I’m going to add a #3: it’s conspicuous consumption by a socioeconomc group that can least afford it, which generally has far less disposable income than the average American individual or household.
I see the same kind of criticism towards other economically strugling groups that seem to have misplaced financial priorities; e.g unemployed Occupiers with MacBooks and the like. Nobody gently affirms the poor rural whites who have expensive weapon arsenals that can hold back an Army division, douchebags and their $125 Affliction and Ed Hardy t-shirts, or basement-dwelling nerds with thousands of dollars in World of Warcraft figurines with the “it’s part of their culture!” excuse.
Really, there’s a big difference between a middle-class professional woman spending $250 on a pair of Fluevogs, a middle-class tradesman spending $250 on a pair of Red Wing 964s, and a struggling inner city resident spending $280 on a pair of Air Jordans that they will seldom, if ever wear. There’s a big difference between a middle-class professional woman spending $250 on an Ann Taylor business suit that will remain in style for many years, a middle-class tradesman spending $100 on a Carhartt jacket that will last them many decades, and a struggling inner city resident spending $900 on a Pelle Pelle flight jacket that will be out of style in a year. Troop and Avirex jackets, anyone?
The ex adored DSW, although it’s not necessarily high-end.
For dressier shoes, I like old-guard men’s stores like this. Otherwise, workwear stores, where you can get sturdy made-in-the-USA boots, and decently priced name brand hiking shoes and boots.
This is silly. I’ve never seen an Aldo around here, but then I avoid the mall like a plague. Plus, the poster alluded to endive, something not often seen in shoe stores.
For the range of shoes you describe, I shop at Carson’s. YMMV.
So ::shrug:: nobody said culture always has to be awesome. We could draw up an endless list of ways in which culture also sucks. Anthropology aims to be a science and, as such, aims to obtain a putative pure or applied knowledge of what it studies. As a putative science, it aims at knowledge in itself, not knowledge in the application of a value judgment.
This is not at all to imply that anthropology says that value judgments are no good. It’s rather that value judgments are outside a scientific field that aims at pure knowledge, or that the only value it’s set up for is knowledge. There have been a great many intellectual critiques of a science whose only value is knowledge rather than, say, compassion for humanity, and they’re so well-known that anyone literate in modern cultures can think of lots of examples off the top of one’s head; e.g. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In this view of how to divide up fields of knowledge, value judgments applicable to human life are legitimately covered by the philosophy of ethics. Of course, the quest to integrate into human life a science that is informed by the best humanist ethics and values is also a great big discipline in itself. I bet any of us literate Dopers could cite their own favorite examples. I like Rachel Carson, Albert Schweitzer, Riane Eisler, the field of ecofeminism, etc.
As for critiques of anthropology in particular, my views are informed by the criticisms by Boas, Deloria, and Pirsig and similar authors who have heavily critiqued the record of anthropology in relation to Native Americans. Deloria’s scathing criticism of anthropologists in Custer Died for Your Sins is a response from Native American eyes. I think, though, the field has been influenced by its Delorias over the past 40 years, as colonialism has continued to recede in academic disciplines, in third-wave feminism, etc.
Wait, what? How is Frankenstein a critique of science? And how does facile undergraduate multiculturalism reflect the values of the field of anthropology? Do professional anthropologists really ask, “Well you have a reliable car; what’s up with that, huh?”
