Over at the Anthrodesign list they have been talking about anthro’s in the military quite a bit. If you have any interest in applied anthropology, this is a very active discussion forum http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/anthrodesign/.

It has me thinking, so here is an e-mail I sent the list today.

Cheers,
Mark

Most people that know me know that I want to see anthropologists working in the widest possible breadth of areas: non-profit, academics, industry, military. Personally you wont find me doing work for the tobacco industry or Wal-Mart anytime soon, but thats a personal choice. I didn’t resent my uncle, the tobacco executive, and I don’t have an issue with an anthropologist working for people I would not care to. For a time the AAA code of ethics forbid anthropologist from doing any kind of research that could not be made public. I solved the problem by not rejoining the AAA for a time until the statement changed. If it changes in a way that conflicts with my professional life or personal opinions again, then I will drop out again. Its not like the AAA is going to miss me!

But this does not mean that I don’t think about ethics often and deeper than some of my writing on ethnography.com might suggest. I do, but its much like other aspects of my life: Ethics are a “normal” concern for lack of a better word. I have faced more than a few and learned to make peace with most of those issues. When it crops up in professional conversations, I am more frustrated that it feels like the first time some people have really thought about this. I was lucky, at the University of South Carolina we were required to take an ethics class before we were allowed to start fieldwork. My graduate work in a state prison was full of ethical problems (for and example of just one of the many, please see my post on a situation I encountered during my fieldwork in a state prison) as you might imagine when working with an incarcerated population who’s rights were limited and the system was designed to prevent privacy or anonymity. What I learned while a naive graduate student is that you have to choose a lot. Roboticly following a code of ethics can be just as bad as ignoring them. I am OK without absolute informed consent, but that is also a very contextual choice. For example, I was acquainted with an anthropologist studying issues related to law enforcement (if I am remembering the focus correctly). In order to get as close as possible he trained and became a full time police officer. He wrote about what he saw, heard and learned but as he stated to me once, when the wife is waving a butcher knife at you and her husband, stopping and requesting a consent form is not a very realistic option.

Even now in the work I do which is fairly benign, people don’t have 100% informed consent. They don’t know who I am working for or the specific purpose of the research. It could be a company or organization they hate. But, on the other hand, they do agree up front to participate even though they know that information will not be forthcoming. Some would argue that my participants should be told regardless, thats an argument I find too paternalistic for my taste. I think people are generally smart enough to make their own choices in that regard.

The part the actually causes me the most concern, and I don’t have an answer for it yet, is what happens when people question who an anthropologist is really working for, as happened to Laura’s friend. I cant yet articulate why I am on the side I am, but all I can say for now it that its not enough to outweigh the benefits of anthropologists in military organizations. Part of it is being a realist, if not a particularly hopeful one. War, oppression, abuse are all part and parcel of our deeply flawed selves. I don’t believe the philosophy that if people just chose to not participate it would all go away. I also believe very strongly that I since I see war and threat as a constant inevitable, I would prefer to have people like us working on the problem rather than someone that believes that the US is the center of the universe.

How to square that with the danger of anthologists in the field, I just don’t know. I only know at this moment is that its still not enough to sway me and is a source of internal conflict when I think about the issue.

Of course, its all an academic question for me. The biggest threat I face these days is a nasty paper cut or a participants dog chewing up my field equipment.

Anyone that has spent time reading my entries in this blog already knows that I am an advocate of anthropologists working in all levels of government, military and intelligence communities. The latest entry into the conversation is from this New York Times piece entitled “Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones”.

By all accounts in the press, which I readily acknowledge from personal experience can be a dubious source, the presence of anthropologists has been effective in actually reducing the violence in some areas. In the article the reporter naturally seeks out the opinions of people that are of the opposing view, and that is only due diligence. An issue I have with all the reporting of the controversy is it focuses on anthropologists that only think its evil. I have seen little written that reflects the anthropologists that I have discussed the topic with that don’t have a major concern with it. They might disagree with someone’s interest in working in the military out of their political views, but even then, I have not run across an anthropologist that would turn their back on a colleague that chose to do so. Its just a difference… no more no less.

