Peace Corps and Anthropology

Becoming an anthropologist is a slow  and challenging process. As I remarked in an earlier essay, Expanding American Anthropology, 1945 – 1980, published through the Association of Senior Anthropologist, brought back lots of early memories. One article is by Robert Textor  where he described the formation of the Peace Corps. This brought back many memories.

In 1960, toward the end of my freshman year at Brown University I walked into Faunce House, the Student Union at the time, and picked up a copy of the Brown Daily Herald, the campus newspaper. That day there was a Supplement (I don’t remember the name) but I do remember an article about the British Overseas Volunteer Corps[1]. As I read the article, I thought to myself –“Wow, I’d like to do that!”

I had enrolled in NROTC in the Fall of 1959, this article suggested an alternative type of service. Little did I know at the time that I would be suspended from NROTC that fall because of my grades the previous year. Those grades which included the math required for my planned major in astronomy, were to be life changing as was the article I had read.

According to Textor[2], a few days after his inaugural address President John F. Kennedy began work to establish a new governmental organization that became known as the U.S. Peace Corps. President Kennedy chose his brother-in-law, Sergeant Shriver, for the task of turning the concept into a reality. On March 1, 1961, Kennedy signed the Executive Order that created the Peace Corps.

Textor’s article traces the development of the early days of the Peace Corps and some of its key personalities. He also recounts his role in the process. At the time, I was still struggling with the immediate personal issue of being placed on academic probation as I entered my sophomore year.

Textor’s major contribution to the development of Peace Corps was to lobby and insist upon a strong language training program for the volunteers who would be assigned to serve in the program. The tradition of US representative such as embassy staff, USAID, and military advisers to live in enclaves and work in English in the metropolitan cities and with host government officials. But this would not work at the village level where the PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers) would be assigned.

At the time, Textor was a post-doctoral fellow, Yale/Harvard anthropologist, who was working on a book about Thai Religion when he got the invitation to join the Peace Corp/Washington. The goal was to develop a language program to train the PCV recruits in Thai and to get them in place quickly. Textor’s article brought back memories of my own training for Peace in the summer of 1964.

In the May, 1964 I graduated from Brown University and faced the question – “What next?” 

This is the perennial question facing AB graduates in anthropology. “Is anthropology simply a major, like history or English, preparation for a middle-class job or professional graduate school?” Or, “Is it a path toward an academic career?”

Another question I faced at the time was, “What about the “peace time” draft?” 

I considered my options. After an interview with a J. Walter Thompson recruiter, who chained smoked Marlboro cigarettes while bragging, “This is one of our clients!”, I decided that advertising was not for me.

 I consider OCS, Officer Candidate School, as a way of fulfilling my military obligation. I also applied to 10 anthropology graduate programs mostly west of the Mississippi. I figured that I would play the IVY LEAGUE degree and geographical distribution card to overcome my early academic record.

 And, I remembered the British Overseas Volunteer Corps article I had read and how it had excited me. So I decided to apply to the newly created Peace Corps.

I was accepted by several of the graduate programs in the mid-west and south-west. However, an offer from the Peace Corps to train for Peru arrived and was more attractive. Our training would be at Cornell (famous for the Vicos Project). There I became one of some 50 candidates who would go through the basic RCA/Tools project training.

I wrote to the schools that had accepted me and indicated my decision. A problem I’d been concerned about was how I would handle the logistics of applying from overseas while serving as a PCV. So, I asked in the letter, ”If I went to Peru, could I update my application for the entrance class of 1966?” Most responded that I would have to reapply for the 1966 class. One, however, the University of Arizona, wrote back that they would update my acceptance to the class entering in 1966. This solved my problem.

In late June, I prepared to go to Cornell and begin my training. There I ran into Robert Textor’s idea for intensive language training. The Cornell Program, headed by William Rideout and anthropologist, Cara Richards, had two language tracks. For those who knew Spanish (either as Spanish majors, or native speakers) there was training in Quechua, the predominate Indian language of the highland Indians. For the rest of us, the language was Spanish. Language training was the dominate subject we trained in for 4 to 6 hours a day for the 8 weeks of training. If we survived Cornell, we would spend 2 weeks in Puerto Rico at Camp Radley.

Reading Textor’s essay brought all this back. My Spanish teacher was an American Graduate Spanish major, a young woman, who spoke Castilian Spanish. Other classes had native speaking instructors who were graduate students at Cornell and represented different Latin American “dialects”.

The classes seemed to go on and on. I found myself getting out of seat and pacing back and forth in the back of the class. That earned me the nickname, El Tigre. I found that as I was learning Spanish, the German I’d studied at Brown also improved as I tried to not respond in English but would go to a German translation first.

I learned from this training the two major truths that Textor described in his essay. Most Americans, outside of the diplomatic corps and who were US representatives in country, did not have good language skills. Most lived in American enclaves that insulated them from the local population. Peace Corps was modeled more like the traditional anthropological field situation, living and working with the locals and in their community. 

Our first task was to learn and/or develop our skills in the indigenous language

As an anthropologist, I observed how my classmates’ language skills had improved and been altered by their communities. Indians, Cholos, and Metizos did not speak Castilian. They spoke with accents that combined Spanish and Quechua derived elements. Second, those of us assigned to work as a link between the PC and the American community – tended to fall into the class that Textor was attempting to have Peace Corps avoid.

 I fell into this latter class.  My spoken language proficiency never exceeded a 3.5 on the foreign service exam. I was based in Cuzco but covered the Departments of Cuzco, Puno, and Apurimac where I was assigned to work on Special Projects as a liaison between USAID/Alianza para Progreso and the Peace Corps Volunteers working in Southern Peru. Special projects included local school construction, potable water, introduction of rabbits as a food source, etc. at a cost to USAID of around $1,000.

Textor’s essay describes the ideals behind the Peace Corps and documents the history of the very earliest days of the Peace Corps, from the Washington perspective. It is a valuable lesson in the history of anthropology and points to the anthropological input in the development of training for the foreign service.

My “class” was part of the second wave of volunteers into Peru. When we arrived at the airport, we were met by the local PC office’s American secretary. The problem was she was there to meet her friend returning from vacation. No one had informed her of our arrival. There were no preparations made for us. In addition there were the representatives of two other classes of PCVs arrived with us. What we found, when we arrived, was a poorly organized program that was still working out its purpose and processes.

It took the regional Cusco office several months to get everyone assigned and settled. My roommate, an artist/ceramist had been told that he would be helping to set-up a kiln in one of the native villages in Cuzco. That never happened. He ended up working with local PC office. In those days, we h had to learn to be flexible and adaptable.

