Anthropology.net

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is a strange organization. I often wonder how it operates, but then I realize I don’t even wanna know because there’s often no real logic to their madness. Take into consideration these cases:

Case 1: About 4 years ago the AAA decided to close access to almost all their journals, directly against the Federal Research Publication Access Act. This spurned a lot of discussion regarding ownership of publication, author’s rights and the AAA’s motivation behind it. Most of us wondered how could the AAA, who didn’t fund the research, produce the data, and write up the analysis, close off the information to the world? Here was a bit of my outcry over the matter, archived by afarensis in June of 2006,

“The hypocrisy that surrounds the AAA when it begged for anthropologists to protest to the US government to not cut funding but their recent resiliency to not give back is outstanding in this matter. I don’t get why the AAA won’t open their eyes and see that this form of publishing helps to ensure long-term access to scholarly articles. Unlike articles that are licensed in traditional article databases, like their closed AnthroSource, public libraries and institutions of the people (like universities) can create local copies and repositories of these resources. People, by working together to make repositories of open access literature, can ensure continued access to these scholarly publications into the distant future.”

From this idiocy, a nice project spun off but hasn’t in my opinion been a viable alternative. Unfortunate.

Case 2: Once upon a time the AAA was an organization that scoffed at social media and Web 2.0, specifically blogs. It’s hard to dig up exact references since many links have died… But I do distinctly remember them issuing a statement saying blogs are useless forms of communication, with a little wink wink nod nod to this said blog.

When they redesigned their homepage a couple of years ago, they deployed several blogs. They even sent me emails asking for link exchange. Sure people are allowed to change their minds, but I wondered what’s with the change in heart? Suffice to say, I didn’t add them back.

Case 3: The AAA just had their annual meeting and yes, everyone’s reporting that decided to do away with science. It’s true, Peter Wood of the Chronicle, writes on them actively deciding to nix science out of the Mission Statement. I’ve copied and pasted the presumed edits to the mission statement he provided below the read more link.  Another related decision made is defining the role of AAA, away from ethnography and scientific experiments and observations to anecdotal and subjective journalism… Again without ethnology and ethnography — what is cultural anthropology?

Alice Dreger of Fetishes I Don’t Get, writes on some of the anger she experienced from other scientific anthropologists,

“The primatologist Sarah Hrdy (a member of the National Academy of Sciences) wrote, “My reaction is one of dismay-actually, even more visceral and stronger than that-albeit not surprise.” The scientists I talked to want to know (as I do) exactly what is the AAA Executive Board’s justification for all this. They are confused about whether they should bother to fight, or just give up and depart the AAA already.”

The Society for Anthropological Sciences, a division of the AAA, objected to these changes, I am sure most do. I don’t understand why this change is being done. In a time and age when we need to strive to objective data to make informed decisions, this organization is moving away from that, and consciously. Why?

Could it because anthropology is largely not considered a science outside of the discipline — so the AAA chooses embrace what most think of us?

Again it is hard to get into the minds of such a dysfunctional organization. They seem to never make the right decision. An analogy that works in my mind is the AAA is to anthropologists as the Clerical Theocracy of the Islamic Republic are to Iranian population. As many governments help make decisions to move forward and advance their society, both the AAA and the mullahs regress their organizations further back in time.

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Currently, there are 22 comments on the AAA blog in response to their decision on the HTS issue. The majority of people are in favor of the decision. Others are not in favor, like I. Most of us see the decision as incomplete and unsupported.

A commentor, Catherine, makes a very critical observation,

“the statement itself strikes me a knee-jerk reaction to what is admittedly a complex issue and one that deserves to be grounded in a careful and thorough investigation of particulars.”

Catherine has pinpointed the problem. The AAA decision is premature. Even the AAA has outlines in that,

“The Commission’s work did not include systematic study of the HTS project.”

How can a academic organization like the AAA make a statement like this without conducting a systematic study? This is a clear case of the AAA saying, “Hey we don’t give a crap about conducting an thorough analysis of the HTS. We’ll just go with our gut feeling that the HTS anthropology program jeopardizes anthropology.” This is not very academic at all. It documents ignorance and superficiality in completely analyzing the issue.

