Following on the discussion about psychologists and torture, this might
be of interest too. After all these disciplinary boundaries are a fiction.
*Counterpunch
November 20, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/price11202006.html
*
/Resisting the Weaponization of Anthropology/
American Anthropologists Stand Up Against Torture and the Occupation
of Iraq
By DAVID H. PRICE
In San Jose, on Saturday evening, November 18, 2006, the rank and file
members of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) attending the
Association's business meeting approved resolutions condemning the
occupation of Iraq and the use of torture.
These two resolutions were co-written by Roberto González, an associate
professor of anthropology at San Jose State University, and Kanhong Lin,
a graduate student in anthropology at American University. The first
resolution condemns the American occupation of Iraq; calls for an
immediate withdrawal of troops, the payment of reparations, and it asks
that all individuals committing war crimes against Iraqis be prosecuted.
This statement passed with little debate or dissent.
The second resolution condemns not only the use of torture by the Bush
administration, but it denounces the use of anthropological knowledge in
torture and extreme interrogations. The AAA's statement stands in stark
contrast with the American Psychological Association's ambivalent
policies which provides psychologists working in military and
intelligence settings with some cover should they wish to assist in
extreme interrogations or torture. One of the concerns underlying this
resolution comes from reports by Seymour Hersh that CIA interrogators
consulted anthropological works such as Raphael Patai's book, /The Arab
Mind/, to better design culture-specific means of torture and
interrogation. This resolution passed unanimously with little debate.
Both of these resolutions must now be presented to the full membership
of the American Anthropological Association in a mail ballot in the next
few months. Prior to changes made in the AAA's bylaws in the early
1970s, activist members of the Association could pass binding
resolutions at annual meetings. During the Vietnam War, these rules
allowed members to direct Association policies and make political
statements by controlling the floor of these business meetings. Changes
made in the AAA's bylaws in the early require that resolutions passed by
members at the annual business meeting now be presented to the full
membership in a mail ballot.
Since this bylaw shift removed AAA members' ability to ratify
resolutions at the annual conferences, attendance at these business
meetings has been abysmal. I go every year, and most years there is
nowhere near the
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822333384/counterpunchmaga>required
250 member quorum present needed for the meeting to officially convene
(this at a conference that generally has between 4,000 -- 5,000 members
attending). Last year only 35 members attended the annual business
meeting--this in a year when many members where upset by CIA efforts to
advertise in AAA publications--simply because the non-binding structure
of these meetings disempowered those who bothered to attend. But thanks
to the activism of González, Lin and others, this week's meeting room
was packed with concerned anthropologists.
But sometimes democratic sentiments are contagious.
After adopting the anti-Iraq War and anti-torture measures, a
spontaneous floor debate arose after Gerald Sider, CUNY Professor
Emeritus of Anthropology, eloquently spoke of how the AAA's bylaws had
been changed during the Vietnam War as an anti-democratic measure to
empower the association's administrative structure, while disempowering
the rank and file's ability to enact political measures at these annual
meetings. Sider knows of which he speaks. While doing archival research
over the years at the Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives, I
have seen enough of the AAA's records and the correspondence of key
actors from this period to know that such claims are well founded,
statements from the floor by Nina Glick Schiller and other veterans from
these past struggles helped push Sider's proposal to a vote that the
association consider returning to its old structure.
The debate that transpired was interesting. Some argued that the
business meeting's normally low attendance was sufficient evidence that
such poorly-attended meetings should not be allowed to direct
Association policy, but the argument that carried the day maintained
that it was the structural decision to limit the power of meeting
attendees that had destroyed meeting attendance. After some discussion,
a resolution was adopted instructing the Association to consider
re-empowering the annual meeting as a forum where direct democratic
action could occur.
Later that evening I spoke with Roberto González, Kanhong Lin and other
anthropologists attending the annual Association for Mutant Anthropology
Business Meeting (a great party, this year joyously honoring the late
great Bea Medicine). Both Lin and González were quite pleased by the
direction the meeting had taken and they seemed to have a good
perspective of what the passage of these measures had and hadn't
accomplished.
Obviously each of these motions will likely have no direct impact on the
Bush Administration, Congress, rogue anthropologists, or CIA contract
torturers, but the events of Saturday's meeting do represent a
noteworthy democratic moment in the history of American anthropology and
in higher academia's struggle to retain some control over the knowledge
it produces.
Such resolutions rarely solve problems, but they do clarify group values
and serve notice to those forces that are pressing to use anthropology
for intelligence needs-but the sudden move to restore what was once an
important democratic mechanism of a past era may signify that the
members want greater control over where anthropology seems to be heading
in the post 9/11 world.
The conference had several organized panels examining ways that
anthropology is interacting with the War on Terror. Some sessions
examined issues of secrecy, the ethical issues raised by anthropologists
working in military and intelligence communities, one session had
presentations by anthropologists working for the intelligence community.
The Association seems to know it is sitting on the edge (let's hope it
is the edge) of something very large and powerful and but there are
organizational fears of establishing limits governing what
anthropologists do. It remains to be seen how the Association's elected
and unelected leadership will respond to the memberships' call for
increased democratic control over an Association increasingly slipping
under the sway of the Pentagon and the intelligence community as
traditional educational funds become scarce, even while covert funding
programs like the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program increases.
These can be difficult times for engaged academicians, so it is
encouraging to find an academic association's voice speaking so loudly
in opposition to what anthropologist Laura Nader calls the "coercive
harmony" of dominant power structures. Whatever political developments
concerning military uses of anthropology transpire next, it appears that
the Association's membership will likely not sit by silently as others
determine how anthropology will be weaponized against those they study
for the needs of American hegemony.
*David Price *is author of /Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and
the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0822333384/counterpunchmaga>/
(Duke, 2004). His next book, Weaponizing Anthropology: American
Anthropologists in the Second World War will be published by Duke
University Press. He can be reached at: [log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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