If these embedded scholars were economists instead of anthropologists would any even blink twice at the program ?
Are most practicing economists social scientists? I'd say not. Most "applied" economists gave that up a long time ago in order to gain the influence associated with being "social engineers." These economists are not interested in generating knowledge; they're interested in affecting social changes. So no, no one would blink twice, but that's because the potential tension has already been resolved.
But weren't US anthropologists involved in the the Phoenix Program, Meking Delta population transfers (strategic hamlets), Tiger cages and other Viet-Nam horrors? If so, have they even given an accounting of their activities? Was anything earned besides shame?
As a fellow academic and someone who teaches war/peace studies, I think you are way, way off base here, and I must say I'm very disturbed by this post.
The problem comes when you assume that academics are all guilty, in that we "a) train students who may end up in the military or the government; b) give any advice to policymakers about the means rather than the ends of their policies; and c) benefit from a preferential tax code that allows universities to operate as non-profit enterprises while amassing millions of dollars in endowments and other resources."
Let's take this in order. As for a), I take pride in discouraging students from going into the military for very obvious reasons, namely the fact that they will end up killing people in an imperialist war like Iraq. I of course don't do this explicitly, but in any war studies course the nature and causes of war is part of the course and I don't hold anything back. If students then choose to go on to join the army that's their choice, but not something I am - or should be - indifferent to.
b) I don't give policy makers advice about means - do you? Isn't that the point here? If you refer to the fact that policymakers may read your articles and act on the knowledge you present in them, what's to prevent them from doing the same as regards anthropological studies of Iraq? As someone else pointed out in regards to this debate, the armed forces could certainly afford a subscription to JSTOR and read all the great anthropological texts on Arab culture, etc. but they chose to rely upon outdated and racist nonsense instead. Do you think if the military REALLY wanted to run things well in Iraq/Afghanistan, they would have hired anthropologists this late in the day (February 2007, according to the article)? Isn't it more plausible that the military is run by a bunch of idiots? This is indeed the reason why I don't bother trying to give any advice to policymakers, precisely because they will only hear what they want to hear.
c) yes, universities benefit from a nice tax code - so what? The fact that ultimately the money we get comes from the government does not mean that we are as guilty as the anthropologists mentioned in the NYT article, who chose to go out and actively help an occupation force subdue and torture people (read more about Montgomery McFate in other sources) - but it does mean that, as privileged people, we are that much more obligated to speak up more against government misuse of tax dollars than others. This is precisely Noam Chomsky's answer to such questions as why he doesn't just sit at home with the lights off as flying around the world givings speeches must be bad for the environment. His reply is the same as mine - what good would that do? Shouldn't I use my privileged position to speak out against injustice? As regards this post, given the fact that we are all embedded to some degree, as per your points above, how should we academics act? You don't really address this point, but you seem to imply that we should just throw our hands up and do nothing - or perhaps help the military.
In the end I am very sad that people like McFate can complete a PhD in a social science and then go help an illegal and immoral invasion force in their efforts to subdue and kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. If that's your idea of Weberian activism, I think I'll pass.
In my view, the main point is not that the embedded anthropologists are not acting as "scholars" but as "experts" -- that's obvious. The question is (and perhaps the NYT or other sources have addressed this): WHAT EXACTLY are these embedded anthropologists doing as experts? Are they helping "subdue and torture people," as the above comment claims? Or are they, for instance, trying to influence military ops in such a way as to perhaps save a few civilian and/or military lives that might otherwise be lost? The above comment seems to assume that any activity connected with the occupation of Iraq amounts to helping "subdue and torture people," but this is a rather dubious claim. If an anthropologist is sitting in an interrogation room and advising on coercive interrogation techniques or on modes of questioning, that's one thing. If the anthropologist is offering advice about how to improve or cement relations between the US military and particular tribal leaders, that's rather different. The above comment assumes that anything and everything the US military is doing is so flawed and/or immoral that no kind of participation in it can be justified. This position may give the holder a sense of being on moral high ground, but it obscures important distinctions. The post would have been more satisfying if it had dealt with the specific questions of who is doing what, rather than expending energy to argue that the military is not engaged in social science or scholarship, which is IMHO both obvious and at best only tangentially relevant to the controversy.
