ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, an intense and divisive debate erupted over the claims of anthropologists to produce reliable, scientific accounts of culture. At times in the history of anthropology, inconsistencies in the ethnographic record posed intense controversy, even long before the postmodern wave of discontent. The results of public opinion polling confirm that the identity of an interviewer may influence how people respond to a particular survey question. This "privileging," in turn, is related to a broader claim that "expert" knowledge has had repressive, disempowering consequences for those unable by circumstances or social position to claim it. This is a rather complex critique, but gets to the heart of a central tenet of postmodern philosophy: a profound skepticism and distrust toward all claims to scientific knowledge. Michel Foucault claims that, in practice, those institutions claiming a command of scientific knowledge in turn employ that discourse to justify their control over other members of society.
