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“It is Probably too Complicated for Them”

Anthropologists, the State and National Security

Gregory Feldman
U British Columbia

Matters of national security invoke globalization insofar as foreign policy elites conceive of security crises (for example, terrorism, illegal immigration, drug trafficking) as originating from somewhere external to the nation-state. In response to such threats, states attempt to increase border controls through, for example, increased military patrols, tighter immigration regulations and stricter customs inspections. Security threats also induce greater collaboration among nation-states, either bilaterally or through the auspices of international organizations, thereby strengthening the inter-state system. Anthropologists are paying more attention to matters of (inter)national security. Their studies, which carry significant policy implications, often show how transnational processes aggravate violent, local conflict and place great strain on the inter-state system.

Despite new insights on peace, conflict, and international security, anthropologists remain on the fringes of foreign and security policy debates. There are perhaps two reasons that help to explain this situation. First, the discipline’s staunch convention that fieldwork is done in uncomfortable surroundings among marginalized people discourages research on how people in positions of authority conceive the world around them and operationalize foreign and security policy accordingly. Laura Nader’s call to “study up” has yet to take hold in anthropology, and, to some extent, this situation leaves policymakers unfamiliar with anthropologists. It certainly limits anthropological knowledge of how international security is conducted as an elite social practice. Second, the disciplines of political science and international relations so heavily dominate debate, discussion, and scholarship on foreign and security policy that policymakers cannot imagine what anthropology could offer. A condescending example comes from my own fieldwork among Nordic diplomats and officials from the Estonian government, European Commission, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. When discussing my research with one particular diplomat, he snidely replied, “I didn’t think that anthropologists studied security and the state. It is probably too complicated for them.”

If anthropologists are to take a permanent seat at the table of foreign and security policy, then representing people marginalized by the inter-state system is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. Anthropologists could increase the discipline’s profile on foreign and security policy in two ways. First, they could conduct more ethnographic studies of diplomats and other foreign policy elites to better understand how these elites conceptualize international security and how this conception renders certain categories of people as potential security threats. This ethnographic project would also open up new lines of communication with policy elites. Second, anthropologists could examine more closely the many ways in which the inter-state system is constituted against the messiness of globalization rather than eroded by it. This research agenda would also help to build ties to the “critical constructivist” camp in international relations, a group whose provocative work on constructions of state, threat, identity and difference has kept it at odds with that discipline’s mainstream.

Understanding Diplomats
Regarding the first proposition, if anthropologists are to influence foreign and security policy, then it behooves them to master such policymakers’ cultural codes, to learn their metaphors of social understanding, and to circulate in their social and professional networks. This move, as in any fieldwork, is indispensable for gaining legitimacy in their circles and communicating in their register. My ethnographic work suggests that foreign and security policy is strongly guided by Boasian assumptions: cultures form concrete wholes; cultures are only intelligible in their own particular historical and geographic contexts; and ethical judgments across cultural lines should be made cautiously. Boasian anthropology meshes with diplomacy’s foundational assumptions: violating another state’s sovereignty is taboo; states naturally correspond to closed territories and coherent national cultures; and states may consider their own particular circumstances when deciding how to specifically implement international minority rights treaties. These assumptions reinforce a model of international security in which the world is imagined as a mosaic of discreet and culturally homogenous units with each holding the other snugly in place. As such, anthropology’s contributions to the understanding of international security lie not only in its expertise on what policymakers now narrowly recognize as the “culture” factor in nationalist conflict. Rather, anthropology’s deeper contributions derive from the political insights gained from its own critique of early American anthropology. These insights directly apply to the discursive framework through which elites conceive of security threats and conduct foreign policy.

The Inter-State System
Regarding the second proposition, anthropologists have not paid enough attention to how the inter-state system interacts with globalization. It is well known that particular nation-states legitimize themselves through the designation of international migrants as cultural others, as “aliens” in a homogenous territory, and as potential threats to a sovereign cultural order. However, the point that needs elaboration is that each nation-state has a vested interest in the security of other nation-states since excessive blurriness in one jeopardizes the supposed coherence of the others. From an (inter)national security perspective, aliens—legal or illegal—are sources of “threat” because they are identified as “matter out of place,” to borrow Mary Douglas’s phrase. States construct aliens as dislocated from their proper territorial place in the global mosaic until they either naturalize or return to their home countries—hence passport controls, visa regulations and other surveillance techniques. International security as a social practice produces that “matter” through its own mosaic model of a stable and secure world. Therefore, anthropological intervention in foreign and security policy should focus on how the system generates that which it designates as an “objective” threat and on how it subsequently legitimizes its existence in its efforts to contain those threats. Globalization and international migration in particular do not jeopardize the inter-state system per se. Rather, these are the system’s preconditions.

These points have not been explored fully enough because anthropologists pay more attention to globalization’s challenge to the nation-state rather than the inter-state system’s reaction to globalization. This situation partly keeps foreign policy elites from realizing that anthropologists have something to say about international security. It also denies anthropologists an opportunity to apply their knowledge to the benefit of those marginalized by foreign and security policy. Both problems could be rectified by engaging with policymakers about how they come to identify certain categories of people as potential security threats. Indeed, the limits of foreign and security policy do not only arise from ignorance about the people implicated in security policy, but also from diplomacy’s starting assumptions about what constitutes “nations,” “citizens,” “aliens” and “threats.” Anthropologists have a constructive role to play in destabilizing how these categories function in diplomatic practice, for the sake of creating room for a broader range of more equitable policy options. Importantly, most diplomats I have encountered would not dismiss anthropology as easily as the gentleman quoted above. They are receptive to numerous perspectives, but anthropology needs to take its own perspectives to them.

Gregory Feldman is a cultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor of International Migration at U British Columbia. He has co-organized a session, “The State of the State in Europe” for this year’s Annual Meeting in Chicago.

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