Indigenous Cosmopolitans

Transnational and Transcultural Indigeneity in the Twenty-First Century

Reviewers’ comments:

“Timely and original, this volume looks at indigenous peoples from the perspective of cosmopolitan theory and at cosmopolitanism from the perspective of the indigenous world. In doing so, it not only sheds new light on both, but also has something important to say about the complexities of identification in this shrinking, overheated world.Analysing ethnography from around the world, the authors demonstrate the universality of the local – indigeneity – and the particularity of the universal – cosmopolitanism. Anthropology doesn’t get much better than this.”–Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oslo; author of Globalisation.

“This collection takes the anthropological study of indigeneity to an entirely new level. Bringing together an impressive range of case studies, from the Inuit in the north to Aboriginal Australian in the south, the authors fundamentally challenge the assumption that that indigeneity and transnationalism are separate and opposed conditions. They reveal with engaging ethnographic richness and historical depth that contemporary indigeneity is a rooted cosmopolitanism and that this indigeneity of roots and routes is being continually reinvented in ways that challenge conventional understandings, both within anthropology and in the wider public arena. This exploration of re-rooted cosmopolitanisms and remixed cosmopolitan indigeneities is also a major contribution to the anthropology of globalisation….This theoretically sophisticated collection will be essential reading for anyone in the humanities and social sciences seeking to understand the nature of contemporary indigeneity.”–Jeffrey Sissons, Associate Professor, Cultural Anthropology, School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Author of First Peoples: Indigenous Cultures and Their Futures.

Book Synopsis:

What happens to indigenous culture and identity when being rooted in a fixed cultural setting is no longer necessary – or even possible? Does cultural displacement mean that indigeneity vanishes? How is being and becoming indigenous (i.e., indigeneity) experienced and practiced along translocal pathways? How are “new” philosophies and politics of indigenous identification (indigenism) constructed in “new,” translocal settings? The essays in this collection develop our understandings of cosmopolitanism and transnationalism, and related processes and experiences of social and cultural globalization, showing us that these do not spell the end of ways of being and becoming indigenous. Instead, indigeneity is reengaged in wider fields, finding alternative ways of being established and projected, or bolstering older ways of doing so, while reaching out to other cultures.

Contents:

Maximilian C. Forte: Introduction: Indigeneities and Cosmopolitanisms

Maximilian C. Forte: A Carib Canoe, Circling in the Culture of the Open Sea: Submarine Currents Connecting Multiple Indigenous Shores

Craig Proulx: Aboriginal Hip Hoppers: Representin’ Aboriginality in Cosmopolitan Worlds

Carolyn Butler-Palmer: David Neel’s The Young Chief-Waxwaxam: A Cosmopolitan Treatise

Arthur Mason: Whither the Historicities of Alutiiq Heritage Work Are Drifting

Frans J. Schryer: The Alto Balsas Nahuas: Transnational Indigeneity and Interactions in the World of Arts and Crafts, the Politics of Resistance, and the Global Labor Market

Julie-Ann Tomiak/Donna Patrick: Transnational Migration and Indigeneity in Canada: A Case Study of Urban Inuit

Robin Maria DeLugan: “Same Cat, Different Stripes”: Hemispheric Migrations, New Urban Indian Identities, and the Consolidation of a Cosmopolitan Cosmovision

Linda Scarangella: Indigeneity in Tourism: Transnational Spaces, Pan-Indian Identity, and Cosmopolitanism

Nigel Rapport: Conclusion: From Wandering Jew to Ironic Cosmopolite: A Semi-Utopian Postnationalism

About the Contributors:

Carolyn Butler-Palmer currently occupies the Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest in the History in Art Department at the University of Victoria, Canada. She is interested in the aesthetic relations between various Pacific Northwest people and their cross-cultural reception. Her program of research includes questions about the politics of aesthetics, modernity, mobility, identity, and humanitarianism with respect to the arts and material cultures of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. She is currently working on a book Cosmographic Cosmopolitanism: The Life and Aesthetics of David Neel that locates Neel’s aesthetic praxis within debates about mobility, identity, and the ethics of cross-cultural relations. Professor Butler-Palmer has recently held fellowships at The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center and a University of Pittsburgh Mellon Fellowship.

Robin Maria DeLugan is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the new University of California, Merced. Among her research interests is the historical and contemporary relations between Indigenous peoples and the nation-state with particular attention to the Americas. In El Salvador she is examining how post-civil war representations of national culture and identity bring the issue of indigeneity to the forefront to challenge ideologies of mestizaje and efforts to erase contemporary Indigenous peoples from national society. Other ongoing research examines how the increased migration of Indigenous people from Latin America to the United States motivates states to forge transnational ties with faraway Indigenous citizens. In Northern California, she is examining how new migrations increase hemispheric connections between Indigenous people of the Americas, build new ethnic communities, and transform collective identity.

