A Note on Nuer Segmentary Organization

Waldorf s comments indicate a misunderstanding of both the intent and content of our paper. Three confusions are serious enough to demand clarification. First, we did not “downgrade” the scientific status of sociobiology nor did we admit creationism into the domain of science. Most researchers of the evolutionary biology of social behavior accept the social, methodological, and philosophical rules that constitute scientific discourse. These rules are brought to bear on the type of speculations discussed in our paper. We were concerned with the use of some aspects of sociobiological theory in a field of discourse located outside of science. A study of the use of sociobiological concepts in popular discourse is not a rejection of the discipline’s scientific status. We believe the scientific community’s judgment on thc validity of sociobiology will be made on scientific grounds, independent of the success of sociobiology in popular discourse. We note, on the other hand, that the rejection of an idea by the scientific community does not automatically extinguish the idea from popular discourse. This is demonstrated by the resilience of the essentialistic concept of race in the Western world. The case of creationism is simpler: creationists do not accept most of the social, methodological, and philosophical rules of scientific discourse and therefore their work is not to be categorized as science. Second, popular sociobiology and creationism are only two of a multitude of ethnosociologies available to Americans. Many uphold the moral values discussed in our paper while others offer different values. We suggested that to become a cultural fashion any ethnosociology must address the cognitive problems inherent in the American secular world view. We further argued this constraint structures ethnosociologies so that they take one out of a limited number of shapes, regardless of their source material (religion, art, science, etc.). Waldorfs discussion of the anti-technology movement is not relevant to our paper, since we did not claim that creationists and popular sociobiologists reject the belief in the “goodness of science.” Most accept this belief but still seek a foundation for it. An investigation of the anti-technology movement along the cognitive lines we suggested and the Durkheimian lines Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) use to explore environmental movements would be rewarding. Finally, Waldorf‘s misunderstanding is especially apparent in the statement that viewing popular sociobiology and creationism as ethnosociologies removes them from the arena of “serious discourse.” Quite the opposite. We do not know Waldorfs criteria for serious discourse, but we believe discourses that suggest a foundation for morality, describe human nature, and define the meaning of existence qualify as serious. lgnoring popular discourses because they are not scientific or because we do not agree with them is anthropologically inexcusable and politically naive.