Received: by bdragon.shore.net (0.99.970109)
  id AA09814; 07 Mar 97 04:27:55 -0500
From: Ulrika O'Brien 
Reply-To: filk-l@bdragon.shore.net (Multiple recipients of Filk discussion)
Nntp-Posting-Host: 128.200.133.103



nancyl@universe.digex.net (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:

>This is also just guessing, but my bet is that McCrumb despises
>people who put a lot of effort into activities that don't bring
>worldly success, and saw fandom through her prejudices. 

Rebecca seems to hold this theory too.  Of course, this doesn't
undermine the suggestion that McCrumb was being a poor 
anthropologist.  Evaluating cultural data through a filter
of ethnocentric bias is certainly bad anthropology.  Arguably
that's why "going native" is a sometime problem among good
researchers, i.e. they go entirely overboard in filtering
out their own ethnocentrisms.

>A little thought would have shown her that convention fandom
>recquires both spare time and spare money, and the amount of
>activity in dealers' rooms would have suggested that fans mostly
>aren't living in poverty.

Sure, but fans are not prone to displaying their wealth in
standard, Yuppie ways, so it does require a perceptive eye
and a good ethnographer to notice it.  


-- 
"Criticism is the only known antidote to error." -- David Brin

	Ulrika O'Brien***ulrika@aol.com***caveat lector



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