CFP: Articulating Political Philosophy and Anthropological Theory, Method, and Evidence

Seminar Invitation: Articulating Political Philosophy and Anthropological Theory, Method, and Evidence

Organizers: Grant McCall, Department of Anthropology and Mary Townsend, Department of Philosophy, Tulane University

Dates: December 3rd-4th;10am-12pm, 1-4pm

Location: The seminar will be held at A Studio in the Woods

(13401 Patterson Road, New Orleans, LA, 70131). A Studio in the Woods is an artist retreat and learning center associated with the Tulane/Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research and is located adjacent to the levy of the Mississippi River on the West Bank. Cold lunch and light refreshments will be provided.

Call for Papers: Participants may give oral presentations of up to 20 minutes. If you wish to present a paper, we ask you to submit a 150-word abstract outlining your topic to [email protected] by October 1st. We ask authors to read the rationale appended below in considering the composition of their papers. We also ask that, if you cannot attend both days of the seminar, please indicate which date you wish to attend.

RSVP: If you wish to attend the seminar and do not wish to present a paper, we ask that you RSVP by email to the address above by October 15th.

Background and Rationale

         Understanding how and why human societies organize themselves in such diverse ways has been among our basic intellectual projects as scholars. Today, the fields of philosophy and social science both approach this set of questions in distinct ways. Political philosophers build theories about human social organization through the logical examination of certain sets of claims about the nature of governments, political control, private property, personal freedom, and the like. Social scientists collect empirical data about the operation of human societies and build theories to explain the variation observed between different contexts. Thus, at first glance, it may seem like the two fields are quite different from one another. The field of political philosophy would seem to be based on analytical critique and social science based on empirical observation, with never the twain to meet.

         Yet, the two fields have much more in common than is typically acknowledged. The claims of the field of the modern field of political philosophy had to start somewhere and, indeed, they began in the form of basic empirical observations about the nature of human societies. From the classical philosophers of ancient Greece, like Plato and Aristotle, to the Enlightenment roots of modernity, such as Hobbes and Locke, empirical claims about human societies, past and present, are ubiquitous. Similarly, the various fields of modern social science began as offshoots from Enlightenment-era political philosophy and they continue to carry the same basic sets of theoretical principles with them into the present day, though these predispositions generally go unacknowledged.

         Therefore, there are two great problems for these two disciplines: first, the field of political philosophy suffers because it retains latent empirical claims about the nature of human societies, virtually all of which are far out of step with our current knowledge; second, social science clings to theoretical principles derived from the field political philosophy, which are equally outmoded. In other words, political philosophers seem unwilling to apply the same analytical criticism to their empirical claims as they do to their theory, while social scientists have collected a vast pool of empirical observation but lack the capability (or will) to make use of this information in building better theory.

         This interdisciplinary seminar aims to bring together scholars interested in the fields of political philosophy and the empirical social science in order to bridge this gap. Over the course of two days, invited scholars will present papers intended to articulate theoretical principles, methodological orientations, and empirical data. Through this collaboration, we hope to identify persistent shortcomings and biases in our thinking about the nature of human social organization and to find better ways forward.