Anthropology and the Army
Tracey Rosen forwarded me her very smart response to an article in last week’s NYT that reports the U.S. Army’s use of anthropologists in Afghanistan. (It should be obvious, but Tracey is not the Tracy of the article.) Her response was originally addressed to her colleagues (of whom the B. in the last paragraph is one), but she’s agreed to let me post an excerpt below.
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I’d like to bring up a couple of articles that have stuck with me as I begin to encounter my own political/existential dilemmas that get raised by fieldwork because I think that they are also relevant to this discussion.
The first is by one of our (controversially) activist brethren, David Graeber, who wrote a piece in last January’s edition of Harpers. The title: “Army of Altruists: on the alienated right to do good,” and the link.
His basic point can be gleaned from the title: viz., the “right” for Americans to engage themselves in the socially oriented “good” has been alienated from most of the population. [Read more]
