Ginzburg knows what he's talking about and I think you're right that Tiger doesn't. I hope you write more on this later... Dennis Claxton
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As Justin pointed out off-list, he didn't write:
``...you would thing from reading it that Geertz invented the division between cultural and physical(?) anthropology...''
I had to translate the distinction in a hurry at work, before my supervisior walked by my work stall. Here is what Justin wrote:
``..Tiger's review is oddly blinkered, though, because you'd think from reading it that Geertz invented the division between the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften, whereas in fact, as my Germanisms indicate, this goes way back to at least the 19th century and arguably to Vico and Herder in the 18th...''
Justin writes off-list:
``...The Geisteswissenschaften are the "sciences of the spirit," roughly the social or human sciences (including history), the Naturwissenschaften are the sciences of nature, roughly the physical sciences..''
But none of this addresses the probability that Lionel Tiger is likely an idiot. Anybody who writes on the decline of the status of the US male is not serious.
There are much bigger fish to fry in this apparently silly obiturary. Here is a link to a course that covers some of this terrain:
http://www.pitt.edu/~hpsdept/courses/course_guides/soc-sci.html
CG