I discovered that there was more than just the basic speaking skills to learning the language . This is what Textor described as his goal in the formative days. There was also learning the “occupational or subject” vocabulary of the language.  This was especially true if your assignment dealt with cultural differences in a specific skill set or activity. To this day, much of my “agricultural” vocabulary and knowledge is in a bastardized Spanish/Quechua based on a mixture of 16^th century and 20^th century agricultural culture.

 In my assignment as a liaison, I learned the “culture” of grantsmanship and program administration. Each has its own language and English and Spanish vocabularies. In essence, Textor was correct insisting that PCV’s know and speak the language of the peoples they would be serving. I doubt, however, he thought of it in this other sense. 

There was a disconnect problem between language training and the country and skills training components at US based facilities,  and, in those early days, the uncertainty of the in-country assignments., When Peace Corps later shifted to an in-country training model, this problem was corrected.

Peace Corps was an adventure, especially for a young BA in anthropology. It confirmed my interest in anthropology – working with village leaders, other volunteers, government (Peruvian and American) officials developing simple low-tech projects – as an applied field.

At the end of my tour, I was offered a contract to work with the Lima USAID office. I turned it down and exercised my option to enroll in the graduate program at the University of Arizona. I recommended a fellow volunteer for the position, which he accepted.

In Arizona, I met Dr. Edward H. Spicer and enrolled in the Community Development Seminar that he conducted with Dr. Cortland Cleveland from the sociology department. There I was introduced to Spicer’s case-book approach to training, Human Problems in Technological Change and had an opportunity to put my personal experience into perspective.

Peace Corps has been the training ground for many who have since considered anthropology as a career. It carried forward a certain Boasian quality even as academic anthropology was fragmenting in to narrower and narrower specialties. It has also trained many in the more exotic languages humans have developed over the history of the species. More important, Peace Corp has helped to salvage may tongues that might have been otherwise lost in the expansion of our global culture.

 For me, reading about those very early days, reawakened many fond memories.

 Isn’t part of what the Association of Senior Anthropologists mission is, is to document the traditions of the profession?

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_Service_Overseas

[2] Chapter 2, Textor (1980:22),in Expanding  American Anthropology 1945-1980

THE GOAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY AS A SCIENCE AND DISCIPLINE

Duality is the nature of the universe: Good and Bad, Life and Death, the Known and the Unknown.

In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang ("dark—bright") describes how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

In the Jewish and Christian Bibles, creation came about in two stories. One, deals with the origin of the universe and the Other the origin of humankind. In both we find the emergence of duality. “In the beginning God created heaven and Earth.” God separates from his creation, e.g. “The Earth was without form or void and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1-2) Then God separates the elements of his creation, e.g. “And God said , Let there be light and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good and God divided the light from the darkness (Genesis 1.3-4)

In the Second creation story revolves around the story of Adam and Eve and the creation of humanity. Here GOD creates Adam, the human, in his own image and breathed in the breath of life. God created Adam was to be GOD’s companion. And again he separates himself from his creation, e.g. HE gave Adam dominion over all HIS Earthly creation. Later, GOD discovers that Adam is lonely so He decides to create a human companion for Adam. Again, God separates the elements of his creation, e.g.  He creates Eve. Made from Adam’s rib, HE creates Woman and thus humanity began on its road of duality.

               How has the human organism evolved to become the true master of its dominion? The above examples are part of the universal theme of humanity’s question – “Where did we come from and where are we going?” These are the universal questions and our answers, based on fact and myth, that tell our stories of our evolutionary journey. The goal of Anthropology as a science and discipline is to discover and understand how humanity has adapted to this duality.

The essence of human experience is the discovery and the management of the existential world of light and ideational world of darkness. The existential world is the physical environment in which humankind finds itself. The existential world depends upon one’s own existence as Subject and one’s awareness of humanity’s existence as the Other. The Existential is the constant of a shared life.

The ideational world depends upon of our individual and collective experiences and interpretation of the unknown and unpredictable in our lives shared with others. The ideational world gives structure to what has no known structure. The ideational is based on shared axioms, or assumptions, about the structure, and it provides meaning where there is no “real” understanding.

Humanity has progressed by experiencing the light of existence and challenging the darkness of the unknown waters. The light is life. The darkness is the cause and meaning of our own origin and destination. The existential is to be discovered in what we know through experience. The ideational is to be found in what we believe. It is our attempt to understand and explain the nature of life, birth and death.

The focus of the anthropological perspective is to discover the unity that lies below the duality. And, to understand the basic axioms in which the human universe exists.

What is the difference between Ethnography and Anthropology?

Ethnography and Anthropology are terms that sometimes get confused in the public's mind. This is in part due to the role ethnography plays in cultural and social anthropological research. And in part by the dominance of the socio-cultural sub-field in the organization and teaching of anthropology. What I want to do here is attempt to clarify the difference and interdependence of these two terms. 

Ethnography is a method of study and data collection involving a trained observer documenting the life of an extant people or group using a participant/observe strategy. It also refers to the product of such research which takes the form of a monograph organizing, describing, and analyzing the data collected. Ethnography is the method most common used by social and cultural anthropologist to collect qualitative data, although it is also used by archaeologist and biological anthropologist for certain types of problem that require data from living people or people living in a natural environment.

Anthropology is the scientific discipline that focuses on the human species, its origins, its evolution, distribution, commonalities and diversity in the way human organize and adapt over time and space. It is self reflective since humans are both the subject of the study and the instigators of the study. Anthropology is the coalescence of the social science movement begun in the late 18th and early 19th century when Western (European) society began to apply the ideal of science to study itself. That is when social philosophy began to shift from a subjective focus to an objective one regarding mankind. Anthropology took on the problem of the study of the non-European and non-literate (no written history) peoples that Europeans encountered in their commercial and imperial expansion out of Europe.

Ethnography became the method adopted to gather first hand information to document the lives,societies, and cultures of the peoples encountered. In a way it is the same approach as a field biologist or primatologist uses except that human have language and express both their emotions and the reasoning through language. Fieldworkers who learn the language are capable of participating as well as observing the life and culture of their subjects. Language also enables a degree of interaction between observer and subject that is not possible in the case of field biologist. Thus the anthropologist can, through ethnography gain a deeper understanding of his/her subject than the field biologist, At the same time, the ethnographer can never be certain how much of what is observed is as meaningful to the subjects as it may seem to the observer since the observed is also observing the observer and reacting to him/her. This is a far more intimate relationship than one finds in most science. It might be equated to the medical researcher using her/himself as the guinea pig.

Short answer Anthropology is a discipline Ethnography is a method

Is Anthropology a method or a science?