LC - my point is simple - what was the point of going to war with Iraq? If it was indeed to bring democracy to the Iraqi people, then we as academics should of course do everything we can to help the US army do so. If that were true I would have no problem with helping the army, and would do so myself (if I had any expertise on Iraq).
But as most people should by now realize, that was never Bush's intention. The US army is one of occupation, whose goal is to permanently control Iraq and its oil supplies, not bring democracy to the Iraqi people. In reality all an academic who believes in human rights and democracy can do in such a situation is to protest against the occupation and help to bring the troops home. In that sense it matters not if the anthropologist is sitting there in the torture chambers or not - his/her presence is enough to add legitimacy to the whole illegal project. It's that simple.
LC: questions about who is doing what, IMHO, shouldn't be asked until we first clarify who ought to be doing what. Absent that prior clarification, it's difficult to say anything intelligible about whether anyone is justified in doing what they are doing. Your suggestion -- with which I largely agree, as I think that Ed is both painting with too broad a brush in his condemnation of the whole military enterprise and steps over a professional ethical boundary by claiming that part of his role as a teacher is to discourage students from going into the military -- in fact presumes the conclusion I draw in the post about the difference between military operations and scholarship.
You may find that an obvious point, but I was and remain concerned about the legitimation effects of "social-scientizing" any specific course of policy action. On this point I agree with Ed: the involvement of scholars in any policy activity should not be taken to grant the activity any kind of "scientific," trans-political status. This is precisely what annoys me about economic policymaking in the US, which has by and large been depoliticized and transformed into a technocratic operation. Step one in restoring the politics to the policymaking realm is, I think, to get rid of the idea that science solves political problems, or that the involvement of scientists (social or otherwise) somehow brings the debate to a close. Once we do that, we can start in on the specifics about who is doing what practically and politically.
The only way that social scientists are going to have anything useful to contribute to this kind of a discussion is as social scientists. If we abandon that and just start acting politically -- a la Noam Chomsky -- we lose both our professional integrity and the battle itself (because other people are considerably better equipped than we are for that kind of political work). But maybe, just maybe, if we pull back the boundaries of science and throw political questions -- and "what are we to do?" is, I think, always a political question -- back into the political realm where they belong, and steadfastly refuse to pretend that we can definitively answer them scientifically (or pedagogically, or authoritatively, or whatever), we can help to open up a space for actual political contestation instead of technocratic rationalization.
That may not be enough for you, but it's more than enough for me.
This is not a new story. George Packer wrote a rather in-depth piece on the military's use of anthropologists in the New Yorker back in Dec 06.
Its interesting reading, and has a significantly more background on these projects, and does discuss many of the issues raised in this post and the subsequent comments.
Read Packer's piece here:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive.../
061218fa_fact2
Tempest, meet teapot.
All I'm looking for from the oppo-anthropologists is some intellectual honesty and political consistency -- if I have to accept your contention that it is wrong for some scholars to provide their services to a particular client simply because you disapprove of that client's policies, then you should acknowledge that it would be equally wrong for you to provide your services to clients who may promote policies of which I or others disapprove.
Sauce for the goose; sauce for the gander.
In other words, to be fair-and-balanced (to borrow a phrase), no social scientist should ever offer her/his knowledge or expertise to anyone outside of the academy at the risk of "endorsing" some potentially offensive political agenda or another. Let's resolve the Weberian dilemma by avoiding it altogether. At long last, a politics-free scholarship.
(And where, by the way, was all of this whining when social scientists were at work for the military in Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor?)
Perhaps we'd better take deterrence theory out of the I.R. curriculum.
It was, after all, largely developed in service to the state. Someone tell Brodie, Schelling, Wohlstetter, et al. that they weren't doing "scholarship."
Article at the BBC newsite saying most anthropology contracts are outsourced through British Aerospace. Moreover, the cultural anthropologists receive a whopping $400,000 per year.
If I was a cultural anthropologist I'd be very pleased to make $400,00 a year.
Commenting by HaloScan.com
