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Neoliberal applied anthropology: Who owns the research — the anthropologist or the sponsor?

Published on May 12, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, ethics, University / Academia

At the Society for Applied Anthropology Meetings this year Hugh Gusterson had a startling experience: A “practicing anthropologist” refused to tell me him who or what, she studies. That has never happened before. In the article Where Are We Going? Engaging Dilemmas In Practicing Anthropology in Anthropology News May 2006, Guterson poses fundamental quiestions. The number of anthropologists working for industry and government agencies grows. So:

Who owns applied anthropological research—the researcher or the sponsor? If applied research is confidential, and thus exempt from peer review, how do we assure its quality and integrity? What recourse is there for an anthropologist under contract of confidentiality who decides they have an obligation to make public what their sponsor wants to keep quiet (say, information about indigenous opposition to a dam, or native Americans’ experience of abuse at the hands of the Department of the Interior, or corruption in the Pentagon or the World Bank)?

Is it acceptable to study people not in order to advocate for them or to interpret them in the open literature, but for the purpose of providing privileged information to sponsors who want to control them? What will happen to our professional meetings, to their warm conviviality, if more people come to them refusing to discuss their research? And how is our discipline even to keep track of possible conflicts of interest if anthropologists are refusing to identify their research in public?

He continues and concludes:

One colleague suggested that we acknowledge two separate communities: those doing academic anthropology and those doing what he called “dirty anthropology” (as, I think, in “quick and…”). He suggested each have its own ethical guidelines. But do we really want to say that anthropologists are no longer a single community guided by a common code of conduct?

The rise of neoliberal applied anthropology is a scandal waiting to happen. We ignore it at our professional peril. It is time to lay out some clear rules of the road to give guidance to applied anthropology colleagues working on this new frontier, and to enhance their bargaining power with powerful contractors.

>> read the whole article in Anthropology News (link updated)

“War on terror”: CIA sponsers anthropologists to gather sensitive information

Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relations

Murray L. Wax: Some Issues and Sources on Ethics in Anthropology

Do anthropologists have anything relevant to say about human rights?

Published on April 9, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, development empowerment

Anthropology News April focuses on the topic anthropology and human rights. Both anthropologists and non-anthropologists have been asked to answer the question: Do anthropologists have anything useful or relevant to say about human rights?

In Gerald F Hyman’s view (Director, USAID Office of Democracy and Governance), anthropologists contribute little to the development of human rights themselves or a human rights regime because anthropologists are skeptical of normative claims.

Sheila Dauer from amnesty international makes a similar point, criticizing the idea that human rights are a Western idea and than introducing them might even be a neocolonial act:

When anthropologists support the idea that the changes the changes people are working for on the ground that are based on human rights standards are “Western” or “neocolonial,” they are using the same argument used by governments and others in power to repress less powerful sectors of society—ethnic and racial minorities, women and other groups. Within the human rights movement, conceptualizing human rights standards as universal is now thought of as bringing local meanings into dialogue with human rights standards to mutually reinterpret them and to find ways they can apply locally—a kind of cultural negotiation.

(related see Democracy Isn’t ‘Western’ by Amartya Sen that also was debated on Savage Minds)

Victoria Sanford calls for “activist scholarship”:

It is not uncommon within the academy for lived experience to be dismissed as unscientific or not relevant to real, objective scholarship. This is completely backwards because it is the academy that needs to be relevant to the reality of lived experience.

Advocacy and activism do not diminish one’s scholarly research. On the contrary, activist scholarship reminds us that all research is inherently political—even, and perhaps especially, that scholarship presented under the guise of “objectivity” is often little more than a veiled defense of the status quo. Anthropologists can do better than that. We can and should use our expertise to support rights claims in the communities where we work.

She has a nice homepage with lots of pictures and several articles about her conflict and peace research in Guatemala and Colombia.

