OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY

From Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416366

Indigenous section OK’d by anthropological group
Posted: December 28, 2007
by: Jerry Reynolds / Indian Country Today

WASHINGTON - The American Anthropological Association board of directors approved an indigenous section of its membership for the first time on Dec. 5. The vote was unanimous.

Section status means the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists will have the right to comment on all papers - primarily research papers - that come before the AAA, according to JoAllyn Archambault, director of the American Indian Program at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. Informal comments have always been possible, she said, but now they’ll have to be accepted.

Traditionally, as acknowledged with humor at a workshop of the association’s conference in Washington at the start of December, Native people have shunned anthropology as a profession because of its role in the settler pervasion of tribes in the 19th century and after. But with approximately 100 Native anthropologists practicing in the United States and Canada, according to Archambault, Native perspective has gained a foothold. Archambault can remember the days, some 30 years ago, when she, Beatrice Medicine and George Abrams could get acquainted with every Native anthropologist in the country. Medicine would book a hotel room at AAA conferences and make it available for discussion. ”The point was … just to get to know each other and encourage the students.”

Eventually, Archambault managed to help establish the American Indian Native American Alaska Native interest group within AAA. The designation meant AINAAN could meet in paid rooms, get a place in the official AAA conference program and gain in visibility. Fewer than 10 people attended that first meeting, Archambault said, but a committee formed to offer fellowships to Indian graduate students. The main committee rule was ”the grayheads decide,” she added. Soliciting contributions mainly from one another and a wealthy friend of Abrams who matched them with $1,000, they published a notice in the AAA newsletter of two $1,000 fellowships, AINAAN’s first. The fellowship program itself they dedicated to the late Ella Deloria of the famous Yankton family, best known now perhaps for her ethnographical novel, ”Waterlily.” But though she considered herself an ethnographer, Archambault and colleagues honor her as an anthropologist.

By comparison, the Association of Indigenous Anthropologists is apt be well-heeled and visible. But Archambault intends to keep the AINAAN fellowships going. She said she likes the idea of fellowships supported entirely (except for that early $1,000 from the friend of Abrams) by donations from Native people.

I have been reflecting back on some of the muddy double-speak to be found in the late parts of the blog of the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, and I mean specifically on the part of those scrambling and labouring to concoct tortured little twists of an argument in the elusive hope of redeeming the value of anthropological embedding in counterinsurgency teams. What I want to do here is to first continue to analyze some of the rhetoric, and some of the context of their utterances, with a few words about the content of those utterances.

The Imperial Anthropologist Turns to Grey Shades of Dim
Academics are routinely accused of speaking jargon-laden and thus hermetically sealed languages, of trading in the esoteric, of being too ambiguous and unintelligible. Heterodox critiques in anthropology (often misleadingly labelled “post-modernist”) have also been faulted for expressing themselves through convoluted tropes of ambiguity.

Who would have expected that this tradition, old and new, would prove to be so convenient, so expediently useful to the band of apologists for anthropological counterinsurgency? Indeed, any utterance that achieved any kind of clarity in opposing Human Terrain Systems (HTS), was faulted precisely for being “too black and white”.

In my mind, the opposites of clarity and decision are confusion and indecision. Faced with complex realities, the ultimate aim is not a muddled and obtuse direct transcription of complexity itself, but some form of intelligibility, and that requires clarity.  So one has to ask: of what use is the grey zone in a rhetorical contest?

Grey. Opaque. Dark. Enigmatic. Doubtful. Illegible. Indeterminate. These are all great intellectual resources for those engaged in concealment, for those retreating to a zone beyond scrutiny. Or they would have been great resources, had they been used with more finesse and subtlety instead of laying themselves bare and open.

Grey: It’s the New Whitewash!
You cannot judge us…you cannot say that embedded anthropology is wrong…you cannot say that it is unethical, in fact it may be so ethical that it renders you unethical…no real evidence that the war it supports is wrong, I mean, it could be, I was against the war, but you know…US domination cannot be refuted or resisted…you can only accommodate…try to do whatever the right thing might be…however imperfect…in whatever circumstances…pragmatism…best we can…let’s see…who knows, you don’t, I might…don’t judge…whatever.

Then came someone who said our argument was a “losing” one (there goes ambiguity and uncertainty, all of a sudden) and I felt like writing and transcribing for him: PWN3D! (”owned!” for those of you not of the online, multiplayer, video game generation).