W Penn Handwerker said,

“I find the AAA Executive Board’s ‘assessment’ of the HTS project embarrassingly uncritical and naive and exceedingly simple minded.”

Exactly. That’s exactly what it is.

Jamie Cleland, a consulting anthropologist with a focus in archaeology, writes,

“…I find the Executive Board’s statement to fall far short of a considered examination of significant issues raised for our profession by the HTS program. The Board wants to affirm in its final paragraph that anthropology is obliged to attempt to improve US government policies, yet through its narrow conceptualization of anthropology as a profession that primarily “studies others,” it totally misses its chance to affect US policies in any meaningful way. It ducks the question, “Under what circumstances can anthropologists work to improve our policies and actions in war zones?” The Executive Board evokes the ethical standard of “doing no harm,” but given a situation where harm is occurring, anthropologists at the front may be in a position to reduce that harm. If we oppose HTS and similar types of programs unconditionally, we will not be doing our best at using the knowledge we have gained through our “studies of others” to improve US policies… Cultural anthropological fieldwork unarguably has in the past damaged the people studied. If through well intentioned application of ethics, we prevent the use of knowledge so gained from practical application in the most horrific of circumstances, we are not living up to the higher ethical standards that should be at the core of our profession. I would like to see the Executive Board take up the issue of how anthropology might actually be useful and ethical in war zones.”

I’m gonna end this post with a modified Marx quote I’ve plucked from Adam of Agraphia,

“[Anthropologists] have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

In my opinion your not going to change military policy and actions by writing in subscription journals and if you truly want to stop the egregious acts and culturally detrimental actions of the military you have to actually get engaged with it, learn the lingo, embed yourself within it, so you can not only understand it, but hopefully teach it the vaulable lessons that anthropology has uncovered over the years.

It has taken the American Anthropological Association (AAA) over a month to respond to the issue of the US Military embedding anthropologists to aide in the war effort. I’ve commented on this in early October. I support the idea of embedding anthropologists, even though I do not support the wars. I see it as progress and a potentially effective application of anthropology.

The AAA has finally convened and decided to disapprove of the program, which goes by Human Terrain System or HTS. They say that the HTS program,

“creates conditions which are likely to place anthropologists in positions in which their work will be in violation of the AAA Code of Ethics and that its use of anthropologists poses a danger to both other anthropologists and persons other anthropologists study.”

I’ve read a lot of debate on this site and all over the anthropology blogosphere on this matter. I respect the amount of thought and concern the community has put into this issue. I really respect this piece of first hand anthropology in the military that was shared on our site. But the AAA has taken a really pitiful stance. I’ll do my best to explain why but I apologize if the following doesn’t come out very articulate because I’m writing this in haste.

First of all, the decision not to support the HTS is based upon a unacademic and uneducated possibility that future anthropologists may face conducting research. Does the AAA have any empirical evidence that future anthropologists will face hardships because of the HTS? No, they don’t. They are running on the notion that because people will not easily differentiate HTS anthropologists from the military, that they’ll forever have a irreversible impression on anthropology.

How do we know that HTS anthropologists will be so horrible that no other anthropologist can follow suite and reverse the damages? We don’t. Just as likely as it is that HTS anthropologists will completely botch up anthropology is the notion that HTS anthropologists may be evangelical figures for anthropology and make it easier to conduct anthropological research in the areas HTS anthropologists work at. What I’m getting at is that at this point we do not have any idea to see how HTS anthropologists impact anthropology as a whole. I really think the HTS anthropology programs should move forward, be supported with constructive criticism… not outright opposition!

Also, I was really disappointed to read in the conclusion of the AAA statement on how they affirm,

“that anthropology can and in fact is obliged to help improve… through the widest possible circulation of anthropological understanding in the public sphere…”

…When they were the very group that ignorantly opposed open access last year. Judging by their actions, the widest possible circulation of anthropological understanding is through closed access publications and through opposing real life applications of anthropology. Give me a break.

I’m really considering posting to their newly created blog on this issue. They basically have opened the flood gates to

“facilitate discussion on this subject, [to use the blog] to post comments regarding the Executive Board Statement and related issues.”

What do you think? How do you feel about the AAA’s stance? Please share your thoughts and comments!