Addition: Savage Minds also has a series of essays examining the situation, cross-published with StinkyJournalism.org.
Is there really an escape-hatch to “Western” thought, I wonder, or is everyone involved best served by a continued discussion of journalistic and anthropologic ethics and epistemology?
Diamond may have had a ‘factual collapse,’ as the lawsuit against him is for libel, but this post has a good overview of the many issues at play:
“Answerability is something that journalists have been struggling with longer than anthropologists and I think what they have to teach Diamond offers lessons we ourselves will have to learn in the future (if we haven’t already): get your facts straight, report them fairly, and let people know that you are doing so. It is not only the right thing to do, but in a world where ‘they read what we right’, your audience is also your informants.”
It’s a small, and perhaps now smaller, world. The author also worries about a potential backlash against anthropology. The comments are worth a read.
See the previous post on this site for links: From The Chronicle Of Higher Education: Jared Diamond’s Lawsuit