I suspect that the primary aim of the green anthropologists who visited that blog, the ones with premature ambitions of gold-plated salaries in a world of uncertain academic employment, was to elicit some measure of shielding ambiguity from all of us who are opposed, some “a-ha!’ like revelation that they could use to shroud themselves with the next best thing to legitimacy: dubious illegitimacy.

They were there not because they were “uncertain” and simply wanted to “learn more”–you don’t throw yourself into a debate, passively aggressively, if you just wish to learn more. No, you keep quiet and watch and listen. That’s what ethnographers do, as some of these smart asses sought to remind us.

No, they were there because they needed to whitewash their reputations and maybe their consciences, and the best whitewash is grey. They hope to have statements of supportive opacity, written in public, for their return from Iraq, for when they need another job and do not wish to answer for their decisions (however indecisively certain they were).

Indeed, they routinely dismissed not just any form of clarity, but only one: the one that criticized the embedding of anthropologists in HTS teams. Claiming to be undecided, while dismissing one side of the debate–did they imagine themselves to be playing with fools?

Their constant inversions–the “no, you are!” trope of the elementary school yard–means that they had little in the way of an argument before we gave them one. They thought within the parameters we set for them. They had no argument, because ambitions and greed do not need arguments. So, let’s be sloppy and slapdash, let’s just take what the critic says and flop it around lazily, and say: No, you are!

(See: Of Mirror Images, Fanatics and Cartoon Characters)

They resisted any move towards clarity, any precise and careful reading, and opted for selectivity, for gloss, for doubt. Why? Because they are hiding. Those who did not use anonymous identities instead opted for something much worse: the anonymous argument.

Vine Deloria Jr. once blurted that anthropologists were those whose brains had been sucked out of their heads. Before one winces or grimaces, let me just say: between Deloria and myself, he is the kinder of the two. It seems to me that some anthropologists, and disturbingly quite a few of the younger ones in this instance, are those who merely had some fluffs of grey stuff blown into their heads (A.A. Milne).

What Remains after Imperialism Goes Ambiguous
The proponents, as falsely indecisive as some claimed to be, in favour of HTS, counterinsurgency, and a new imperial anthropology, left the scene of that blog not only without an argument of their own, or the endorsements they sought, but also without good answers to questions they were asked, and some which they themselves asked.

Consent–no discussion of what Iraqis might want, of Iraqis having any say as to whether they could be “studied” by HTS anthropologists. That went without saying, because what came without saying is that these anthropologists simply do not care about this issue. It is not significant to them. What matters is that the US military is there, and they are there because of that. This is, pace Brian Donohue-Lynch, where imperialism does collide with ethics and makes the two discussions inseparable. Consent, in a war zone, gained by someone who is part of the occupation? Routinely, this question is largely ignored. This kind of clarity is inconvenient.

The fact remains that all we have ever known about Iraqi opinions is that they repeatedly reject the US occupation, blame the US for continued instability and sectarian strife, and want to see an immediate withdrawal. If they reject the dogs of war, then surely they are not ready to accommodate the dogs’ fleas.

No harm–assisting one side of a combat situation cannot satisfy any criterion of “no harm”. Instead, the argument was that it would “lessen harm”. The evidence for that? None. It is an assertion.

Future ethnography–the Code of Ethics of the American Anthropological Association, Section B(3) states: “Anthropological researchers should do all they can to preserve opportunities for future fieldworkers to follow them to the field”. Having had HTS anthropologists foisted on them, and maybe suffering the consequences, it is difficult to see how in the future Iraqis would accept more foreign, and especially American, anthropologists working in their midst.

Damage to the discipline–Section B(2) of the Code states: “Anthropological researchers bear responsibility for the integrity and reputation of their discipline, of scholarship, and of science”. To the extent that, already, major outlets of the mainstream and international media have widely reported and circulated news of the embedding of anthropologists in counterinsurgency, significant damage may have already been done to all of us. In Trinidad & Tobago, where I did most of my research over several years, and where I avidly followed the news media, I do not ever recall seeing an article about anthropology. In fact, I would venture to say there has been none in the past 20 years. Yet, recently, even here it has been reported that anthropologists are joining US counterinsurgency efforts.

Non-exploitation–the issue of the gigantic salaries reportedly being paid to HTS anthropologists, ranging from around a minimum of $100,000 to $400,000 US, and the influence this might have on anthropologists chosing to join, was either ignored completely or lightly tossed aside. Why? When you conceal so much, this degree of concealment thus reveals that this is the primary motivation. It is what is least stated, in an argument of determined opacity, that bears the greatest weight.