Maximilian C. Forte is an associate professor and anthropologist in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. His primary area of ethnographic research has focused on the contemporary indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, and specifically the Carib Community in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago. In relation to these areas, Maximilian published Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs: (Post)Colonial Constructions of Aboriginality in Trinidad and Tobago (University Press of Florida, 2005), and he edited the volume Indigenous Resurgence in the Contemporary Caribbean: Amerindian Survival and Revival (Peter Lang, 2006). Maximilian has also published his research in Indigenous World, Indigenous Affairs, and Cultural Survival Quarterly. For 10 years he served as the managing editor for an open access, peer-reviewed journal that he founded, KACIKE: The Journal of Caribbean Amerindian History & Anthropology, as well as a Web editor for the online database he constructed, the Caribbean Amerindian Centrelink. His involvement in supporting indigenous Caribbean transnationalism extended to the creation of the online Indigenous Caribbean Network. Maximilian’s research for this chapter and related projects was supported by a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), from 2006 to 2009.

Arthur Mason is an anthropologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University and was the 2006–2007 Canada-U.S. Fulbright Scholar at the University of Calgary. Between 2001 and 2003, he served as Associate Director of Energy in the Office of the Alaska Governor. From 1992 to 1993, he served as curator of the Alutiiq Native Cultural Center on Kodiak Island. Arthur’s research is concerned with Alaska’s political and indigenous elite who possess the administrative positions, personal qualities, and utopian vision required for modernizing Alaskan society. In particular, he is interested in the practical aspects of how Alaska leaders aim to translate Alaskan society into the object of their image of the modern, including their increased reliance on the specialized knowledge of non-Alaskan expertise.

Donna Patrick is an associate professor in the School of Canadian Studies and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she is the Graduate Supervisor in Canadian Studies. Her current research focuses on urban Aboriginal communities, particularly Inuit; indigeneity and language endangerment; the political, social, and cultural aspects of language use, mainly Inuit and Aboriginal. Her research in Northern Quebec is published in a book titled Politics and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community (2003) and Language Rights and Language Survival (2004) (coedited with Jane Freeland), as well as a number of papers on language endangerment and language rights in indigenous communities. Donna teaches courses in Aboriginal and Northern Issues with an interdisciplinary focus on historical, geographical, and social processes concerning language, culture, and nationhood; minority languages and multilingualism; language rights and policy; language, identity, and political economy and other areas in the sociology of language and sociolinguistics.

Craig Proulx is an associate professor in anthropology at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada, where he is also the Chair of the Department. Craig is interested in Aboriginal experiences in cities along a variety of lines from restorative justice to community building to constructions of identity and processes of cultural production within North American cities. The anthropology of sport is a new area that he is exploring. He has published Reclaiming Aboriginal Justice Community and Identity (2003) and, along with coeditor Heather Howard Bobiwash, he edited Aboriginal Experiences in Canadian Cities, published in 2007. Craig is also an active member on the executive committee of the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA).

Nigel Rapport is a social anthropologist at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where he directs the program on cosmopolitanism and was appointed Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies in 1996. He previously held the Canada Research Chair in Globalization, Citizenship and Justice at Concordia University, Montreal, where he was the founding director of the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. Nigel has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has undertaken four pieces of participant-observation fieldwork: among farmers and tourists in a rural English village (1980–1981); among the transient population of a Newfoundland city and suburb (1984–1985); among new immigrants in an Israeli development-town (1988–1989); and among health-care professionals and patients in a Scottish hospital (2000–2001). His research interests include social theory, phenomenology, identity and individuality, community, conversation analysis, and links between anthropology and literature and philosophy. His recent books include The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity (Pluto, 2002); “I Am Dynamite”: An Alternative Anthropology of Power (Routledge, 2003); and (as editor) Democracy, Science and the Open Society: A European Legacy? (Transaction, 2006).