In a recent discussion about the central focus of anthropology, what distinguishes anthropology from other disciplines, an argument was made that we do have a central theoretical focus. In fact, the argument goes, that theory is based on the fact that we are holistic and yet culturally relative. We are, in this formulation, the combination and contradiction of C. P. Snow's Two Cultures - Science vs Humanities. This approach, which goes back at least to Boas, is proposed to be the anthropological method.

 I agree that we have a central methodology. It is a methodology that in many ways also reflects our underlying philosophy of science and the nature of things -- that is, the objective (etic) observation of the world and the subjective (emic) nature of the observing instrument -- the anthropologist. We incorporate a "quantum" perspective which recognizes the fact that the observer IS part of the system being observed and thereby influences the observation -- i.e. creates a degree of uncertainty.

But a methodology is not a theory or explanation. It is only a process which without direction and purpose is like the mouse running on the wheel in its cage. Good exercise going nowhere. Theory is by its very nature "inductive" speculations based on deductive analysis of the observations made of nature. Induction is the "If, then" statement where the "if" statement is based on a known set of data, and the "then" statement is a generalization of that data into an unknown future event or situation. Deduction is tautological. It too is a set of "If, then" statements. However, these statement are known facts and relationships from which a new or previously unknown fact is "deduced" If A = C, and B = C, then A = B.

As "natural history" anthropology is a deductive science. But as an predictive science and an applied science, anthropology.is an inductive science. That is, in the former case we report what we see and then analysis it to see more detail in the facts we already have. In the latter case, we detect patterns from past observations and hypothesize or predict future outcomes based on the correlations found between variables from past observations, e.g. what the population of X will be in ten years based on the population rate for the past 30 years..

Inductive models or theories point out problems for study and to validate observed patterns or to disprove the pattern. Anthropology today, especially ethnography, does not seem to have an inductive focus -- a set of principles or correlations that drive the research or analysis. Instead we seem to be happy pursuing our own idiosyncratic emic agendas -- "description and deductions" based on a sample of one at one moment in time and space.

My personal bias in this regard is the broad generalized question of the human condition and what we can infer about it based on a 150 or more years of anthropological research. Some might say anthropology is the study of "culture" (e.g. Leslie White, Tylor, Kroeber) which is phenomenon oriented, while others might say anthropology is the study of mankind ( or pc "humankind") which is species (biologically) oriented.

In this regard, the concept "meme" or "trait" or any other term that one chooses that distinguishes the physical "gene" concept from the ideational "superorganic" concept presents us with an interesting and promising why to inductively test propositions that relate directly structure and dynamics of "culture" on one hand, and on the other to the "tipping" point between Hominid to Homo (Human like animal to the self aware Human animal).

Finally, those who question the validity of Memetics argue that it "is not a theory by any reasonable definition thereof. More a model, and a rather questionable one to anyone who has studied semiotic"

First, anthropology is not semiotics, although semiotics has much to contribute to anthropology. Second, "meme" is a theoretical concept, the same way the Higgs Particle is/was a theoretical concept, it is not a fact. As a theoretical concept it calls for an inductive approach.

The "meme" provides a basis for directing research by focusing on creating hypotheses to prove or disprove its existence. And if "meme" is not the right concept, the question still exists, how did man or culture become what it is and what it means to be human? Unless, of course, you accept the orthodoxy of the breath of life and the apple in the Garden of Eden.But then we have ceded a scientific approach to the study of culture and humanity to a religious orthodoxy.

Autoethnography or Going After Culture

It would seem to me that "autoethnography" is creating a corpus of data for historians and future psycho-anthropologist of ethnography to study in order to gain an understanding of the personality and culture of late 20th century and the millennial anthropologist and their discipline. 

As the anthropological discipline broadens its academic base beyond the United States and the west, and as the traditional cultural isolate (a heuristic device) we studied has all but disappeared, the rationale for traditional anthropology no longer feels valid. If we can't study "Them," may be we can "study" US studying Them studying US. Maybe we will have to go "after culture" rather than capture it.

Could it be that several generations of anthro graduate students and junior faculty who have had to face such questions as " Where can I go to do my dissertation research? "Who will fund it?" and "How do I justify my research to the Promotion and Tenure Committee?" have turned to autobiographical narrative as an answer. That is, "Is autoethnography really a scientific or historic methodology that grows out of the anthropological tradition (culture); or is it a reaction to a larger set of forces taking place in the academic and funding environments (locally and globally) in which a generation of anthropologists seek to build their careers?

An example of this navel gazing approach is to be found in a very interesting and thought provoking paper by Stefan Helmreich, original published in 2001 in Cultural Anthropology, entitled After Culture: Reflections on the Apparition of Anthropology in Artificial Life, A science of Simulation.

Helmreich reports on a study he conducted in what he refers to as the anthropology of science which is the study of science as a cultural institution. He conducted his research at the Santa Fe Institute for the Sciences of Complexity among a group of  scientists drawn from a variety of disciplines ranging from mathematics, systems theory, biology, computer science among others. All of whom are interested in the question of vitality, i.e. life, and whether one can model evolutionary systems. Such models would enable the biologists to not only test theories about life as we know it but also build a larger frame of reference to include life as it could be. That is, artificial life would be a tool for the development of a theoretical biology.

Helmreich describes a real and intellectual connection between these scientists and American anthropology. He points to the fact that many of them were trained as undergraduates during the 1970s and were influenced by the anthropology of the period. In particular, he points to Christopher Langton who studied anthropology at the University of Arizona in the late 1970s where he became interested in the ",,. parallels between biological and cultural inheritance and evolution" (2001: 615). Langton later went on to do graduate work in computer science at the University of Michigan. 

Langton plays a significant role is Helmreich's study and understanding of the "culture" of these scientist. He serves, it seems, in Helmreich's discussion as the key informant and as an interpreter  between the "natural" scientists and the social scientist who is personified through Helmreich's own personal narrative of his involvement with these scientists. This is evident in the author's definition of what he means by "after culture."

After culture is defined in two ways as the goal being sought by these artificial life researcher. 

First, they had come to see themselves as cultural objects -- with vision mediates by an ideational, informatic framework, the specificity of which tacitly depended on a relative sense of culture, even as it was driven by by a universal cybernetic logic.

Second, they had come to theorize "culture" as a human adaptation with a "life of its own," and were thus "after culture" in the sense of pursuing it as an object for their own study and explanation ...  (Helmreich: 2001, p.620)

Heimreich goes on to observe that ...

playing anthropologist among these scientists required being "after culture" myself, drawing on the store of my discipline's ethnographic knowledge to query assertions about the universal "nature" of kinship and reproduction, for example, but also forcing myself beyond the limits of the culture concept to locate my subjects' activity in the power-saturated world of practice, discourse, and history - to read 'against culture",   ,.. ( Helmreich: 2001, p. 620)

This study, with its auto-ethnographic content, shines a light on two very different and yet interrelated issue facing anthropology. First is the subject -- artificial life. If it is a viable method for the study of "life" processes through an artificial biology, could not also become a tool for the study of social and cultural process through an artificial sociology and anthropology. Just think of SIM City, for example. Anthropology has always faced the conflict between its objective outside observer role and the participant in the local society being studied role. It is the source of much ethical discussion and debate. Would the artificial life model free us of this ethical dilemma? In one of his notes, Helmreich observes there are anthropologists who are trained in cultural ecology who find promise in the use of artificial life techniques for modeling social dynamics.