Doing some good–some anthropologists claim their intention is to help Iraqis and to do some good. What that does not answer is why they do so without consulting Iraqis first or why, all of a sudden, this is a world without NGOs. One went so far as to claim that NGOs were assisting the US military–without reflecting on the meaning of “NG”, and was then, of course, unable to substantiate the assertion when asked. “The only game in town” argument does not work.

But, this does not stop some hopefuls from continuing to reproduce flawed notions–click here for a recent example on this blog.

Many thanks to a graduate student in my ANTH 601 course (no permission to name her) for sending me this link to something called “Uncyclopedia” and an entry simply titled “Anthropologist“:

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Anthropology

In my view, this is an emergent classic, and I expect we will see more of this in the future. For now, some memorable quotes for those not interested in reading the complete entry:

The difference between rich people who occasionally like to ’slum it’ for a laugh, and anthropologists, is that anthropologists take notes.

Anthropology in the early days consisted largely of very overweight scholars reading the accounts of missionaries and adventurers and seeing if there were any patterns. They became known as the Armchair Scholars, because of their tendency to drop sheets of paper they were reading into the cushions of their armchairs occasionally, causing them to fish through the cushions and be humorously accused of studying the chair rather than the text.

Ethnography: The study of people by actually getting up off your ass and looking at them….The creation of ethnography has been widely documented as an attempt for socially awkward, unattractive, mousy pedants to gain free passage to a foreign country on the dollar of a taxpayer funder university in order to sleep with the young passport hunting girls of whichever exotic country they have chosen. This “scientific” study has been debunked by those who choose not to engage in a strange holding-pattern that is approximately between star-gazing and navel-watching and who do not believe in extreme forms of relativism which are lazily thrown out in serious debate in much the same way that a young child says “uh uh.”

Ethnology: Ethnography for the lazy. Involves trying to piece together things about a culture just by reading about it. Not dissimilar to writing fanfiction. Armchair optional.

Anthropology may be a career for you. However, since the recent research funding policy decision that health and medicine are the only topics social science need concern itself with, all future academic appointments will be in medical anthropology only. Sorry.

I encourage you to see the rest, and perhaps add a few gems of your own. For now, I think the “fanfiction” characterization is right on target.

As for mousy pedant…I am closer to the elephant end of the spectrum.

Because even a dog sleeping in one’s place on the bed can be a source of distraction, here is another one for my “out there” category. This painting was inspired by a sleeping dog, and, a post on another blog (see Carl Feagan’s “Man’s Best Friends: Part 1–The Dog” at Anthropology.net). The words below are extracted from Carl Feagan’s illuminating piece.

(click above for the full sized image, 544kb)

It struck me, while reviewing the patterns I found in postings to the AAA Executive Board’s blog on the statement condemning anthropological support for counterinsurgency, as well as the comments section of the Inside Higher Ed piece titled, “Questions, Anger and Dissent on Ethics Study” (Nov. 30, 2007), that those opposing our criticisms have found a means of consistently reinforcing our arguments. They reinforce our arguments by simply inverting them. In other words, they have found no place of their own from which to rise and make a stand for their own supposed principles, and that should be disquieting to them, to have to build their self-representations entirely on the basis of what opponents say of them. It also suggests that, beyond the level of ideologies of nationalism and patriotism, they have little to contribute to the discussion of research ethics. Instead, they reduce the discussion to a set of easily manipulable caricatures in an unimaginative rhetorical strategy.

With reference to the Inside Higher Ed piece above, I posted a short comment of my support for the AAA Executive Board’s statement:

“I applaud the many sensitive and sensible anthropologists who want to see the AAA become part of the mainstream of international, American, and above all else, Iraqi public opinion in wanting to see no more American occupation of Iraq. Any discipline that lends its support to the service of an invading and occupying state, that is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands, issues itself a death sentence”.

The response?

“Prof. Forte: The mainstream opinion to which you refer is the view of self-appointed elitists with a bias that prevents from looking at facts objectively. Surely you don’t support Saddam’s or Al Qaeda’s torture houses, or the gassing of the Kurds, or the beheadings. Personally I’m curious about what exactly it was that the Russian Special Forces took from Iraq and trucked into Syria shortly before the war started.”

Pure inversion, but with some invention borrowed from right wing conspiracy media (Fox “News”). The majority of public opinion is “elitist”? Invert majority, and you get minority. Invert public sanction, and you get this nonsensical “self-appointed” elitist. Criticize the US invasion, and you become a supporter of torture. Condemn the thinking behind the invasion, and Weapons of Mass Destruction suddenly “materialize” once more as myth.

