. many of the same people who insist we need to understand the motivations of the 9/11 bombers are completely uninterested in understanding the motivations of America’s religious conservatives.”
That is a phenomenon I ve observed, too.
It`s moreover hard to get a talk going on the US and on US-Americans within germanspeaking space (n`importe – offline and online) that does not immediately get drowned in commonplaces, stereotyping and discourses that you d imagine to be articulated like a hundred or fifty years earlier but not now.
I would like to better understand what you mean by small s science–if it is not just meant as “practice” in contrast to, say, “idealization” or “image” or “representation”, as which I understand big s science in your terms.
“Anyone have any suggestions for a reading list?”
As opener I`d suggest Christine Bolt and A. Robert Lee,
New England in the Nation in: Malcolm Bradbury and Howard Temperly (eds.), Introduction to American Studies [London 1998].
Thanks for the suggested readings, keep ’em coming!
Orange, regarding S/science. I’d say that small-s science represents the ideal, while it is the practices of big-S Science that most people object to. However, they are empirically very mixed up. For instance, it is the ideal of disinterested science which legitimates the practices of pharm and GM corporations, no matter how vested their interests might be. Similarly, many scientists will sign up for military contracts for projects they don’t believe in (Star Wars) in the interest of doing “pure science”, and so on.
Moreover, it isn’t simply a contrast between ideals and practice. There are contrasts at the level of practice: for instance, F/OSS is seen as contitutive of science, while Science depends on patents and copyright. Just as there may be differences in values between those of techncial control and those of abstract knowledge.
For actual fundamentalists: Ammerman, Nancy Tatom. 1987. Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
For evangelical (not fundamentalist) religious conservatives: Smith, Christian. 2000. Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want. Berkeley: University of California Press.
May I suggest a careful reading of the Old and New Testaments? — along with a heavy dose of _Asimov’s Guide to the Bible_. I have to deal with fundamentalist Protestants frequently at work and socially, and I’ve found that most of their beliefs are based on a very selective reading of the Bible. It’s always good to go armed with a verse or two from the Bible that will refute what they’re saying. In most cases it doesn’t change their beliefs, but I’ve noticed that I can occasionally force a believer to scurry back to look up the passage I quoted. Anything to raise the seeds of doubt and uncertainty.
I can imagine that some of you are shuddering at the thought talking to fundamentalists. Well, you will ultimately lose uless you can engage these people in a dialog –- a dialog where you argue with them in the context of their beliefs — instead of framing the argument in terms of science and rationalism. I seriously believe that a religious theocracy could come to power in the United States. Whether it’s in the classroom, the boardroom, your places of worship, or your school board meetings, you must not remain silent. For, by remaining silent, they will win — and you will ultimately lose your academic and intellectual freedom.
–Beo
“.. the fact is that often what states, institutions, and corporations are defending is not a set of practices for determining the truth of the material world, but rather a set of beliefs through which they seek to legitimate the status quo.”
It might be useful to draw a line between the reception of the S/science(s) and things themselves. [Now of course a question is, whether you can talk of “things themselves” aka scientific knowledge independantly of reception resp. reproduction at all–and if not, why not.]
“..it is the ideal of disinterested science which legitimates the practices of pharm..”
Is it? What about the idea of “progress”? Ain`t this THE idealized interest of our times still?
“.. small-s science represents the ideal, while it is the practices of big-S Science that most people object to.”
I m still not sure if I got your point. Whose ideal is represented by small s science–yours? [Not questioning you, just thinking loud in the aim to figure this out properly.]
“F/OSS is seen as contitutive of science, while Science depends on patents and copyright.”
aha. ok. This helps me getting at least your direction of thinking towards structural and ideological differences. Thx for your explanation so far.
Concerning the other subtopic,
I dont consider useful for someone who enters the field of us american religious conservativeness to start with reading on fundamentalism, as fundamentalism does not just “plop” and “is there”, but grows and is gardened, figuratively spoken.
[Just as you won`t get much insight into structure and mechanisms of antisemitism, if reducing focus on it`s climax in 1933-1945 german history. You need to get into the history of not only the concept of Antisemitism, but into the rise of Semitism, that brings you straight into the history of Science in 18th century–namely the one of Linguistics in the first place and Anthropology in the second.]
Returning to your reading list.. when I prepared my presentation on Manifest Destiny last year (translation to come this winter), I came along
Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood (eds.), Imagined Histories. American historians interpret the past [Princeton 1998], wherein not only the introduction is very readingworth, but also Daniel T. Rogers` reflection of US- American exceptionalism.
A good book on fundamentalism within the Religious Studies discipline is Martin Marty & R. Scott Appleby, eds. Fundamentalisms Observed, and there is a whole U Chicago Press series of books: The Fundamentalism Project of which this title is the first volume. I ran across an online article by William Beeman, an Anthropologist at Brown, that might be of interest, particularly the bibliography: Fundamentalism and Religious Revival; also the bibliography here may be of interest: Religious Movements Homepage: Fundamentalism.
“I dont consider useful for someone who enters the field of us american religious conservativeness to start with reading on fundamentalism..”
Well, why not?
Because not all religious conservatives are fundamentalists, simply.
[I`m an atheist, btw. ;)]
No, no no. PZ Myers proved that religious people are idiots who believe in nonsense. Only the Kleimanite school of thought, a minority school, holds to the view that religious people are neither ignorant nor stupid. If you keep bringing up things like Herbert Spencer and eugenics, how is Science ever going to cope? These intra-science divisions are weakening secular control over education, and will lead to the rise of the Christofascist state. Please stop having rational arguments.
The assault on evolution by fundamentalists is highly confusing to secularists because they have been so conditioned to the idea of Darwinian natural selection that they are blindsided by the challengers. Science needs to put its own house in order on evolution before getting into sociological analysis mode with the Bible Belt. Darwin’s theory had a terrible influence on a whole generation of people, something Bryan understood very well, but which scientists seem unable to acknowledge or deal with. The emergence of positivism left modern science without the ability to construct a general cultural world view, and the attempt to remember this in the Age of Big Science is an uphill struggle.
Darwiniana
Surprised nobody’s mentioned the U of Chicago’s excellent Comparative Christianities Workshop or the work of some of its participants like Tanya Luhrman or Omri Elisha (who’s involved in this remarkable project at NYU:
http://www.therevealer.org
Most prominently, UCSD’s Joel Robbins has made a compelling pitch for the (global, not just US) anthropology of christianity here. Cf The Anthropology of Christianity, edited by Fenella Cannell, Duke University Press, in press (from a special issue of Religion, 2003).
Here are Robbins’ recent things on the subject:
2004 “The Globalization of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 33:117-143.
2003 “What is a Christian: Notes Toward an Anthropology of Christianity.” Religion 33(3): 191-199.
2003 “On the Paradoxes of Global Pentecostalism and the Perils of Continuity Thinking.” Religion 33(3): 221-231.
I can testify that the “subjects” are pretty interested, and often sympathetic: my own talk in the Comparative Christianities workshop, on the linguistic ideology of Mel Gibson’s Passion, was enthusiastically received by the movie’s theological consultant and language expert, Father William Fulco, S.J.