Anthro in the news 9/14/09

• A guest editorial by Nancy Scheper-Hughes in the August issue of the journal Anthropology Today on public/engaged anthropology was picked up by the British publication Times Higher Education on September 3. Scheper-Hughes argues that anthropologists should be publicly engaged but that universities do not reward public roles and contributions. UK academics, according to the article, are facing increased pressure to make their research relevant to public issues and thus face the challenge of how to convince their academic employers to recognize such contributions.

• Hugh Gusterson, professor of anthropology at George Mason University is quoted in an article on the Human Terrain System (HTS) in the September 8 issue of Foreign Policy. Gusterson emphasizes that, according to the longstanding code of ethics of the American Anthropological Association, “The prime directive is that you do no harm to informants” and that the information produced by Human Terrain teams is “inherently double-edged” because, while it may indeed reduce the amount of force by providing leaders alternative courses of action such as negotiation or a development project, it can also be accessed by military intelligence who may use it to target Taliban operatives. Gusterson argues that involvement of anthropologists with the HTS may taint the entire discipline with a reputation of miilitary collaboration.

• It’s fascinating to observe when the mainstream media do and do not mention that a particular high visibility person is an anthropologist. Paul Farmer, for example, is often described as a charismatic doctor with no mention of his being a medical anthropologist with a PhD from Harvard. Ashraf Ghani, who recently ran for president of Afghanistan, has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia and taught anthropology before joining the World Bank and then serving as Minister of Finance in Afghanistan. His World Bank and government credentials tend to be given center stage. Much less frequent is the attribution of “anthropologist” to someone who isn’t. In the September 8 article in Foreign Policy, we are told that David Kilcullen, who played a key role in developing the Human Terrain System has a PhD in anthropology. He does not. He earned a PhD in politics at the University of New South Wales. His dissertation was based on ethnographic research carried out in Indonesia and South Timor, so he stands as a prominent example of a non-anthropologist who uses anthropological methods. It is perhaps significant that, as opposed to a U.S. anthropologist, Kilcullen (an Australian who is not an anthropologist) plays such an important role consulting for the U.S. Department of State in its war efforts and in promoting the use of social scientists, especially anthropologists in the HTS.