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L. Hirschfeld, S. Gelman (1994)
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Science, Erudition and Relevant Connections P ASCAL B OYER ¤ Paulo Sousa makes a strong case for applying the best anthropological models of cultural transmission (epidemiological models) to anthropology itself, to the ways in which anthropologists’ choices of topics and methods have changed. Sousa’s model of how kinship got gradually pushed away from its central position in anthropological inquiry is quite persuasive. Here I only propose a slight modi cation of this general model, in the hope of making some of its predictions more speci c. As Sousa points out, scientists’ general statements about their own eld generally consist of interpretative statements that cannot be taken as a straightforward expression of what they actually do. Also, most scientists and academics are generally unaware of (or unconcerned with) the dynamics of authority transmission that organise their own eld, that is, the set of criteria that people actually use when deciding that a given person is a member of a professional guild or community. Authority transmission is important because it has crucial consequences for how elds evolve. Scienti c or more generally academic and scholarly activity is a highly regulated social activity. Each speci c community (generally
Journal of Cognition and Culture – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2003
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