Linda Scarangella is an anthropologist and Postdoctoral Fellow at Carleton University’s Institute for the Comparative Study of Language, Art and Culture (ICSLAC), in Ottawa, Canada. Linda Scarangella earned her PhD in Anthropology from McMaster University in June 2008. Her dissertation, “Spectacular Native Performances: From the Wild West to the Tourist Site, Nineteenth c. to the Present,” focuses on Native North American perspectives and experiences in both historic and contemporary Wild West shows and exhibitions. A short article in Anthropology News (May, 2005) considers the challenges of multisited fieldwork in conducting this research. She also published an article in the 2004 issue of Nexus that considers the ethical issues surrounding research on Indigenous knowledge. Based on ethnographic work conducted in 2001, her article in Anthropology in Action (2004) examines how Salish performers create a space in tourism for the witnessing of First Nation claims of history, culture, and identity by reclaiming discourses of “the Native” through performances of place, ancestry, and cultural continuity. Dr. Scarangella’s research and teaching interests include First Nations of Canada, identity and indigeneity, representation, performance and visual culture, anthropology of tourism, globalization and popular culture, narrative and oral history, ethnohistory and ethnographic research methods, and ethics.

Frans J. Schryer was Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University Of Guelph, Canada, at the time of writing. He has taught at Guelph since 1974, and he has held part-time teaching posts at Atkinson College (York University) and at the Centre for Rural Development Studies of the Colegio de Postgraduados at Chapingo (Mexico). He also spent four months in 1988 as a visiting researcher at the Centre for Research and Documentation on Latin America (CEDLA) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Agrarian Studies at Yale University in 1994–1995. Frans has done most of his ethnographic and historical research in Mexico, but has also carried out a study of postwar Dutch immigrants in Ontario. He is currently examining the impact of globalization on the Nahuas of the Alto Balsas region (Mexico), a group best known for its craft production (especially paintings on bark paper known as amates) and a successful struggle to stop the construction of a hydroelectric dam (in the 1990s). His recent publications include Farming in a Global Economy (Brill, 2006) and “Multiple Hierarchies and the Duplex Nature of Groups” (JRAI, 2001).

Julie-Ann Tomiak is a doctoral student in Canadian Studies, with a specialization in Political Economy, at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests include the political economy of urban Aboriginal service organizations, transnational First Nations, Métis, and Inuit positionalities, identities, and communities, and the application of intersectionality as an analytical framework.

Published by Peter Lang USA, 2010:
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien.
X, 223 pp., num. ill.
ISBN 978-1-4331-0102-1

Order from the publisher, or,

Order from Amazon.com.

This is the only presentation I have made at a conference where those attending and participating found it to be “shocking,” “chilling,” and “extremely depressing,” in the words of three different participants. The vast majority of those participating and attending the conference were not anthropologists.

The second of only two conference papers I have presented thus far that involve the Human Terrain System was presented this past May in Vancouver: “Useless Anthropology”: Strategies for Dealing with the Militarization of the Academy.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Smart, Soft and Long: Propaganda Abroad and at Home

In promoting a “long war” against so-called “extremism,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has spearheaded initiatives to assimilate social scientists into the so-called “global war on terror,” with culture and ethnography being the two most salient areas of interest that drive the renewed military creep into universities, coupled with the expansion of military activity into areas previously dominated by civilian efforts, such as relief work (also see this, this, this). The result is a realignment of academic research with the imperatives of the national security state. Canada is by no means immune to this, it is merely a latecomer, as I will discuss later.

For the past two years the Pentagon has actively sought to recruit anthropologists, and now other social scientists, in its twin wars of occupation and counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking the form of the Human Terrain System and now the much broader Minerva Research Initiative. The Human Terrain System, or HTS, embeds academics with military units, with the purported aim of mapping local cultural formations so that U.S. military can better understand who the local power brokers are, the prevailing customs, and material needs that can be satisfied to win local loyalty and collaboration with U.S. forces. HTS claims that its aim is to save the lives of U.S. troops first and foremost, and to lessen the need for directing firepower at local populations. Critics have argued, among many points, that social scientists are being used to better refine targeting, given that the Assistant Undersecretary of Defense, John Wilcox, noted: “the human terrain enables the global kill chain.” The embedded academics wear American military uniforms and carry weapons if and when they conduct interviews.

My belief is that it was created above all for domestic consumption, as part of a domestic propaganda effort and a public relations war conducted through the mainstream media. The aims include, in my view, quelling the homegrown intellectual insurgency of critical academics, by luring academics with salaries up to $300,000 when they are in the field, while at the same time promoting a new image for increasingly unpopular wars by emphasizing that smart people [and smart power] are replacing smart bombs, that a new intellectual elite is at the helm as personified by General David Petraeus, and that wars are now winnable because they are being fought within the cultures of the occupied. Ethnography is the shiny new tool in the armory of intellectual counterinsurgency. While the Pentagon takes over civilian developmental efforts elsewhere, it is bringing in more outsourced civilians into the war zone, contracted by British Aerospace in the case of HTS, and celebrating their counterinsurgency effort as an increasingly civilian affair.

