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> I don't even know what that means. I just mean if you were an alien anthropologist, and you were trying to understand napoleonic europe by looking at paintin
by pasabagi 5y ago
> I don't even know what that means.
I just mean if you were an alien anthropologist, and you were trying to understand napoleonic europe by looking at paintings or time-travel-photographs or whatever, you'd almost certainly notice gender divisions before you noticed anything else.
Nationality is obviously a social structure. That's a large part of what the napoleonic wars were about: the birth of nationalism.
- jhgb 5y agoYou would also notice that all people in the paintings have two legs, two arms, and two eyes, and yet this knowledge would not help you understand Napoleonic Wars, or to predict the outcome of the war from the initial conditions, or anything like that. So the knowledge that people in the paintings have two legs, two arms, two eyes and two genders doesn't necessarily have to be vital for understanding Napoleonic Wars unless you find some strong evidence that it is.
- pasabagi 5y ago> all people All people. That's the point. All the people have two arms[0], legs, and eyes. Half the people are wearing big dresses, the other half are wearing funny-shaped hats and tight white trousers. The alien anthropologist would assume, rightly, that the first sentence is just how people look, and the second is marking some important social distinction. Since wars are fought over social distinctions, and their conduct is largely guided by social distinctions (who fights, etc), the most obvious distinctions would seem to be relevant. [0]: except Nelson.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agohey, that guy with the one arm must be pretty important!