Another three weeks of modules are here. This time, I am the student. 😅
Here are the two questions I asked our Professor:
- You mentioned in your book that Social Darwinism or Spencerism as part of the Enlightenment project suffered a decline after the two World Wars. I am curious about the influence of positivism or the empirical approach to science in the formation of Cultural Anthropology. In Kraft's ideas of the environment, he mentioned the "supernatural" contribution. I wonder if Kraft's ideas are not completely free but reliant on the positivist approach, how can we account for the supernatural element since in the first place his premise is based on naturalists' assumptions? And how can cultural anthropologists do fieldwork or ethnography that will include even the supernatural environment?
- The idea of decentralization is popular these days. When I stumbled upon the concept of ethnocentrism and at the same time, thinking of our situation here in the Philippines, in which in my mind, our ethnicity can be described as anything else but ethnocentrism, what concept would you propose to describe the plurality in our ethnicity? Is it valid to describe our situation in something like ethno-decentrism? Just my wild thoughts. Thanks!
!PIZZA
!CTP