Two Suns: Cutlural Anthropology, Limitations to Experimental Approaches, Dialogue

In a virtual world today, an academic host-interviewer, whom I admire for making information about virtual worlds public, and whose interviews focus on new developments in virtual worlds, suggested that experimental cultural anthropology should be possible, especially in the context of virtual worlds. He's on the faculty of an Ivy League school, an accountant, and an experimental economist.

Here are some simple reasons why I don't think cultural anthropology will ever become an experimental discipline. There are too many variables in any related studies, and culture is almost impossible to define rigorously.

In a paper I wrote at UC Berkeley some years ago, I addressed some of these questions, and here's the course paper: "Science in Malinowski, Bateson and Sociocultural Anthropology" (2001) scottmacleod.com/anth250x.htm.

Quesitons of context, outside the virtual world, say shaping the various people and groups around the world in hypothetical studies, are nearly impossible to control for, as well. But, in addition, I think it's extraordinarily difficult to separate the money-making intentions and designs of virtual world developers from any kind of 'objective' data, however defined.

When one adds in questions that emerge from our evolutionary biological heritage, more complications emerge, especially about the individuals who are represented by 'avatars.'


The cultural anthropological literature, over about the past 150 years, has, by and large, never explored explored experimental, cultural anthropology, that I know of, especially in any credible manner. This doesn't mean it won't emerge. The Human Relations Area Files, housed at Yale University (http://www.yale.edu/hraf/), could become one remarkable resource for such a process. But it, like much of cultural anthropology, puts an emphasis on on comparative studies. Stanford University's anthropology department split from 1997 - 2007 into science and cultural departments, but not with this question informing the split.

In general, however, theoretical and epistemological questions have not moved toward positivist or reductionist approaches, as have the 'hard' sciences, in the field of cultural anthropology. Questions about power-relations have rightly informed insurmountable obstacles to such approaches, especially over the past 40 years. Nevertheless, cultural anthropology continues to seek dialogue with the 'hard sciences' (see Rabinow and Bennett's "A Diagnostic of Equipmental Platforms" 2007, and Cerwonka and Malkki's "Improvising Theory" 2007).


I'll post some key anthropological texts which have explored more fruitful cultural anthropological approaches over the past half century here.