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| From the November 2003
Anthropology News
Speaking Out on War, Peace and Power Towards a Preventative Diplomacy Roberto J Gonzalez In the wake of 9/11, US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the “War on Terror,” a growing number of anthropologists are using mass media to publicly comment upon war, peace and American power. Such commentaries, published in newspapers and magazines or broadcast over the airwaves, have analyzed our country’s involvement in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, the Balkans and Latin America. This work represents a publicly engaged anthropology that is desperately needed today. Official statements from the highest levels of government reveal appalling levels of ethnocentrism and ignorance about world history, culture and geography. Provide Context Such articles place current events in historical context and demonstrate the importance of culture, language and religion. Our discipline is uniquely positioned to inform citizens, since we integrate multiple perspectives—from the streets, barrios, villages, and refugee camps, as well as airports, luxury hotels, and boardrooms. While collecting articles for an anthology of commentaries on the global effects of American power, I found that some anthropologists had predicted impending political and humanitarian disasters months or even years in advance. In the wake of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani published a commentary (“Cut Off Arms Flow and Let Afghans Unite,” Los Angeles Times, Feb 15, 1989) in which he argued that the US should not abandon the country. If his advice had been taken, the Taliban’s rise might have been less likely. During the early 1990s (long before the incident depicted in Black Hawk Down), Anna Simons published op-ed pieces warning about the dangers of military intervention in Somalia (see “Our Abysmal Ignorance about Somalia,” Washington Post, Dec 6, 1992). Fadwa El Guindi wrote an article explaining that the repression of Algerian women was unlikely to be connected to Islamic opposition groups, but rather to a corrupt government terrorizing its own population (“UN Should Act to Protect Muslim Women,” Newsday, Apr 13, 1998). Others including Beatriz Manz (“US Dollars Forge Guatemalan Chains,” New York Times, Mar 18, 1985) and Catherine Lutz (“Our Legacy of War,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Sep 28, 2001) have addressed our government’s complicity in maintaining dictatorial regimes abroad. More recently, anthropologists have warned of serious trouble ahead in Latin America, Pakistan and the Middle East. Leslie Gill (“Unveiling US Policy in Colombia,” Foreign Policy in Focus, Apr 19, 2002) has consistently critiqued the escalation of our military’s involvement in Colombia’s 40-year civil war, and has drawn attention to the dangerous blurring of counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics programs in that country. Kamran Asdar Ali (“Pakistan’s Dilemma,” Middle East Report Online, Sep 19, 2001) has analyzed the dangerous state of affairs in Pakistan, where poverty, violence, and the threat of nuclear war with India has created a situation that encourages religious extremism. Jeff Halper, director of the Jerusalem-based Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, has written impassioned articles in which he argues that an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories is a necessary prerequisite to ending years of bloodshed (“After the Invasion: Now What?” CounterPunch, Apr 11, 2002).
Aim to Forestall Crises Current approaches based upon gunboat diplomacy and Realpolitik have proven to be unsustainable in economic and humanitarian terms, and indeed survival terms. There are formidable barriers to such public engagement. The corporate media is becoming more restrictive and homogenous. TV appearances by independent scholars are rare on CNN and Sunday morning talk shows. Instead, official government spokespersons and self-proclaimed “experts” from privately funded think tanks offer a narrow range of opinions. News editors frequently filter scenes of people who are suffering overseas, particularly if our government’s foreign policy is implicated. The need for anthropological input is greater than ever. Although some might argue that anthropologists should work directly for government agencies (as Mead, Benedict, Murdock, and Kluckhohn did during World War II), such efforts haven’t always resulted in humane policies. In the 1940s some anthropologists helped administer internment camps where 110,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were incarcerated. During the Cold War, some anthropologists undertook clandestine projects with the US military in Southeast Asia, providing detailed data on peasant communities for use in counterinsurgency efforts. Deployment of anthropological knowledge—especially by wartime government agencies—is not free of contradictions, ethical dilemmas, and abuses, which is worth remembering today as the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department vigorously recruit area specialists for the “War on Terror.” A potentially effective way of overcoming these pitfalls might include a renewed anthropological emphasis on public engagement in foreign policy debates. David Price convincingly argues that “we have a fundamental duty as scholars and citizens to counter the limited views of American and allied policymakers . . . efforts in this direction would be most effective if we operate as citizen-scholars outside of governmental agencies” (Anthropology Today, March 2002, pp 3-5). The expansion of US influence across the globe is leading to new imperial relationships largely invisible to Americans, which are radically transforming (and sometimes disrupting) millions of lives. An anthropology that communicates these realities directly to the public—independent of government channels—holds great promise towards strengthening preventive diplomacy, especially if it sparks citizen action. Publicly engaged citizen-scholarship might demonstrate anthropology’s contemporary relevance and vitality. In this we have much to contribute to our country and the world.
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