MrTia

interesting article, unfortunately, i'm at work and too busy to read the whole thing. maybe i'll print it and read it on the train tonight.

at first blush it seems like a good idea, particularly as these numerous military invasions and military incursions that seem to have become the cornerstone of US foreign policy have in common that they involve countries about whom the policymakers in washington appear to know very little.

i do find myself wondering, yes, whether from a professional point of view it presents ethical problems, a lot like the brouha about doctors and psychiatrists being used to monitor torture sessions. (can you believe that we’re now having to talk about what happens when the US tortures people -- i’m still stunned to now be living in an america where it’s just a matter of policy that the US government tortures people.) i recall the anthropological community being particularly outraged when the administration let the iraqi museums get looted. this is the sort of thing that makes me think that this could be a fruitful short-term partnership but in the long run anrthopologists and the military are going to make poor bedfellows. after all, one of the things that “Shock and Awe” involved was a brutal frontal assault on one of the formative cities of modern civilization. the damage this war has done to anthropology and our sense of humanity’s collective history is inestimable, which kinda puts the military and the anthropologists on different sides of the fence.

from that story...

“We’re looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist’s perspective,” he said. “We’re not focused on the enemy. We’re focused on bringing governance down to the people.”

some interesting hierarchical presuppositions in the use of the word "down" here. that’s another reason why i’m pessimistic about the long-term prospects of a project like this -- a lot of these colonial projects are founded on vaguely patronizing assumptions of submerged universal cultural sameness, which is antithetical to anthopology in its essence. for instance, i was listening to a press conference the other day about iraqi “reconstruction” and why it seemed to be taking so long and the press secretary, falling back on the old blame-the-iraqis-for-not-being-better-at-being-occupied strategy, said, “look, you can’t expect the iraqis to become like us overnight.” my jaw fell to the floor -- become like us? it reminded me of the old line from full metal jacket, “inside every gook there is an american trying to get out.” and that’s the essential disconnect: the laissez-faire capitalist reformation of iraq presumed that somewhere in the iraqi culture an impulse toward western-style entrepeneurship lay latent, and the occupation is failing because this presupposition is so thoroughly, and tragically, wrong. but this is the problem with the philosophy behind the invasion, it’s this idea that all of america outside the continental 48 is some variation of the frontier west, an extension of america that hasn’t found its inner ‘america-ness’ yet. hard to imagine anything less sympathetic to the practice of anthopology than seeing all other cultures as a projection of one’s own, yanno?

__________________
The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
-- Bruce Lee