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Dear all,
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Observer reported that the death toll in
relation to the War in Iraq has reached 1.2 million. Even Alan Greenspan, ex
Head of the Fed, has recently stated 'I am saddened that it is politically
inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely
about oil.' The Observer 16/09/2007:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170237,00.html).
The Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA), formed in September 2007,
seeking to promote an ethical anthropology, calls on everyone to sign their
petition: ‘Petitioners Urge Anthropologists to Stop Working With Pentagon in
Iraq’ War:
http://concerned.anthropologists.googlepages.com/home
I’m told that the forthcoming October issue of AT continues with debates on
the ethical implications of covert military involvement in the social
sciences and anthropological research in particular, and their potentially
devastating consequences for both people and our research activities more
generally. This issue does not just affect our colleagues in the US.
The ESRC/Foreign Office funded £2.5 million research programme, 'Combating
<http://tawdrysouvenirs.blogspot.com/2006/10/combating-terrorism-by-counteri
ng.html> Terrorism by Countering Radicalisation', was forced back to the
drawing board in the light of scholars’ protesting “that it was tantamount
to asking researchers to act as spies for British intelligence, in countries
identified by MI5's anti terror unit.” (THES, 20 July 2007). It was
re-launched earlier this year, as the “New Security Challenges:
'Radicalisation' and Violence - A Critical Reassessment". Recurrent protests
pointed out that the program has barely been changed and continues to put
the lives of researchers and researched at risk, and thus contradicts with
the fundamentals of our disciplinary code of ethical practice and
jeopardizes our professional standards.
As anthropologists I think we should be very concerned and lend our voice to
this NCA initiative. We might also think beyond that, and discuss what
postgraduate anthropology students in the UK can do to register our protest
against this war, and against the explicit threat to ‘academic freedom’ and
an ethically sound research practice, now and in the future. But the NCA
initiative is a good start and I hope people will take the petition around
their departments and return them to the details as listed on the petition.
A couple of more blogs that might be of interest debating this issue:
http://chronicle.com/news/article/3063/petitioners-urge-anthropologists-to-s
top-working-with-pentagon-in-iraq-war
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/when-anthropolo.html
All the best,
Heike
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