From his exceptionally prominent and privileged position of patronage and influence at the Institute, Prof. Geertz sought to integrate anthropology with the humanities. This had the dolorous result of turning much of what well-meaning anthropologists do into a lame and confused form of literary scholarship. And worse, he widened the strange gap between the social and natural sciences. (What? Is social behavior not as natural as yogurt?) He abetted this pointless isolation just when, among other accomplishments, there were new results of breaking the DNA codes, new understanding of the inner complexity of the brain, and a decisively rich appreciation of the complex social lives of other animals and our evolutionary ancestors.
[WS:] Amen! However, the same can be said about mathematical economics. In both cases, empirical content is replaced with products of human imagination - fuzzy literary musings in cultural anthropology and assorted ethnic and gender "studies" - and Platonic abstractions in economics.
Both IMHO are worthless from the point of view of empirical science, but the latter is more damaging. The reason is that Platonic abstractions claim to represent the essence of reality and at the same time are more intimidating to most audiences (use of abstract formulas, Greek symbols, incomprehensible technical jargon, etc.) which makes it less prone to criticism. The fuzzy literary musings, OTOH, reject the existence of objective reality and use everyday language (in an obtuse way, but still recognizable,) which makes it more prone to criticism. These different levels in being prone to outside criticism makes also a big difference in the damage that these literary genres or tropes can inflict on critical thinking grounded in empirical analyses - or at least social standing of such thinking. The literary musings are quickly rejected as "politically correct babbling" (and rightly so), while the Platonic abstractions enter, colonize, and subvert the public discourse with little opposition.
Wojtek