Second, the question of the anthropologist as the one "after culture" in the research context. Helmreich is fairly candid about his own role in the discussions and in citing his activist participant role with his subjects. Whether this auto-biographical insight represents a break with or an admission about the traditional role of the field investigator as participant, is a question for others to decide, But, when Helmreich describes a visit to the Institute he made after his study was published, he remarks that

I found many previously skeptical researchers suddenly sympathetic to my analysis of the cultural valences of Artificial Life. But where some felt that an anthropological account enriched their understanding of science as practice, others used my story to support their sense that Artificial Life had been contaminated by "culture" in a way their own fields - computational mechanics, for example - had not."  (Helmreich: 2001, p. 621)

It seems that the contamination reported here may or may not have come from the presence of the anthropologists as the participant observer. Of course, we can't prove that that is the case, or that this doubt about the purity of their "culture" would have not occurred if left alone to "discover" an artificial culture. What autoethnography can tell us is about our selves. In this case, where the subjects share so many things in common with the researcher we witness a situation of contamination despite the close similarities of share beliefs. This makes even more real the criticism leveled against western anthropologists by the "natives" of non-western cultures. But, by the same token, what does this have to say about potential affects of non-western anthropologists on a universal anthropology on one hand and upon their own native cultures on the other?

There may career opportunities here after all.

What If They Began the 21st Century and Forget to Invite Anthropology

"Suppose They Began the Twenty-First Century and Forgot to Invite Anthropology"
first published October 13, 2011

In 1973, Thomas Weaver of the University of Arizona organized a symposium in conjunction with the American Association for the Advancement of Science meetings to be held in San Francisco in February 1974. The theme/ title, "Anthropology in the 1990's: Conditions, Needs, and Prospects." with the subtitle "Suppose They Began the Twenty-First Century and Forgot to Invite Anthropology!!!" One of the people Weaver called upon was Dr. Edward H. Spicer, a fellow colleague from the University of Arizona and the President of American Anthropological Association, for his observations and thought about the future for cultural anthropology.

As reported by his widow in 1994, (Spicer, Rosamond 1994 Human Organization, Vol. 53. No. 4, pp. 388 - 395), Spicer took the assignment with the same degree of seriousness and dedication that he had displayed through out his professional career. He saw it as an opportunity to share his thoughts and impressions of the profession and in particular, to speculate on where he saw the profession going. On February 28, 1974, he presented his paper entitled, "Anthropology in the society of the 1990s".

Edward H. Spicer was a both a humanist and scientist whose work spans the traditional four field of anthropology, and who played a significant role in the formation and development of the fifth field, Applied Anthropology. Spicer taught those of us fortunate to be his student to appreciate and understand the connection between a people’s past, their present, and how these shaped their future. In his paper on that February day in 1974, he outlined 5 trends in the social and cultural environment that he felt would shape the next 20 years for professional anthropology.

Twenty years later, in 1994, the paper was republished in Human Organization with a forward by his widow, Rosamond Spicer, under the title, "Reassessing Edward Spicer's Views on Anthropology in the Society of the 1990s: How and Why This Paper by Edward H. Spicer Was Written" From her forward, we can gain an insight into Ned's thinking and approach to the future.

In 1974, Spicer envision five major societal trends that would impact the development of the profession leading toward the 1990s were the following:

(1) increasing intercommunication among the peoples of the world;

(2) increasing occupational specialization with accompanying organic differentiation within societies;

(3) increasing failure of technological solutions for the resolution of human problems in acceptable ways;

(4) increasing assertion and self-expression of ethnic groups within nation-states; and

(5) increasing reaction against centralization in political and administrative structures.

He stated "In general, continuation of these trends will, I believe, result in a society more heterogeneous than it was in the 19th or any previous century, more aware of its heterogeneity, with stronger than ever tendencies to compartmentalization, with increased awareness of and interest in non-technological and non-economic factors affecting human life, and with a growing tendency to view the nation-state in a wholly new light, especially with reference to its ethnic components and its political and administrative units." (p. 389)

Now nearly 40 years later, it might be worth considering just how prescient Ned’s predictions were for the 1990s and for the 21st Century.

Was he right? Partially right? Or, Did he miss the mark?

What are your thoughts?

Why Professional Ethics Count!!

World War II was a watershed for anthropology both here in the US and for anthropology in the European colonial powers. How each reacted, and how individuals from the different traditions reacted to the wartime experience and the post war environment is a fascinating story and chapter in the history of anthropology as an institution and a culture.

While we, as anthropologists, advocate and believe that we can be both "participants" and "observers," the truth is we can never separate the two roles like our physical and biological science colleagues can. We will always be both, even when we attempt to dehumanize our "participant" role to become "more" objective. It is this fact alone which makes "professional" ethics an important and extremely complex issue in my opinion.

For example, the choice to not participate with the military in such areas as human terrain analysis is an individual moral and ethical choice. But is not a collective (professional) excuse nor escape from the consequences of the choice since collective is made up of the range of individual choices.

As a profession, for example, we have no moral right to criticize the actions of others (outsiders) who could have benefited from an anthropological input but were denied that input because some members objected to their colleagues working with the particular group or in a particular situation.

The profession must take a stand on what is ethically acceptable behavior of its members and which is the demarcation between Us (those we speak for i.e. the profession) and Others (those we do not speak for nor represent). The role of the profession is to define and mediate the limits of a member's acceptable behavior as it applies to its unique jurisdictional claim over a member's public behavior as it reflects on the profession and membership.as a whole.

A professional organization is by its very structure both a social/economic institution representing a group of specially trained individuals; and is the intermediary between the professional practitioner and the general public. In the role of intermediary, it sets ground rules for the interaction and, in return, receives (formally or informally) the right to administer those rules from the governing public authority. It is authorized to be self-governing as these rules apply to its official members. But it also limits the professional organizations authority over its members. And this is the problem we face in our organization and structure as "professional" anthropologists.

Where are the Ethics and What is a Code?

The Question is: Where are the Ethics and What is a Code?