Veena Das is sceptical. Institutional transformations in the universities in the US and elsewhere are threatening the kind of free inquiry on which critical understanding rests:

I see a far greater threat to anthropology’s capabilities for engaging politically difficult questions based upon good evidence from everyday practices that govern research in universities than from direct censorship.

~~>> read the whole article in Anthropology News~~ (removed, no longer available)

UPDATE (9.10.06):
The October 06 issue of Anthropology News asks the question ~~Do Anthropologists Have an Ethical Obligation to Promote Human Rights?~~ (removed)

“We have a huge responsibility to give back to the places we study from”

Annelise Riles: Anthropology, Human Rights, and Legal Knowledge: Culture in the Iron Cage

Sally Engle Merry: Human Rights Law and the Demonization of Culture (And Anthropology Along the Way)

Links updated 12.5.2018

In Gerald F Hyman's view (Director,…

Popular IT-anthropologists: Observe families until they go to bed

Published on April 4, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, culture traditions, technology

Intel recently advertised four anthropologist openings and had more than 300 applicants, including top-notch researchers from the best schools according to Union Tribune San Diego. The newspaper portrays several IT-anthropologists, among others Anne Kirah who is heading a team of eight anthropologists at Microsoft:

She focused on immigrants and refugees in her anthropology graduate studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. Today, she takes notes on people’s daily lives, from Japan to France and Australia, in her role as Microsoft’s chief anthropologist. Data from the families she studies led the company to add several features to the Vista operating system, due out next year.

Much of the team’s research is conducted without a link to a specific product:

The anthropologists will typically spend two days with people, or families, who have agreed to let them into their lives. Kirah will knock on the subject’s door at the hour when they wake up and stay with them until they go to bed.

For anthropologists who wonder if they need to be a computer geek in order to work as an IT-anthropologists: When Anne Kirah was ansked if she was interested to work for Microsoft she “thought Microsoft made chips, and I didn’t really know what a chip was.”

INTEL-anthropologist Genevieve Bell compares academic and business life:

One of the biggest differences between her Intel research and university studies is that she doesn’t have to spend a lot of time writing grant proposals, she said. And instead of teaching in a Stanford classroom, she’s introducing social science to engineers in meeting rooms, she said. “I’m doing vibrant, rich, rewarding work that’s intellectually exciting,” Bell said. “I’m giving a voice to people who otherwise wouldn’t be in the conversation.”

Also a former suicide-prevention counselor (Kelly Chessen) were engaged by a computer company – that actually specializes in data-recovery:

While the counseling of computer-crash victims might sound humorous, a hard-drive meltdown can create despair on the same level as the suicide hotline, Chessen said. She has taken calls from people who have just been fired over lost data or who are facing the loss of years of work or the demise of an entire small business.

“We’ve had people talk about taking their lives if their data can’t be restored,” Chessen said. “A lot of my job is really just listening to people, even when they’re angry and yelling. I help give them hope.”

>> read the whole story in the Union Tribune

>> Microsoft and the Australian tribe – Interview with Anne Kirah (ABC Radio Australia)

(all links updated 3.1.17)

INTEL and Microsoft conference “a coming-out party” for ethnography

INTEL-ethnographers challenge our assumptions of the digital divide

Office Culture – good overview about corporate anthropology in FinancialTimes

Too engaged anthropology? The Lumpenproletariat on the US-Mexican Border

Published on March 26, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology (general), anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, books, ethics, migration, Northern America, poverty, Us and Them

“The most important information, which we can get out of this study, is how and what kind of action one can take.”

How much should anthropologists get involved in changing the lives of their informants? Johannes Wilm didn’t limit his research to presenting his findings about the daily life in in Douglas, an US-mexican border town. In his conclusion of his book On the Margins: US Americans in a bordertown to Mexico, he considers several forms for action.

The challenge: More than half of the 14000 inhabitants in Douglas are unemployed, 53% of the under 18 years old are officially living under the poverty line. The main source of income for the town: Smuggling of people and drugs. He proposes among others:

Constantly high unemployment figures can tell us, that an organization of the lumpenproletariat is neccessary in the planning of a world revolution or some more localized struggle for a democratic and economically just society.

