Thanks, Mark. It was one of the more “illuminating” comments, wasn’t it ? Still, I’m certainly glad he made it since it was a really good illustration of the irrationality inherent in the process (esp. that last paragraph!).

Perhaps your greatest post – though the robotic ideologue in the first comment ( I will guess an Anthro grad student or untenured academic with an affinity for Pilgrim psuedonyms) was icing on the cake.

Honestly, I don’t know. Personally, I loved Musashi’s book. I also like the Iliad, the Mahabharata and Beowulf, have the start of a good sword collection, and learned how to use them when I was 10. I don’t think I suffer from “gun envy” . Then again, I got training on them young (11 if I remember correctly).

One of the things that Musashi does is to place “violence” within a larger, spiritual context – at least, that’s my read on him. I certainly wouldn’t think that one should condemn a culture merely because it practices warfare, although I would condemn cultures that practice warfare “uncaringly” (a poor word, but the best I can come up with right now for what I am trying to get at).

But what do we do with a culture which embraces warfare without ascribing “evilness” to it?

I just finished reading Musashi’s “The Five Rings” and was struck by the fundamental “goodness” he and his culture ascribes to warriors, war and fighting.

Wouldn’t an anthropologist be required to condemn a culture in that case?

Personally, I like J.M.G Van der Dennen’s comment about Anthropologists hating warriors because they get all the girls…. ;^)

I’d certainly agree that academic Anthropology is pre-disposed to that view, at least since the 1960′s or so. My gut guess, and I haven’t done any research on it, is that there is a sub-conscious recognition that the “military” (actually, perceptions of the military) is diametrically opposed to many of the axiomatic assumptions and values of academic Anthropology.

I don’t think that he majority of Anthropologists would believe that the military is inherently “evil”, but I suspect that the military is viewed as being required to commit “evil” and that this has a “polluting” effect (all the stuff about ritual pollution and impurity that Mary Douglas talks about). OTOH, “war” tends to be viewed as “evil”…

The one-group-over-another kind of witchhunt IS the “normal meaning of political hyperbole”–if McFate is a witch it’s because she’s an insider.

Just a couple of points. First, I am a Canadian living in Canada and President Bush is definitely not “my leader” (that’s the Queen). Second, the post itself had nothing to do with whether or not I support either the war in Iraq or Afghanistan; it had to do with a social process – witch hunts – and how that process is playing out right now.

Let me return to your first question about the difference between a “witch” and a “criminal” since it is a really good one and gets to the heart about why witch hunts are so irrational. Most cultures have a split between the “sacred” and the “profane” (cf Durkheim or Mary Douglas). As a general category, “criminals” commit actions that are in the “profane” (or “secular”) realm, while “witches” commit actions that are in the “sacred” realm.

Now, that split can be a bit tricky when you aren’t dealing with a religion, so the easiest way to look at it would be to ask “what does this group hold as their core beliefs” and treat those core beliefs as the sacred realm. Within that set of core beliefs, there are often what Levi-Strauss called “binary oppositions” with one pole defined as “Good” (us) and the other as “Evil” (them).

In Anthropology, one of the “Evil” symbols is that of the “Spy” and, in its original formulation (see the Boas quote), it is opposed to that of a “Scientist” (nowadays frequently a “progressive activist”). If you want to look at another example, think about “Communist” and what that stood for as a symbol back when McCarthy was running his inquisition.

Personally, I don’t think it is “wrong” for Anthropologists to work either for or against the various wars. That is our duty as both citizens of our various countries and as human beings. I do, however, think that it is “wrong” for a small group of people to decide what is and is not “Truth” and then try and impose that definition on the larger population.