29th November 2005, 01:22 AM
[quote]Originally posted by Beer Beast
The editor of the digger is a Marxist/Trotskyite member of the SWP and as such represents a tiny section of the archarchaeological comunity.
But this is not true, lefties are quite a big section of the archaeological community.
I am continually meeting SWP and ex SWP archaeologists. Generally speaking I have found archaeologists to be more left wing than the previous job I worked in for 20 years. They are for example on the whole much less racist and more anti-war than many groups of workers
I believe that if you did a survey of archaeologists you would find, compared to other groups of workers a higher percentage of people who broadly identified themselves as left wing.
I base my views on my contact with archaeologists in the UK, India and Australia.
But I suppose Beer Beast may dismiss Australia, since he might claim it as having been already corrupted having produced a dangerous Marxist like Gordon Childe (and India too may not suit Beer Beast since so many of its best archaeologist and historians are Marxists).
But even more telling, if you looked at such issues as the invasion of Iraq, abortion, global warming, refugees and pensions, you will find the majority of archaeologists (even the people who clam no interest in politics) holding left of centre views.
And it is obvious why. Archaeologists are people who tend to be interested, not just in human history, but also in what lessons might be gained from the past (how humans coped with global warming or cooling perhaps!).
[Perhaps its also to do with geting an education and then living in poverty...revolutionaries and archaeologist both tend to do that
]
But archaeologist tend also to take an interest in the world as it is now and try to find out what is going on.
Trying to scrape away the lies from the truth.
And it is also obvious why Marxist theory continues to be an important influence in archaeology. After all the Historical Materialist approach to human prehistory suggests that changes in the ?mode of production? produce changes in wider society, for example changing from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled farming, produces a less egalitarian and more hierarchical society.
The fact that this obviously does happen (with all the ?agency? you like contained in this generalisation) would surely suggest that Marxist theory is a traditional and valid tool.
A tool and a way of thinking that has become so standard within archaeology that many do not fully recognise its Marxist origins.
So for these reasons if The editor of the digger is indeed a dangerous red then it is obvious he is in fact quite repressentative of many diggers.
Arthus
The editor of the digger is a Marxist/Trotskyite member of the SWP and as such represents a tiny section of the archarchaeological comunity.
But this is not true, lefties are quite a big section of the archaeological community.
I am continually meeting SWP and ex SWP archaeologists. Generally speaking I have found archaeologists to be more left wing than the previous job I worked in for 20 years. They are for example on the whole much less racist and more anti-war than many groups of workers
I believe that if you did a survey of archaeologists you would find, compared to other groups of workers a higher percentage of people who broadly identified themselves as left wing.
I base my views on my contact with archaeologists in the UK, India and Australia.
But I suppose Beer Beast may dismiss Australia, since he might claim it as having been already corrupted having produced a dangerous Marxist like Gordon Childe (and India too may not suit Beer Beast since so many of its best archaeologist and historians are Marxists).
But even more telling, if you looked at such issues as the invasion of Iraq, abortion, global warming, refugees and pensions, you will find the majority of archaeologists (even the people who clam no interest in politics) holding left of centre views.
And it is obvious why. Archaeologists are people who tend to be interested, not just in human history, but also in what lessons might be gained from the past (how humans coped with global warming or cooling perhaps!).
[Perhaps its also to do with geting an education and then living in poverty...revolutionaries and archaeologist both tend to do that
]But archaeologist tend also to take an interest in the world as it is now and try to find out what is going on.
Trying to scrape away the lies from the truth.
And it is also obvious why Marxist theory continues to be an important influence in archaeology. After all the Historical Materialist approach to human prehistory suggests that changes in the ?mode of production? produce changes in wider society, for example changing from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled farming, produces a less egalitarian and more hierarchical society.
The fact that this obviously does happen (with all the ?agency? you like contained in this generalisation) would surely suggest that Marxist theory is a traditional and valid tool.
A tool and a way of thinking that has become so standard within archaeology that many do not fully recognise its Marxist origins.
So for these reasons if The editor of the digger is indeed a dangerous red then it is obvious he is in fact quite repressentative of many diggers.
Arthus