I would also like to recant a little of what I wrote about the boring and obtuse nature of the discipline. There are vibrant and interesting researchers out there, but they seem to be drowned out and attacked. Still so many anths that think they are philosophers. I was mainly referring to the fact that there are more available forms of pop psychology or economics. Marvin Harris has written stuff that would be our version of Freakinomics or Blink, but again he’s attacked quite often. Psychology has webpages like this: http://www.spring.org.uk/

We need something like that, which would require people to not be so self-righteous, and take themselves less seriously. I also agree with everything in your critique, but I feel that the discipline is being suffocated by a an angry minority that feels that it can define the discipline for everyone. I think people have let them scream at others for so long that they think we’re all like that. I’m all for good solid debate, that’s very healthy, but personal attacks are not called for.

I’m going to think a bit about the points you make here about the military, and get back to you. As always, thanks for your comments.

Tony

I cannot disagree with a thing you said. I don’t know much about the shrouded world of academic hiring. There has been a recent ethnography written from business anthro Karen Ho, about the hiring world of high finance, that make the exact point you just did. In Wall Street she tells us that there is a very strong bias towards hiring and promoting people only from Ivy league schools, in a buddy system. My wife, whose Japanese, told me that it was also a common practice in Japan.

You’re also right about the military, although I don’t think people realize how diverse the various branches in the military are. There is no biasing in the selection process however, so this is a very different thing. The biasing is only in who joins. Anyone without a criminal record, legal residential status of an ally nation (over 70 nationalities are represented), and physically healthy can join. It’s harder to join the military than people think, and within the military there are many hierarchies and branches. If you want to drive a truck, your not going to find it hard, but if you want an elite position (nuclear, spec ops, engineer, linguist, etc…) you’ll find a position similar to trying to get into an elite university. During the last presidential campaign military members donated more money to Obama’s campaign than McCain’s.

Like in anthropology, it is more of a situation with a few far right loud mouths who are ignored as they say stupid shit. For the most part there isn’t a more diverse organization than something like the US Navy. People also forget that the officer class are highly educated professionals with multiple master’s degrees. They are more open to ideas than academics give them credit for. If people feel like you don’t respect them, or you feel superior to them, etc… they aren’t going to listen to you. That’s everywhere.

Right now our military, for better or worse, consists of the people that represent us on the ground around the world. I wish is was more diverse, but I think people would be amazed at how diverse it is. Mostly these are stereotypes that leftist academics have. More then “Republicans” the warrior class in the military are made up of the working class; people that didn’t have a lot of options, or who have a family tradition. Right-wing forms of patriotism are not the most common reason people join, and it isn’t why people fight.

In anthropology there’s a bias in the literature that tells us that others simply won’t understand things in a holistic way, as though the world we live in hasn’t changed in the last 40 years. All of my experience with educated professionals in the public and private sector tell me the opposite. In Dallas City Hall for example, I’ve seen nothing but immediate acceptance. Everyone I’ve talked to understands that they need to do what the discipline tells us needs to be done, they are taught in their fields that they need to have an ethnographic understanding and better bottom up communication. They simply don’t know how to do it. I talked with the environmental quality director and in 5 minutes he wanted me on his team. After I started a project for him, directors from other departments started saying they want their own anthropologist too. There was this incredible felt need for what we can do, and there was no one filling that need. The Dallas design studio (architects and planners) asked me to help them get local residents to partner with them so they could come to their office and tell them how they wanted their communities to look in the future. They took vans to low-income communities and residents literally worked with architects shoulder to shoulder with the help of an anth grad student so their communities would better reflect their needs. And on and on. The only issue right now is funding. I have to rely on federal grants, because local governments are broke. An academic is much better positioned to do this work, because they can work for free.

This reality is invisible in the academic branch of anthropology, because people don’t look beyond the Ivory tower. Their Marxist paradigms don’t allow for these now more common interactions, and they are actually responsible for this state of affairs. Why the hell was I the first anthropologist to go to city hall and offer my services?! I should not be the first anth they’ve worked with.

For what it is worth, no employer can first fire an employee, and then demand he take a sobriety test.

I guess we also disagree about the importance of using real names when posting on-line.

Tony