Once again the American Anthropological Association is going to vote on an Ethics Code. The link here points to a posting on aaanet.org inviting AAA members to cast their vote in reference to a "new"(?) version of the profession's 'code' of ethics. So much time and thought has been spent over the past half century on the question of what is "ethical" anthropology and still we don't know who or what should be subject to a AAA ethical position.

Anthropologists play many professional roles -- most have nothing to do with being an anthropologist -- and are subject to formal and informal codes, standards, and regulations that impact their performance in those roles. Among these roles are: teacher, employee, researcher, consultant, mentor, writer, counselor, administrator, business person, etc.

As a product of the Viet Nam Era, I have followed and been involved in this search for a unique and common ground where being a professional anthropologist creates a moral or ethic obligation that is not covered by the ethical standards already imposed by one or more these roles.

The Society for Applied Anthropology was the first professional association to be seriously concerned about professional ethics. This was stimulated by concern about the role(s) played by American anthropologists in the World War II effort. Today, the SfAA has replaced the ethics code with a procedure for dealing with Conflicts of Interest on the part of members.

Meanwhile, the AAA presented its first concern about ethics in a 1948 resolution on the Freedom of Publication which ran 5 short one sentence paragraphs. The statement basically reenforced the traditional values of academic freedom and scientific inquiry. The Viet Nam era and Cold War politicized the profession. In 1967, the AAA shifted to a more dogmatic debate over professional ethics. The debate aimed at limiting the anthropologist's professional involvement and conduct, especially as it applied to research. At that point in time to be an anthropologist was to be an academic, a researcher and a member of the AAA. This concentration of roles may have justified attempts to circumscribe professionally accepted behavior at the time. Today this is no longer true.

As the AAA has expanded and been transformed from a professional to a membership organization, its claim to be the moral and ethic center for the discipline has been deluded. Today, there are many conflicting interests collected under the AAA tent. Meanwhile the attempt to "codify" its ethic position has ballooned from 5 simple sentences to the present 9 pages of Do's and Don't's. A visit to the AAA Ethics website will show you the evolution of such thinking within the AAA.

While the intend may be honorable, the biggest problem with these codes and the efforts to regulate behavior is that they are without teeth. And, therefore, as a Code of Behavior, they are without purpose. This position is reinforced in the preamble to the current draft where the document does everything it can to deny that it is a code of ethics. Instead, it is presented as an educational tool.

Elsewhere I have been critical of the AAA and its attempt to be both the ethical guru/spokesman for all anthropologist and a disengaged bystander overseeing the behavior of its members' behavior.

So the questions, I ask are: "Why is the current document titled a 'Code of Ethics'?" And, "Is the AAA the right organization to set the moral and/or ethical rules for what it means to be an anthropologist today?"

Climate Engineering in the Anthropocene

What is the Anthropocene?  This is an idea that has been coined and proposed for describing the new epoch that the planet Earth has entered as a result of the growing and dominant role Homo sapiens play in the dynamic of the planet. The video presented below features a lecture by Professor of public ethics Clive Hamilton published on Jun 22, 2012 by theRSAorg on the subject the Anthropocene.

Professor Hamilton  explores the far-reaching implications of the intentional, enduring, large-scale manipulation of the Earth's climate system that human technology has and is bring about for the planet and its inhabitants. He explores the contrasting philosophies of mankind's role in this process and the ethic questions these present for our human institutions and our species.

While looking at the problem from an engineering standpoint, this lecture also raises questions that we anthropologist have been and are asking about the impact of human activity and human technology. This a policy area where we should have a lot of practical information and experience to bring to the debate. Only in anthropology with its holistic four field approach do we have a conceptual model of humanity that comes close to the earth model Hamilton alludes to in his opening remarks.

In this 18 minute video questions are raised. Questions that call for policy answers based on the best recommendations that anthropological record of humanity can provide.

Something we should think about - Does our technology destroy our humanity?

In a recent article entitled The Moral Hazard of Drones  in the New York Times John Kaag and Sarah Kreps raise a very critical question about our relationship with our technology. They state, "

As in the myth of Gyges, our use of drone warfare confuses our ability to kill without detection with the moral right to do so.

As anthropologists (scientists and  humanists), we should recognize from our archaeological and ethnographic archives the moral hazard that this conundrum presents to our species. Do we have an answer to it?

 Human beings exist in a Superorganic environment created by our unique intelligence, our collective memories and the technologies these have produced that enable us to become the dominant species on this planet. For a million years our species and precursors have relied on technology to give us an edge in the evolutionary game of survival of the fittest. But over the past 500 years, our technology and the environment it creates for us has become as much a threat to humanity and its survival as it has been the tool by which the superorganic evolves.

If you question this assumption, think of the millions of human beings who died because the invention of navigational tools and science, and deep water sailing ships broke down the natural barriers between the old and new worlds. These brought the Europeans and their diseases to the new world and disseminated the peoples who lived here. Just as the rapid growth in international air travel today brings peoples from all parts of world and their products together in a one world system where humans competes with and use advanced technologies to survive.

One might argue that this is the old Luddite argument against the machine and technology. That it is the political argument that favors labor over technology, that pits labor against capital. But these are political arguments easily dismissed by partisan philosophies and ideologies.

The question Kaag and Kreps present is moral, not political, but the solution may require a political solution. It has to do with the question of survival of our humanity. If you study the HISTORY of the technology of weapons, you will find that going from the hand axe that one uses to beat the prey to death and move to today to the predator drone where you sit in air conditioned quarters half way around the world and destroy a truck (and kill the human occupant), you will find that we become more psychological desensitized or disengaged the further and further away we become from the physical act of killing.

To be human is to have empathy. There are only a few species that we know of with this capacity. There is only one species so physically generalized that it has adopted technology as it means to adapting to environmental change. The further removed our technology makes us from the consequences of our action, the less empathy we have for the victim. As the technology of killing becomes more sophisticated and efficient, the whole process has becomes more mechanical and dehumanizing.

The question is a practical, pragmatic one. When killing is a job, there is a lose of one's humanity, a lose of empathy. Terrorism is successful only as long as we put a human face on the deaths and suffering that the terrorist can produce. The whole of the United States military technology has not been able to stop or beat terrorist attacks using technologies like IEDs or using using a human bomb. Our greatest fear is that A TERRORIST will obtain and successfully deploy a WMV (technology) in a major populated setting. How do we control this and not lose our own humanity? 

Where is the responsibility for the moral hazard that this technology imposes on our species?

Re-branding Anthropology Part 2 -- Heart, Mind, and Pocket Book

The basic guidelines for American anthropology were laid down by Franz Boas and taught to his students and passed down as the American anthropological culture. These traditions are a powerful force within the discipline and its organization and create a set of contradictions that have plagued the profession for three quarters of a century. The conflict can be summarized as in four words: Heart, Mind and Pocket Book.