The quote in the piece that for me underscores that lackluster argument that most anthropologists provide against working with the military is from Roberto J. González, an anthro professor at San Jose State University. He simply dismisses those anthropologists in the program as “naïve and unethical.” Frankly that’s a cheap shot for which he has no evidence that I can ascertain. Has he spoken with the anthropologists in question? How does he know they did not wrestle with their own ethical issues and simply come to a different conclusion than his own? I have minimal experience with the military (not as an anthropologist, in my former profession as an instructional developer), and found the people in the military to be a lot like people I meet in businesses, schools, movie theaters and anthro departments. Human beings with desires, needs, egos, gifts and flaws. Some are boy/girl scouts and some are rotten and most are just people doing a job.

To suggest that an anthropologist that works with the military is naive is saying that they have somehow gotten through life and grad school without ever once picking up a newspaper or being yammered at by the local Marxist hold-out. Dr. Gonzalez, you the and Network of Concerned Anthropologists are not the only social scientists aware that the US government, military and intelligence agencies have all committed abuses in the past and undoubtedly will in the future. But it seems the solution to that would be to encourage people that have the views you hold dear to be a part of those communities where change is much more likely. But as always, criticism is much easier than solutions.

The one issue that I do understand, and I don’t have a ready answer for, is the risk of an anthropologist being accused of covertly working for the government while in the field. I don’t think it’s a good enough reason to simply not to do any government related work. Fieldwork is indeed risky, and I would like to believe that any anthropologist planning on working in a high risk environment has done due diligence in ensuring they have proper contacts, people to vouch for them, etc. But it has to be remembered that the anthropologists that are working in the HTS with the military are not there in a covert capacity. They are there as anthropologists.

This blog is about why ethnographer Erving Goffman’s observation of stigma are important not just to ex-cons, but also to professors like me on foreign exchange programs. Goffman, as many sociologists and anthropologists know, observed the maneuvers of the marginalized and stigmatized in society, and then wrote about how they thought about their disability. He saw that the marginalized were constantly managed their spoiled social identities because they feared public exposure of their disability. To make his point he wrote about ex-cons, ex-mental patients, prostitutes and others. Such stigmatized people, he wrote, are acutely conscious that at any moment any pretense they maintain of being a “normal person” can be unceremoniously disclosed. Mental patients, ex-cons, and prostitutes always wonder if a passing person knows them from their “other” life, simply recognizes the habits and tics they carry with them from that life. What this creates is a “hyper-vigilance” on the part of the stigmatized as they move through their daily routines. They watch everything, and are always wary. To control the stress, the stigmatized avoid situations where they are easily exposed—they fear being the fool, humiliated, or even attacked. Their greatest desire is to be socially invisible, even as they move through the necessary routines of daily life.

In fact, I was mulling over Goffman’s wisdom when walking to the bus stop on my way home two weeks ago. My mind though switched off when I realized that once again, as it is with many new American residents of Germany, I needed to manage my identity with respect to my highly imperfect, ungrammatical, and accented German. I can of course manage this by remaining mute in many social situations. This is surprisingly easy in places like supermarket checkout lines where the numbers on the cash register, hand gestures, and smiles help me pass without disclosing my stigmatized status. But finding the right bus home creates higher risks of disclosure than the supermarket checkout line.

Because I have yet to master bus schedules, I arrived thirty minutes early at my stop that day. Not wanting to stay on my feet, I spied an almost empty bench—only one fellow there to ask “permission” to share. I did this with hand motions, eye contact, a nod, the universal “ok,” and then scrunched into the furthest corner possible from my fellow bench warmer. Terrified at the thought that my bench mate would initiate a conversation, I took the only English language book in my backpack out (Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, no less) and buried my nose into it. This was effective, and the man sharing my bench ignored me. But five minutes later we were approached by an older man who politely asked if the spot between us was “free.” I nodded, smiled, motioned, and grunted, protected once again from having to say anything. But the situation was now more hazardous. There were now three of us on the bench sitting uncomfortably close, and the potential for being unmasked as a linguistic incompetent had uncomfortably increased.

