Northern America | antropologi.info

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

Published on June 3, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, applied anthropology, ethics, fieldwork / methods, Northern America, politics

“A CIA scheme to sponsor trainee spies secretly through US university courses has caused anger among UK academics, the BBC reports. The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program pays anthropology students up to $50,000 (£27,500) a year. They are expected to use the techniques of “fieldwork” to gather political and cultural details on other countries. Britain’s Association of Social Anthropologists called the scholarships ethically “dangerous” and divisive.”

“Undergraduates taking part in the scholarship programme must not reveal their funding source and are expected to attend military intelligence summer camps.”

The CIAs activities are defended by an American anthropologist (Felix Moos, University of Kansas). He wrote according the BBC in Anthropology Today: “The United States is at war. Thus, to put it simply, the existing divide between academe and the intelligence community has become a dangerous and very real detriment to our national security at home and abroad.” >> read the whole article (BBC)

Let’s hope anthropologists say NO to the CIA!

This story reminds me on Montgomery McFate’s controversial article Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of Their Curious Relations where she urges anthropologists to cooperate with the military and Dustin M. Wax’s comments: “a functioning anthropology can never be on the side of U.S. forces”.

UPDATE 2 (6.5.05): More on the return of spies to college campuses in the Kansas City Star

PS: By the way. Check what kind of definition of anthropology the BBC uses on their website: “the study of esp. primitive peoples”…

The CIA’s Campus Spies. Exposing the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (Dave H. Price, Counterpunch, 12.3.05)

Anthropologists as Spies (David Price, The Nation, 20.11.00)

"A CIA scheme to sponsor trainee spies secretly through US university courses has caused anger among UK academics, the BBC reports. The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program pays anthropology students up to $50,000 (£27,500) a year. They are expected to…

Book review: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life

Published on April 28, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, culture traditions, fieldwork / methods, medical anthropology / ethnobothany, Northern America

USA Today

Medical anthropologist and University of California-San Francisco professor Sharon Kaufman, relies on extensive research and two years of firsthand observations in three hospitals. Kaufman’s book wrestles with death and dying. She describes how 27 people pass their final days and hours. In the epilogue, she notes that she had not expected to spend half her time in intensive-care units. >> continue

USA Today

Modern American family: Strained and losing intimacy

Published on March 20, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, Northern America, Us and Them

The intimate moments that once were the glue of American family life are disappearing amid job demands and nonstop activities. Scientists at UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families have spent the past four years observing 32 Los Angeles families in a study of how working America somehow gets it done. Day after day. “We’ve scheduled and outsourced a lot of our relationships,” says the study’s director, Elinor Ochs, a linguistic anthropologist. “There isn’t much room for the flow of life, those little moments when things happen spontaneously.

For Ochs, the most worrisome trend is how indifferently people treat each other, especially when they reunite at day’s end. In her view, the chilly exchanges repeated in so many of the study’s households suggests something has gone awry. >> continue

Collision of cultures? Somali immigrants share New England’s small-town values

Published on March 13, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, culture traditions, migration, Northern America, Us and Them

St.Petersburg Times

As almost 1,400 Somali refugees poured in this nearly all-white New England town, the natives weren’t quite sure what to make of them. Here were people who looked different, spoke little English and had little money. And expected this city of 35,000 to find them jobs and places to live.

But these Muslims from Africa, it turned out, shared many of Lewiston’s small-town values. The Somalis wanted to raise their kids in a safe, quiet community where faith was important. As both groups discovered, things as simple as potluck dinners and henna hand painting can go a long way toward bridging a vast cultural divide.

Heather Lindkvist, an anthropologist at Bates College, has studied the local Somali migration to Lewiston, Maine.
>> continue

St.Petersburg Times

As almost 1,400 Somali refugees poured in this nearly all-white New England town, the natives weren't quite sure what to make of them. Here were people who looked different, spoke little English and had little money. And expected this…

Ethnographic lecture confronts female gang myths

Published on February 21, 2005 by lorenz Posted in anthropology in the news, books, fieldwork / methods, gender, Northern America, youth

The Lantern, Ohio State University

In a presentation titled “The Politics of Representation,” ethnographer Marie “Keta” Miranda addressed the general misrepresentation of gang members, but focused largely on women. She discussed the knowledge she gained through her ethnographic collaboration with Chicana youths in Oakland, Calif., published in the 2003 book “Homegirls in the Public Sphere”.

It is important to recognize that women in gangs do have agency and they do make significant decisions. She said the gangs she studied in northern California were unique because they consisted entirely of young women. Miranda stressed the need for people in power to change their approach in order to provide more understanding of subculture groups. >> continue

SEE ALSO:
Homegirls in the Public Sphere – Reviewed by Ramona Lee Pérez, New York University (Association of Feminist Anthropology)

The Lantern, Ohio State University

In a presentation titled "The Politics of Representation," ethnographer Marie "Keta" Miranda addressed the general misrepresentation of gang members, but focused largely on women. She discussed the knowledge she gained through her ethnographic collaboration with Chicana…