Anthropology is founded on two basic principles – its subject is the human species; and how the species adapts to the physical and cultural environmental challenges it faces. The question is how do anthropologists apply these principles in their role as a member of the human species, as a scientific and humanistic disciple, and as individuals with basic needs and self interests? That is, where do the anthropologist’s heart, mind, and pocket book interests lie?

Where is the anthropologist’s heart when it comes to his/her subjects and to his/her role in developing the discipline? Where is the anthropologist’s mind when it comes to his/her subjects and to his/her role in developing the discipline? And, where is the anthropologist’s pocket book when it comes to his/her subjects and to his/her role in developing the discipline?  Three simple questions!

These questions, however, are not so easy to answer without admitting the basic contradictions that exist in the profession between the “emic” and “etic” perspective toward the behavior of the practitioners of anthropology whether they are academicians or social engineers.

The Anthropological Heart

In our “hearts”, I think and my experience suggests, most of us are philosophical liberal in our view of humankind. It would be hard not to be when a fundamental axiom of our discipline is based on the “psychic unity of humanity.” If we begin with the belief that we are all of the same species and that collectively we share a common biological heritage, then it is not a difficult step to a second basic axiom, “cultural relativity.”

The axiom of cultural relativity leads us to the conclusion that human behavior is “cultural behavior,” and arises from a common biological and mental base in response to diverse environmental challenges.  This does not discount minor variations between individuals or groups. But it does focus our attention on the behavior as the response to, rather than the motive for, cultural actions. Thus, when it comes to a “judgment” about the actions of others, we have a built-in bias to side with “the other”. This is where our hearts are, to suspend our judgment and seek to understand differences. 

The anthropological heart reveals itself in the causes we advocate for or oppose. It is revealed in the century of debate over professional ethics and our obligations to our subjects, the use of the data we collect, and the long running battle with University IRB and government sponsors over “informed consent,” just to mention a few. It can be summed up as an ethic that favors a role as the protector and interpreter of “our” people, i.e. the subjects of our research. For better or worse, it is the origin of our humanistic impulse.

The Anthropological Mind

In our “minds,” I think and my experience suggests, most of us try to be objective with our subject and subjects regardless of our practice as scholars, researchers, or applied practitioners. We try to operate and conduct ourselves based on another foundational axiom: “the holistic approach”.  To be holistic is to be open to and look for evidence from any quarter that may contribute to our understanding of the collective behavior of the individual within the group, and the group within its environment. The holistic axiom implies that we should adopt a systemic perspective toward the evidence that we collect and use to reach our conclusions.

The holistic axiom leads to another basic axiom: Human behavior is bimodal. That is, all human behavior consists of a balance between the individual’s emotional and/or physical (emic) response to an event or context and what we observe to be the group’s interpretation and meaning (etic) attached to the event or context.  This “emic”/”etic” perspective leads directly to our unique methodological response -- participant/observer. 

This methodological bias toward both an experiencing of the affect of the phenomena we study and the detached observation of its effect on the subject is most pronounced in the central organizational structure in our discipline – cultural anthropology.  Participant - observation is extended to the other sub-disciplines of anthropology through the role we give to culture as the “contextualizing” element in interpreting in recording events and structuring their context. This is where our professional mind is, understanding human behavior in context. It is the origin of our scientific impulse, for better or worse.

A corollary to “emic”/”etic” on an individual level is the “status”/”role” at supra-organic or societal level. This implies a structural-function approach to human behavior in a social context where status limits the legitimate range of individual behavior within the group and the role describes the individual’s performance in that status as it relates to the group.
  

The Anthropological Pocket Book

As anthropologists, we are first human beings. We live our lives as individual human beings. Much of our life is oriented around the practical problems of living, i.e. pocket book issues. While the early founders of modern anthropology were amateurs, that is, individuals who pursued their anthropological interests as an avocation, most anthropologists today pursue their anthropological interests as a vocation. They make their living doing something called, “anthropology.” 

In 1879, John Wesley Powell, in his address as the first President of the Washington Society of Anthropology and as Director of the Bureau of American Ethnology, called for a more scientific and professional approach to anthropological research. When Boas was hired to teach and head a new department of anthropology, in 1889, at Clark University, he brought with him an idea of how the professional anthropologist were to make his/her living. Boas set the standard for dealing with the pocket book issues when he proposed that the professional anthropologist pursue a tradition of employment in a research setting associated with a museum or university. Powell’s focus was on the government as the employer of anthropological researchers; Boas focused on the private university and museum as the vocational home for the research anthropologist.

Early on, the objective of a career as a professional anthropologist has been defined as basic research with an emphasis on non-literate, small scale socio-cultural systems as the subject of study. Teaching, lecturing and writing would be part of the job description following the tradition of other sciences and scholarly careers. While this career model was supposed to protect the scientist/scholar from outside influence by providing an environment that is based on the sacred principles of “academic freedom” and “freedom of scientific inquiry,” it has produced a mind-set filled with cognitive dissonance that echos through the profession and discipline today.

Anthropologists, as employees of the academy, government, non-profit sector, corporation, are staff personnel. They are hired to perform a specific set of tasks for the organization that has hired them. We are essentially bureaucrats. Despite were our heart and mind are, we consciously and unconsciously, are conservative and risk avoidant in the way we build our careers. In an earlier day, when going into the field to do our field work leading to our PhD, we might have been seen as risk takers, and even considered ourselves to be risk takers. But this has always been a risk based on the belief that some benefactor, sponsor, or employer would be there to pay the bills. 

Foundation and government grants have, as Patterson has pointed out, had as much influence on the development of anthropology in general, and in the USA in particular, as the professional development of the discipline. While today we still rebel against certain claims of control over anthropological research made by the granting sources, and we protest the use of anthropologists in such activities as human terrain analysis, basically we are bureaucrats and happy to collect our paychecks from our employers.

The overproduction of graduates at all levels is critical to ongoing sustainability of anthropology departments in museums and universities. But employing these graduates is a real problem facing the profession organizationally and philosophically. Applied anthropology, defined as the application of anthropological and other social science principles to the solution of practical problems faced by human institutions, is the solution to the employment issue in one sense and a threat to it in another. 

Re-branding Anthropology

Re-branding anthropology means identifying anthropology as a practical discipline, instead of the egghead eccentric hunter of rock and bones, the comic Indiana Jones, or the overly rationale and emotionally distant  forensic anthropologist. Anthropology, as a practical discipline, can lead students to become more critical in their thinking and their approach solving everyday problems. It can help them to adapt these critical thinking skills to whatever career they chose. To re-brand anthropology we must recognize the three dimensions in the life of an anthropologist – heart, mind and pocket book.

MEME: Concept or Toy?

