Postmodern Social Science (Score 1)

When I was an undergrad, I had the fortune of majoring in the one discipline that has literally been torn apart by postmodernism: cultural anthro. In a nutshell, the field is divided (or at least claims to be) between those who apply "scientific" methods to cultural studies (i.e. cultural materialists and evolutionary psychologists) and "postmodernist" methods (i.e. symbolists, Marxists, critical theorists). Having had to do work on both sides (quite a bit in evolutionary bio., in fact), I agree completely with the author that postmodernism's greatest legacy is keeping everyone on their toes.

Until postmodernist theorists came along in anthro, it was always assumed that any write-up of a cultural activity could be viewed as the objective analysis of the observer. In reality, there's *a lot* that can influence the anthropologist to see (or more often, not see) important parts of an expressed social behavior. The positive consequence was the harder-working anthropologists could take the time to catalog as many perspectives as possible and formulate a sophisticated analysis for application. I had a few professors who contracted with Xerox PARC, and their work in workplace communication was obviously stronger because they had taken the time to try different approaches to seeing where there are snafus between individuals and departments (Quick aside: much of this work can be applied to understanding the communication problems that arise between off-shore firms and domestic customers).

The biggest problem with postmodernism being applied outside lit-crit is when the critics start taking criticism as canon. As Walter points out, a PoMo anthropologist would take the "better" value judgement from adaptationism as proof that it's just a limited opinion. I once sacrificed an A in a class arguing with a T.A. that a poor choice of words by an author shouldn't invalidate an entire body of scientific evidence. The most extreme versions of this attempt to partition "postmodernist knowledge" from "scientific knowledge" led Stanford's anthro department to fall apart a few years ago into two distinct departments that spend most of the time arguing with one another (or, at least, that's how it comes across in journals).

My favorite archaeology professor once said, "The only thing postmodernists proved absolutely is that talking to yourself can get you published." My favorite "postmodernist" anthro professor said essentially the same thing years later. The best postmodernists don't try to prove "science" as irrelevant; they try to prove why other people think it is (after all, somewhere around 75% of Americans think evolution is untenable in the face of creationism). Alas, theorists in this vein are few and far between, and that bodes poorly for both lit-crit and the social sciences.