Month: January 2007

I have spent three entries on why anthropologist should not put limits on the professional opportunities an anthropologist should accept. I want to offer some links to other viewpoints on the web. In 2002, NPR broadcast a debate between Anthropologists Catherine Lutz of Brown University and Anna Simons from the Naval Postgraduate school in Montery, CA.

Both the Savageminds website and David Price writing in CounterPunch discuss the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholarship Program which funds students for language and cultural studies in exchange for working at CIA.…

Of course I’m an anthropologist, and I’ve been doing what I do for a decade. I think I’m one of the fortunate people that since leaving graduate school I’ve never taken a job as anything but an anthropologist. The question is am I just an anthropologist and the answer is absolutely not. Frankly in my field we can’t employ people who are just experienced in anthropology, we require more areas of expertise than that.…

Much of the conversation about who is an anthropologist is about the appropriateness of “secret” research. Currently the stance of many anthropologists and the AAA code of ethics is that no professional anthropologist should engage in secret research. This means you should avoid research were the data and analysis cannot be openly scrutinized by your peers. (Please see my previous entry, were I agree that the field of anthropology has not always been a paragon of ethical behavior.)…

Its amazing how otherwise bright people can spend a goofy amount of energy trying to determine just who is in the tribe of anthropology and who is not. It’s not that I object to keeping an eye the quality of the profession, I am all for it. My own little corner of the anthropology world is chock-full of dreadful charlatans that believe Ethnography is as easy as mashing the record button on a video camera and asking inept questions.…