Anthropologist Fazia Rizvi points to an article by Maureen Dowd where she argues that the White House should hire an anthropologist:
Corporations have begun hiring anthropologists to help them improve product designs and interpret markets. And clearly, the Bush foreign policy team doesn’t understand any of the markets where it is barging around ineptly trying to sell America and democracy.
(…)
It’s stunning that nearly four decades after Vietnam, our government could be even more culturally illiterate and pigheaded. The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react.
One smart anthropologist reinforcing the idea that “mirroring” – assuming other cultures think like us – doesn’t work would be a lot more helpful than all of the discredited intelligence agencies that are costing $30 billion a year to miss everything from the breakup of the Soviet Union to 9/11 to no WMD to Osama’s hiding place to the Hamas victory.
Maureen Dow on why the White House should really hire an anthropologist
I am thoroughly entertained with the the idea suggested by a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist by the name of Maureen Dow, in her article titled, “Bush could benefit from an anthropologist”… given that recent blog posts by me like this one here and here
made a similar argument in a 2004 commentary piece I wrote on the Bush administration’s policy regarding the Middle East and terrorism. For those interested, you can see it at: http://culturalcommentary.blogspot.com/2006/03/bushs-battle-with-science.html
Thanks! I’ve added you blog to my anthropology blog newspaper and anthropology newsticker