Anyway, I soon decided I wasn’t that tired anyway, and got up and wandered back to the bus stop, even though I was still 15 minutes early. There I leaned against a post, and again tried to bury my nose back in my book. Soon though, I was distracted by what happened next at the bus bench. A woman with dogs on leashes came up. One of the dogs started to sniff at the older man’s bag. There was a brief exchange, and then the woman with the dogs went on. The older man then stood up, picked up his bag, and walked over to where I was standing and then, horror of horrors, he began talking to me. I more or less understood what he said, but could only muster the barest of responses:

Man: Did you see those dogs? They sniffed through my bags!
Me: Grunt.
Man: People should control their dogs, shouldn’t they!
Me: Grunt.
Man: Don’t you think it is an invasion of privacy that dogs will sniff through my bags?
Me: Certainly.

Thankfully, the bus then arrived, resulting in a change of subject. We got on the bus, and then further horrors, he sat near me! What would I do? Too nervous for Max Weber, my hyper-vigilance sensors went up, and I studiously avoided his occasionally friendly gaze, fearing that my incompetence could be further revealed. In this context, I bolted for the door when five minutes later we arrived at the place where I needed to transfer buses. I rushed off the bus, eager to re-embrace the anonymity that would be available on the next bus. But then things became worse. The man was following me onto the bus—he was going in the same direction I was!

With relief, I saw him settled with his bag into a seat far from mine. But still my anxiety did not dissipate until I reached my final stop ten minutes later. Off I stepped, and finally regained my anonymity as just another normal person, anonymous and obscure on a busy German street.

Such hyper-vigilance is exhausting, but also routine when you are a discreditable minority of any kind. Goffman’s mental patients, ex cons, prostitutes, and others were always aware that someone from their former life will strip away the sense of normalcy they desired . But the same principles applies to foreigners in all places, linguistic minorities, ethnic minorities, racial minorities and others who fear a part of their identity will unceremoniously at any time subject them to ridicule, or a loss of honor.

Like the ex-con and mental patients, I seek the comfort of blending and belonging while here in Germany, something I take for granted at Chico State. The sad thing for me was that as a result, I passed up language learning opportunities on my bus ride. In retrospect, I know that I should have bravely plowed ahead, and attempted a conversation with both my fellow bench warmers. After all, intellectually I know that Germans are almost always unfailingly kind to foreigners attempting to learn their language. I know too that it is educationally correct to have a conversation with the two men at the bench, rather than avoiding them. It would also have been enriching to engage the man the one who “followed” me on my two bus rides in small talk about the weather, dogs, his bag, or anything else. I didn’t of course because I value the anonymity of being normal more. As a result, I hid my stigma behind props like Max Weber’s book, and avoid the random encounters of social life which in English, I often delight in.

Both sociologists and anthropologists glamorize the intellectual stimulation such cross-cultural experience I am having. I still believe it is glamorous, and I will continue to encourage students to go abroad and study languages. But there is another value to study abroad experiences, particularly for students who are from the default normative category of their own country. At Chico State, this includes me, as well as the many middle class suburban white students in my undergraduate classes. But studying abroad is also about becoming an outsider who will evaluate every potential social encounter for its capacity to strip away the comfortable anonymity we gain when we hang with people like us. My chance to be an exchange scholar in Germany is of course partly glamorous. But my story is also the one that Goffman wrote about. I am sure that in one year, I will speak better German, and the memories of my constant hyper-vigilance dissipate. But in the meantime, I look forward to the mental exhaustion of both language learning, and stigma management.

For what it is worth, I sleep more here in Germany despite the pleasant Fall weather. Hyper-vigilance is mentally exhausting!

Reference
Goffman, Erving. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity.