Enjoying this thread, and just a note as someone who keeps an eye on  
the anthropological debates on method.

I have no real interest in the question of Mead's rightness or  
wrongness, except to say that her work has a very poor reception  
among Samoan scholars, who surely must be credited with some insight  
into their own life and culture. I am a little annoyed at how Ken's  
reframing of the discussion in terms of the Mead/Freeman debate  
continues to elide the work done by Pacific scholars who have for the  
last 15 years or so been putting forward substantial critiques of  
Mead's work and legacy to not so much critique her, but the colonial  
impulses built into anthropology *as a discipline*. Linda Tuhiwai  
Smith's "Decolonizing Methodologies" and Haunani Kay-Trask's "Natives  
and Anthropologists: The Colonial Struggle" being only two of the  
most well known. Although Norm did not mention this explicitly, I get  
the feeling this is the version of the critique of Mead that he is  
referencing, which has little to do with Freeman.

This debate is important for designers because positivist versions of  
ethnographic methods continue to be imported into the design  
discipline with very little critical assessment of the contemporary  
debates in the disciplines that hatched those methods (though Barab  
et. al. is an excellent exception which proves the rule):
Barab, Sasha, Michael K. Thomas, Tyler Dodge, Kurt Squire, and  
Markeda Newell (2004) Critical design ethnography: Designing for  
change. Anthropology & Education Quarterly 35(2), 254-268.

This is not to say that anthropology has nothing to offer design, but  
to say a shallow, functionalist reading of ethnographic methods will  
not serve designers well if it instrumentalises "subjects" (as Keith  
implies) and glosses over the political implications of extracting  
knowledge from one community (e.g. "market") to circulate it in  
another (e.g. "firm").

Another issue is that in anthro the period of fieldwork is long-term  
in a way that few designers really undertake. All in all, as Dori's  
initial post suggested, there is still a lot of work to be done in  
investigating the correspondences across the disciplines in their  
discrete trajectories before too much can be fruitfully said about  
their contemporary overlapping or not.

Warm regards,

Danny

--
http://www.dannybutt.net


On 25/07/2007, at 12:36 AM, Keith Russell wrote:

> Dear Ken
>
> There seem to be two kinds of cautionary tale being told in this  
> debate.
>
> The first is the very attractive hoax story which warns all of us  
> about
> being taken in my our own serious engagements. Sartre's take on  
> this is
> simple - to treat anything seriously you must collapse the
> subject-object distinction or else irony will be your undoing. And, if
> you do collapse the subject/object distinction, then you are a serious
> and silly soul. Both Mead and Derek Freeman are open to self-hoaxing
> whether any third parties assisted by taking the position of  
> objects of
> study and/or subjects of study. All reports of reality are  
> transcendent
> in that they exceed that which they report and at the same time  
> they are
> reductionist in that they fail to match that which they report.
>
> The second cautionary tale is the general academic one that keeps us
> aware that facts do not equate directly with integrity, honesty or
> sincerity. Like a stopped clock is dead accurate twice a day, so  
> amongst
> the fabrications, falsification and straight out lies of a fool, there
> might be elements of truth that are superior in their clarity to the
> efforts of a seemingly wise truth telling authority. Mead might indeed
> be right about more than she is wrong about and she may be right about
> most of what Freeman claims she is wrong about. We all have to  
> approach
> the literature with open minds if we are to take any benefit from what
> has been placed before us by history.
>
> Sure, the academic approaches that aim to address these issues are  
> there
> for anyone who wishes to become an expert in any particular field.  
> And,
> sure, we all need to apply due diligence when approaching these  
> matters.
> But, until we have found ourselves making these errors, we really take
> small benefit from the second cautionary tale. As professionals and
> masters of our trade we may even become expert in such errors. But,  
> the
> rest of the world doesn't really care.
>
> The hoax tale is altogether different. We all can take a primary and
> immediate benefit from this tale because it goes to the heart of our
> everyday epistemological uncertainty. We are hesitant, by second  
> nature,
> because we did, at some time, believe in, the reality of some such
> fictional character as Santa Claus.
>
> cheers
>
> keith russell
> OZ newcastle