It becomes obvious that Wilm works within a Marxist framework. He is an peace and media activist and has been socialized through the globalisation from below movement.

People in bordertowns are especially skilled, he found:

Also, in a border town, knowledge is spread according to a much more heterogeneous pattern, and a group of people cooperating across the various barriers will therefore be likely to build up a great amount of knowledge of how to circumvent the power apparatus of either of the involved states. Just for this, in the planning of a cross-national or global change, towns like Douglas should not be ignored.

In bordertowns, we find more ethnic diversity than in other areas. This might be a hinder? Wilm denies:

While ethnic diversity often has been seen as a hinder to organisation, it seems that combined with unemployment, its force is not as negative. In cases where people are forced to live close together and each person only has access to a part of the things seen as desirable (…), it even integrates rather than segregates.

The inhabitants with Mexican background are often “the better Americans”:

And while lots of Hispanics with strong personal ties to Mexico in Douglas seem to believe in the “American way of life”, it is Anglos that are the first ones to actively break out of the hegemonic space once they have the chance. (…) It is Anglos that represent resistance and not Hispanics.

He quotes an Hispanic father who has returned from the war in Iraq:

“Seen to many dead children”, he explains, while he almost seems to start to cry. However, he finds time commenting on the amount of Anglos in the military. “I guess white people don’t like serving their country that much” as he puts it.

Generally, he found, that ethnicity / race or class don’t play a role in the daily life in Douglas. That’s due to the economic crisis in his view:

Even though Douglas has had a history of segregation based on ethnicity, the complete lack of any kind of job for vast proportions of the population, and consequently the prevalence of the lumpenproletariat, has also done away with the ethnic model of stratification. None of my Anglo informants are in any position of power due to their ethnic background.

(…)

Had I been in Douglas during the good days of American capitalism, while Phelps Dodge still was there, they would have been strictly segregated according to race in the earlier period, or according to income layer in the latter period. Keoki, Art and Tim, all with somewhat more of an intellectual background also find themselves in this classless society in which everyone is part of the lumpenproletariat.

While I agree that advocacy is one of anthropologists’ jobs, we should, I think, be cautious about presenting final solutions as he does when he describes the problems connected with organizing people:

(…) A fourth problem (…), the amount of Marxist or anarchist literature read by the members of the lumpenproletariat seems quite low, and is often replaced by the Bible, Adam Smith or, in the case of the cultural elite, various critics who are looking at single issues. This means that agitation has to start from the very beginning.
(…) What has to be done, is to develop a generic psychologic strategy to win over people with background from “serving the nation”.

>> more information on the book

>> download the whole book (pdf, 30 MB )

"The most important information, which we can get out of this study, is how and what kind of action one can take."

How much should anthropologists get involved in changing the lives of their informants? Johannes Wilm didn't limit his research…

Two more Anthro-blogs and an anthropological consultancy

Published on March 22, 2006 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, corporate & business anthropology, websites

My so-called anthropology newspaper is getting more and more crowded. The most recent addition is Cultural commentary”, a blog by anthropologist Marcel J. Harmon. He is partner and founding member of the consultancy Human Inquiry, that “applies anthropological/ethnographic methods within an evolutionary framework” to among others “improve human applications of technology, increase profits, and maximize productivity by analyzing how people use technology – from laptop computers to architectural spaces – thus enhancing the enjoyment, comfort, efficiency, satisfaction, and safety of both customers and employees”.

Also added: The life of PhD with the subtitle “Writing a PhD can be fun, but it can also be torture. This is my space for coming to terms with writing my thesis”. Many thoughts about the writing and working process!

>> anthropology newspaper

>> anthropology newsticker

My so-called anthropology newspaper is getting more and more crowded. The most recent addition is Cultural commentary", a blog by anthropologist Marcel J. Harmon. He is partner and founding member of the consultancy Human Inquiry, that "applies anthropological/ethnographic methods within…