Both the AAA blog and Inside Higher Ed see numerous postings by people whose names cannot even be traced to anyone with a position in anthropology, and often without even a degree in anthropology. These are individuals in other professions, in other walks of life, that stomped into anthropology to dictate to us what we should be doing. Anthropology’s new motto, so that these fanatical militarists can understand it readily, should be:

Then, someone calling himself “John-Michael Davis” comes back with more of the mirror image. If I refer to those who are not anthropologists, who seem to avidly support the militarization of anthropology, who desperately cling to a war that was a farce and became a tragedy rejected by almost everyone, everywhere, and thus constitute themselves as both fanatics and militarists… then that makes me the fanatic. If I say that those supporting the enlistment of anthropologists to serve in HTS in Iraq are out of step with the majority of American and Iraqi public opinion, then I am the one who is divorced from reality. If I criticize the invasion, then I must support torture?

Americans are the heroes, others are terrorists or perhaps innocent and neutral to the US occupation of their territories. Everything is reduced to a comic book script. We are doing good, saving the world, they are evil. Mild-mannered anthropologist by day, fighting villains and saving humanity by night (Superman and Spiderman). The academics are here, perverse, in their Ivory Towers, while the glorious HTS anthropologists are over there slogging through the mud, laptop in hand, roughing it out to the tune of $400,000…that’s right, almost the salary of four, full professors in Canada, for one guy without even a PhD in anthropology. Oh, what sacrifice!

And yet, funniest of all, is when such characters as “John-Michael Davis” try to hide behind grey areas, after having created a black and white discourse. What they oppose is reduced to black and white, and what they defend…well that’s all grey of course, nebulous, cannot be judged easily, maybe you should study it ethnographically.

At the end of the day we may remember that those who defended HTS anthropology were not anthropologists, and in some cases were really from the bottom of the discipline’s intellectual barrel.

A Canadian news story on a momentary stalling of the entrenchment of the copyright culture in Canada. The weight of this culture of permission, of closed access, is felt especially heavily in Canadian universities, where royalties are collected, presumably on the behalf of authors, while restricting the extent of access to any given author’s work. In the meantime, as a result of this tithe, a new bureaucracy is formed, precisely to extract the tithe…and guess who pays for that bureaucracy? Both authors and students, first and foremost, who pay for a system that serves neither. Incidentally, years later, nobody has ever sent me a cheque for the articles of mine that have been used in course readers–somebody is collecting money in my name and then keeping it. If they do pay, they will have subtracted an amount for their salaries, which I, as well as other authors, never authorized. Theft is routinely institutionalized by both the state and private sector, that much will be news to very few.

This is a story from the CBC:

GOVERNMENT RETREATS ON COPYRIGHT REFORM
Minister of Industry Jim Prentice delays plan to introduce controversial bill

(…)

But Prentice backtracked on the plan after more than 50 angry protestors showed up to question him at the meeting, and an online group formed to oppose it on social networking site Facebook. The group was started by University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, a chief opponent of the legislation, on Dec. 1. More than 20,000 Facebook users have joined the group since then.

A protest is also scheduled to be held at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Dec. 18.

Critics said the proposed legislation will mirror the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and take a hard line against the copying of digital materials. Geist accused Prentice of caving in to lobbying from U.S. entertainment companies, who are seeking to curtail digital copying in all its forms.

Writing in his blog on Thursday, Geist said the delay was an opportunity for Prentice to revisit the legislation.

“This is Prentice’s moment. He has an opportunity to brush aside the momentary embarrassment of the delays and instead work toward a genuine copyright balance by reaching out to all Canadians,” he wrote.

“As astonishing number of people have voiced their concern over the past two weeks and the government seems to have listened. Now it must act by openly consulting and engaging with a country that genuinely cares about copyright.”

(…)

A large number of Canadian musicians, however, do not support ACTRA’s position and are concerned that industry bodies are not speaking in their interests. A number of high-profile acts, including the Barenaked Ladies, Sarah McLachlan and Avril Lavigne launched the Canadian Music Creators Coalition in May to speak on their behalf.

“It’s short-sighted to say ‘See you in court’ one day and ‘See you at Massey Hall’ the next,” said Barenaked Ladies frontman and coalition spokesman Steven Page. “If the Canadian government wants to reform copyright, it should be creating a made-in-Canada solution that looks to where the music industry is going, not where it was.”