 "Meme" as Dawkins' intended the term, as the second replicator and meme as it has become popular culture's new word for "fad" or trait are two entirely different concepts. My focus is on the former and I see the latter as the "toy" phase of the concept. As we know, many of our human innovations begin as toys before they are translated into real products and practical knowledge.

I believe what Dawkins was getting at is that at some point the gonads produced a genetic set that altered the way a species could adapt to a rapidly changing environment. That change took place in the way the brain or central nervous system processes information. The change reorganized the way and the capacity to receive and process input from the sensory systems. This resulted in a change the way individuals learn from experience and to store memories. It enables the individual to recall past experiences and correlate these stored memories with an immediate environmental challenge or problem.

Such recall (memory) would enable the organism to response more efficiently and effectively to opportunities and/or threats -- increasing its chance of survival over others without such an adaptation.

That memory is what I would consider to be the "meme". Initially, it might take the form of a simple S -> R (stimulus -> response pattern) or even an instinct triggered by external or even internal sources.

"Meme" in this context would be the behavioral response to emotions generated by the stimulus. The behavioral responses in higher animals would include learned behaviors. Learned by individual experience as when a new born begins to explore its body and learns where its body ends and the world begins; and social learning as when a lioness teaches her cubs to hunt.

"Meme" may have a genetic base but it is more than a "trait." It is an advanced adaptation of the gene, to continue Dawkins Self Gene analogy, to insure its success in competition with other genes. It is the transcendence of a chemically based DNA sequenced gene to a superorganic neuron sequenced "gene" or what is defined as "meme".

There are many interesting questions and potential answers that the "meme" concept offers -- especially for anthropologists -- as it relates to the success of Homo sapiens over the other hominids. And for biology, it could help in our understanding the success of animals over plants. Learning is a critical adaptation for life forms that are free to move in their environment and play a role as both predator and prey in that environment. Further, it can link the principles of behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology to the evolution of language and culture.


Meme provides an analogous mechanism to the gene as the mechanism for non-biological social and cultural evolution. It brings back something we need to reconsider, the lamarckian evolutionary model. Our theories of cultural and social evolution imply an evolution by means of acquired characteristics which is based on a biological agent (human) but advanced by a supra-organic entity, which Malinowski defined as the institution.

While children play with their internet memes we are learning something about the process whereby they emerge, become manifest, develop, evolve and die. Link these with the advances in ethology and neuroscience and we may gain a real understanding of culture or the super-organic as a derivative of the meme.

There is a place for the "meme" in our understanding of human development.

REBRANDING ANTHROPOLOGY Part 1 -- What happened to culture?

According to the American Anthropological Association

Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present.

This definition is somewhat different from the usual and traditional discourse we encounter about anthropology. The traditional approach placed “culture” at the center of the anthropological paradigm.  Anthropology’s brand and identity within the social sciences has traditionally been the concept CULTURE. Today, that is no longer true as the above definition clearly shows.

In a recent posting (October 2011) I made to the AAA site on LinkedIn I asked the following question, 

"What definition or metaphor do you find most helpful when you are defining "Culture?"


In 1963, A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn published a book entitled "CULTURE: A critical review of concepts and definitions" In their study of the term and it's history and use, one finds a wide range of ideas about what is the core concept of anthropology. These definitions are, in a way, a road map of the intellectual development within anthropology up to the mid-20th century. Now fifty years later, the concept of culture has changed with the times, the metaphors and the theories of  the profession and prejudices of its students.

What is your definition? What are your metaphors? How do you describe "culture" to your students, colleagues, and clients?

Since then, I have received a total of 8 responses. None of them truly addresses the question except in the most general of terms. It seems that culture is no longer the central organizing principle around which the four fields of anthropology, ethnology, physical/biological, archaeological, and linguistics orbit.

Yet when you ask anthropologists and practitioners, “What is anthropology?”, the most frequent response is “the study of culture.” As a practicing applied anthropologist for the past 30+years, I find that this response has not changed. Most anthropologists coming out of academia appear to think that the concept of “culture” is anthropology’s biggest selling point. Ethnographic research is the new and improved TIDE when it comes to applied social science.

These anthropologists seem to think, or feel, that they are the possessors of the great secret. It is a secret that every potential employer needs to know in order to succeed. As the bearers of this secret, these anthropologists seem to feel that they will be immediately embraced and employed to share this secret. The secret, of course, is – “culture.”

The problem, seen by these anthropologists, is that the potential employer lacks an understanding of the role culture plays in his/her business. What the employer needs is a staff anthropologist, or at least an anthropologically trained consultant, to research and provide answers to “cultural” problems in the business. What they don’t seem to understand is, that outside of academia, the “culture” concept no longer is the exclusive cache of anthropologists.

They are often surprised to discover that the term “culture” has long been accepted and integrated in the popular vocabulary of the employer and most other applied social and behavioral sciences serving the business community. As generally used, “culture” defines the fact that there are “differences” between Us (the business) and Them (Stakeholders).

Meanwhile within the profession, which has defined itself mainly as an academic discipline, the concept itself has lost its unique centrality and meaning.

Dating from the 1940’s, the profession has been struggling with question, “What is anthropology?”

Is anthropology the study of humanity or culture?
Why is anthropology a four field discipline and should it be?
Is the natural focus of anthropology the study of preliterate society?
What is anthropology’s role in the sciences and/or humanities?

Lacking any consistent answer other than “Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present,” it seems that American Anthropology has lost its brand identity.

It may be time to reposition the brand.

What Do We MEME in Anthropology

A recent article in the Atlantic  "Are LOLCats Making Us Smart?," describes the popular fad of LOLCats and how this phenomenon is drawing the attention of academic researchers at such events as the ROFLCon, -- a conference devoted to Internet memes and the mini-celebrities that have emerged. The Atlantic, in another article, entitled "Memes are people too ..." describes the conference.

The "meme" is an extremely important concept for anthropology as the science of humanity (the human species). The term, coined by Dawkins in his "The Selfish Gene", addressed a very real problem in human/social/cultural evolution, "How do you explain the super-sonic development of humanity as the dominant species on the planet from an evolutionary (biological) point of view?" The answer he suggested is that you don't. You have to look to something that while it acts like a gene (encapsulating basic fundamental information for a biological organism) but which is not physically (chemically) based. This he called the "meme."

When Darwin (& Wallace) discovered the principle and mechanism for species evolution -- "survival of the fittest", it took the rediscovery of Mendel’s pea experiments to demonstrate how that process works (although it was long understood in agriculture and animal breeding on a practical level). Almost a century later, Watson and Crick, and Rosalind Franklin, aided with by the technological invention of x-ray crystallography, discovered the double helix nature of DNA, the basis of the gene. This has produced a explosion of understanding and application of the concept of the genetic technology.

