Paul A. Erickson

“…popular and populist writers, journalists, and on-air personalities do not so much engage in meaningful examination of controversial issues as reproduce simplistic and long-cherished notions about social and cultural evolution, biological determinism, the timelessness of traditional society, and the intractable character of ethnic and religious animosities… Seemingly outside this process, well-known pundits and public intellectuals – agents of political, economic, and cultural establishments – are mythmakers who persuade by providing their positions with the veneer of scientism: an elite discourse in which readers are invited to participate and which offers sure cognitive “satisfaction” by virtue of its paint-by-numbers explanations.”
― Paul A. Erickson, A History of Anthropological Theory