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Originally Posted by abaya
I'm a little late to the thread, but I'd have to go with the latter, rb. I see these kinds of anthropologists as mercenaries. In my dep't, we get recruiting e-mails from the government pretty often, promising all kinds of goodies if fresh PhD's would be willing to go to places of military interest and act as go-betweens, translators, etc. We've all laughed loudly and shaken our heads, whenever we receive these e-mails. None of us would touch that with a ten foot pole. It has nothing to do with us being American citizens (of which half of us are not, in my department... keep in mind that a shit-ton of grad students in the US are foreign) or being "divorced" from the real world. I have no intention of going into the ivory tower, but I would never use my ethnographic skills to abet any kind of military activity whatsoever.
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The war is already THERE, you are not helping military activity you are helping PEOPLE, people who are DYING. Note the all caps, you feel your imaginary anthropology code of ethics you would be letting people DIE because you feel its wrong to somehow interfere? Its about being human, not an american, though it would be nice if you didn't hold your non-oath code of ethics over the lives of US soldiers, but I don't thats too much to ask of people.
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which I find unfortunate for the discipline.
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I want you to think about this and yes you are very very high in an ivory tower right now, looking down on humanity with dispassionate eyes with a code of ethics that doesn't even really exist, as you said it gives you no court protection because its not recognized as such. You find it unfortunate that anthropologists are helping people in a life or death situation.
Thats really sad.
Army: We don't understand what the problem is, why do we have so many suicide bombers coming from this one particular village?
Anthropologist: I can see the problem but my code of ethics keeps me from helping you.
Army: 30 civilians were killed last week alone and we lost 8 marines!
Anthropologist: I'm sorry I can not help you, it would be unethical.
Ironically this is most likely one of the few practical uses for anthropology I've ever heard and its apparently unethical, go figure eh?
Well thankfully not every anthropologist is so 'ethical'.