But despite attempts to extend the power of the gene into the field of social organization of species and especially the human species, through sociobiology, such explanations are inadequate given the relativity short time period of Homo sapiens existence as just one of a variety of Hominid species to today being the dominate species on the planet.

The "meme" is a concept that helps to explain how this could and can happen -- which was Dawkins' point. Memetics is a relatively new field of study and considered by many as a fad. In the context of the internet, the term "meme" has taken on a superficial meaning of graphic images that has gone viral. The concept is still in a "toy" stage as the Atlantic stories demonstrate, yet I suspect in time will be given the serious attention it deserves.

To understand "culture" and the role that it has played and does play in human existence and evolution, we need a concept that explains the spread of cultural elements across populations and generation and even within populations and generation independent of the biological constraint of passing on of an individual's genetic material to the generation where it will come to dominate the population over time and under the given environment conditions that favored it.

The "meme" is such a concept and worthy of more serious attention than it is currently receiving. The technological advances in brain sciences and neurology may help us to bridge the gap. On the practical side -- understanding the nature of the meme has tremendous implications for education, marketing, advertising, and propaganda.

Where does anthropology fit in this Brave New World

Anthropology has long had a holistic and historical focus on its subject matter. Culture is historical in the sense of the generational transmission of societal experience and values. When we enter periods such as today and forget or ignore the lessons of the past.and as we anthropologists enter the real world of marketing and seek to build our careers in it, what are we bringing with us in terms of anthropological values and ethics. And what are we giving up to make a buck? 

Recently Bill Moyers addressed this question indirectly in an interview with Marty Kaplan, director of USC’s Norman Lear Center and an entertainment industry veteran. The title of the show is Full Show: Big Money, Big Media, Big Trouble

 I found the questions Moyers is asking here to be a real challenge to the science of anthropology and to our professional ethics as we move into the world of consumer behavior both academically and as practitioners. As Moyers points out in his talk with Kaplan, "... taking news out of the journalism box and placing it in the entertainment box is hurting democracy and allowing special interest groups to manipulate the system."

This is a bigger question than just TV journalism. Journalism has been, at its best, the public record and the first cut at history of a community and a society. For the historian and anthropologist journalistic reports have been and are a starting for digging into the great and the mundane issues and facts that we rely upon to build a history of the events and context of our studies. The facts reported also help those of us who are practitioners  to understand and interpret the context of our practice and enable us to respond accordingly.

Moyers and Kaplan raise important questions, I feel, for modern anthropology as a profession and a discipline

What are we doing to study this phenomena? 

How is it shading and influencing the way we understand the events and context of the times?

How are we preparing students, especially those who are training for careers in marketing and media, to deal with the ethical issues they will be facing?

And, most of all what does this tell us about the social and cultural forces that are shaping the world's impression of what the world is?

I am interested in your responses.

Terror and the Nuclear Threat Tradition

Culture is formed by the accumulation and the passing on of traditions from one generation to the next in social groups . These traditions are the collective experiences, beliefs, values and practices of individual members and institutions of society. Those which prove to be adaptive and become critical to the group's survival  are recorded and passed on from generation to generation. Those which are not critical may be lost over time. The speed of culture changes influences what is retained, what is passed on and what is lost.

The end of the Cold War in 1992 changed the way we, in the public, look at the nuclear threat. For those born after the end of the Cold War, the nuclear war threat may only be "history." But, for those of us who lived through the Cold War, the traditions of that period remain part of the our culture and worldview.The terrorist attack on the twin towers on 9/11/02 has shifted our national focus from the threat of a global nuclear war between nations to the threat of the individual terrorist suicide bomber of the 21st century.


Today, with the discussions about the possibilities of  nuclear terrorism once again surfacing, it may be worthwhile to re-examination of the culture of nuclear defense and disaster control. Today in 2012, with the concern over Iran's nuclear program and Israel and US potential response to it, it is worth thinking about how our traditional nuclear culture may be used to guide our response. We should examine the super-organic of t,he Nuclear war and Terrorism as anthropologists by asking:  How do the Cold War traditions influence, or not influence, life in America and the world the 21st century? Do our traditions prepare us for what might happen?

A good place to start is this 2008, TED presentation, by Irwin Redlener entitled

How to survive a nuclear attack

The presentation is described as: "The face of nuclear terror has changed since the Cold War, but disaster-medicine expert Irwin Redlener reminds us the threat is still real. He looks at some of history's farcical countermeasures and offers practical advice on how to survive an attack "

How old is "applied anthropology"?

Applied anthropology -- the application of anthropological concepts to the solution of human and institutional problems -- is, despite the biases of the academic community,seen today as the road to the profession's salvation. Applied anthropology is really no different from the academic sub-species. It just occupies a different ecological niche in today's world. Rather than the exploiter of the intellectual property of their subjects, the applied anthropologist is the translator and communicator of intellectual property of others to their clients.

As pointed out earlier in this blog What does it mean to be a career anthropologist these are somewhat different skill sets but part of the same intellectual species. We might say that "anthropology" or the "anthropological" meme emerged in the west in Classical Greece and the writings of Herodotus. The "anthropological meme" took the form of history and eventually transformed into a social science in the 19th century scientific revolution. But what about the "applied anthropology" meme?

When did the "applied anthropology" sub-species emerge?

Interesting enough, this question was addressed in an editorial that appeared in Human Organization in the Spring of 1958 entitled: Applied Anthropology in 601 A.D.. The article quotes a letter from Pope Gregory VII to his priests who were attempting to convert the "heathen" Britons to Christianity. In the letter he proposes a policy to overcome local resistance.

We must refrain from destroying the temples of the idols. I t is necessary only to destroy the idols, and to sprinkle holy water in these same temples, to build ourselves altars and place holy relics therein. If the construction of these temples is solid, good, and useful, they will pass from the cult of demons to the service of the true God; because it will come to pass that the nation, seeing the continued existence of its old places of devotion, will be disposed, by a sort of habit, to go there to adore the true God.
It is said that the men of this nation are accustomed to sacrificing; oxen. I t is necessary that this custom be converted into a Christian rite. On the day of the dedication of the temples thus changed into churches, and similarly for the festivals of the saints, whose relics will be placed there, you should allow them, as in the past,to build structures of foliage around these same churches.
They shall bring to the churches their animals, and kill them, no longer as offerings to the devil, but for Christian banquets in name and honor of God, to whom, after satiating themselves, they will give thanks. Only thus, by preserving for men some of the worldly joys, will you lead them more easily to relish the joys of the spirit.

We can see today that Gregory's advice established a policy that was to serve the Church well. This was especially true when a 1000 years later it ventured into the New World. It is also an example of what today would be considered a sound applied anthropological based policy.