The pioneers of cultural anthropology who created “cultural relativism”
People would take anthropology more seriously if it at least aspired to be a science, instead of having explicitly disavowed that aim. From 2010.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chronicle.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;innovations&#x2F;anthropology-association-rejecting-science&#x2F;27936" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chronicle.com&#x2F;blogs&#x2F;innovations&#x2F;anthropology-ass...</a><p>&gt; The weekend before Thanksgiving, at the closing of the annual convention held this year in New Orleans,  the Executive Board of the AAA discussed a new long-range plan that alters the AAA’s mission statement. The new mission statement deletes the idea that anthropology is a science. It also blurs the intellectual boundaries of the discipline and, ironically, inserts a stronger warrant for using anthropology to engage in public advocacy.<p>&gt; The proposal has already prompted a strong dissent by, so far, at least one section of the AAA, i.e. the Society for Anthropological Sciences, which is objecting on several grounds. The Society’s listserve, SASci, reflects the widespread distress.  One prominent anthropologist observed that the proposal makes the “mission exclusively educational rather than [focusing] on the discovery of knowledge.” Another sees the move as the latest attempt of cultural anthropologists “to rid” the profession of archaeologists, biological anthropologists, and perhaps even linguists. Another complains, “Those of us in applied anthropology are hired because of the scientific nature of our work,” a status that the proposed mission statement would undermine. Another anthropologist wonders what  will happen to the flow of federal research funds predicated on anthropology’s contributions to science.