Abbey, evo-anth is a specific thing in the US. It isn’t just anthropologists looking at evolution. Associated with specific universities (named in the thread!) and its own journals, it is determinist, essentialist, and yes, sexist and heteronormative. Allied with evo psych it slides toward eugenics.
Ok - maybe it’s good to be specific about what we’re critiquing? Like I’m an evolutionary anthropologist with a broad anth background. I read evo-anth as my discipline (and maybe I’m crap at reading threads bc I didnt see the universities / journals mentioned lol)
The universities were mentioned as were key scholars. The journals weren’t and I’m not about to publicize them. When you read articles claiming that where people sit on a bus is a reflection of sexual selection, that’s what we are criticizing.
Or I'll go back to my post that Abbey first responded to. There is a continuing story about men as hunters and explorers with women as baby vessels that is reinforced by evo-psych in particular. That story provided the frame for much of anthropology (yes, even mainstream) for a long time. +
It's getting better now, and burials of, for example, high-ranking women are considered in their own light, not as subordinates to the king. But there are the pockets of male privilege, for example in the Republican party that want to believe and have others believe the Flintstones scenario.
My concern is if we’re too generalised with critique then it’s easy to dismiss the legit concerns about evolutionary work used to justify the worst sexist ideologies used to repress
Not sure how you see a rigorous objection to the combination of evolutionary psychology— which promulgates an inherent gender nature that is always binary— with evo-anth (not all evolutionary thought in Anthro, but the particular determinist approach) as eugenicist as undermining these goals.
Ok so, I think, you’re inferring my read of the original post as “ there is a concerning strength of psych and anth which can support problematic ideology “ Yes this is concerning - but that wasn’t my take away or what bothered me …. (1/2)
My read was evolutionary approaches in any discipline are *necessarily* problematic. Like, for me, it’s just as much of a fallacy to say that the mechanisms by which evolution can influence behaviour/thinking necessary -> the very narrow western ‘traditional’ viewpoint Like why would it?! (2/2)