Moreover, the principles and mechanisms behind the Human Terrain System have been incorporated in newly expanded designs for the U.S. military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM), which came into being on October 1^st, and its Latin American and Caribbean Command (SOUTHCOM), to better penetrate local cultures and expand the nature of U.S. military presence in those regions, in part with the aid of social science research. The aim is to get U.S. troops used to the climates, cultures, and so-called human terrain of these various zones, through so-called humanitarian, development, and relief work, so as to maintain a regular presence and a higher sense of familiarity should more forceful action be required. Here too Canada is directly involved once more – at this very moment, Canadian military personnel are part of the crew of the USS Kearsarge, a US Marine aircraft carrier and amphibious assault vessel, currently docked in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Kearsarge has been touring Central America and the Caribbean since August, as part of this expanded Pentagon mission and the reconstitution of the 4^th Fleet that has alarmed both Brazil and Venezuela.

U.S.S. Kearsarge

ARIMA, Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 26, 2008) Lt. Cmdr. Kathaleen Sikes, a Navy nurse embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), gives a young girl a routine check-up at the Arima District Health Facility as part of the partnership between Continuing Promise (CP) 2008 and Trinidad-Tobago. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian/civic assistance mission CP 08, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Joshua Adam Nuzzo/Released)

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 30, 2008) 1st Lt. Lindsey Maddox, embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), reads to children from the All in One Child Development Center, a local daycare where engineers embarked aboard Kearsarge are making renovations supporting Continuing Promise (CP) 2008. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian/civic assistance mission CP 08, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gina Wollman/Released)

COUVA, Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 29, 2008) Lt. Cmdr. Kathaleen Sikes, a Navy nurse embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), listens to a young woman during a routine check-up at a medical clinic at the Couva District Health Facility during the humanitarian/civic assistance mission Continuing Promise (CP) 2008. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of CP, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Joshua Adam Nuzzo/Released)

BELMONT,Trinidad and Tobago (Nov. 3, 2008) Information Systems Technician 2nd Class Andrew Bryson, assigned to the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), teaches Sister Helena of the Carmelite Sister Convent how to use the Internet. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian assistance mission Continuing Promise 2008. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Joshua Adam Nuzzo (Released)

(See Operation Continuing Promise 2008; the blog for the mission; its extensive photo gallery; note from the U.S. Embassy in Trinidad, the operation as a form of “soft power;” more on Kearsarge as soft power; the main operation page from SOUTHCOM, and a short overview/summary of the mission; and, concerning the Canadian presence, a note from the Dept. of National Defence, a photo gallery of the Canadian military personnel on the Kearsarge mission, and “Ahoy, eh! From the Canadian Medical Contingent in KEARSARGE!“)

Anthropology: Sucker for Power

Where the employment of anthropologists in HTS is concerned, this is a repeat or continuation of the long history of anthropological service to expansionist states, colonial management, and imperial domination, a history with which institutional anthropology has yet to come to terms, if the relative paucity of literature on anthropology and colonialism, or the rarity of courses on decolonizing anthropology attest. This is not say that anthropology does not contain within it a significant critical and even activist tradition, especially since the 1960s, as much as it is to suggest that anthropology has no real core, as David Price argues, with which to either align or collide with state power. Primary motivations and compulsions within anthropology, that pre-date its institutional birth and continue into the present, include:

• the constant perceived need to promote the relevance and usefulness of anthropology;
• policing its proprietary claims over ethnography;
• bemoaning the lack of attention from other disciplines and the wider society;
• the drive to develop applied anthropology;
• self-promotion as a science that should be valued by those in power;
• the desire for a higher public profile and engagement with the world;
• the goal of helping to do good; and,
  
• selling knowledge of the other.

All of these varying emotional, intellectual and political strains within the discipline contribute, individually or collectively, to propel some into the folds of the Pentagon, to keep many others silent, and to provoke the visceral critiques of a few, such as myself.

Research in the National Security State

Both HTS and the Minerva Research Initiative (Minerva or MRI from now on) are additions to an already existing array of programs that meld the national security state with academia in the U.S. These programs include the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), formed with the guidance and active support of an anthropology professor (Felix Moos) at the University of Kansas, as well as the National Security Education Program (NSEP), the Intelligence Community Scholars Program (ICSP), and the National Academic Consortium for Homeland Security (NACHOS), and an array of private think tanks that link social science research to the so-called “global war on terror” with some of these, like the Hoover Institution at Stanford, housed on campuses. One could also mention the presence of ROTC on many campuses, and the fact that as far back as 1988 a CIA spokeswoman publicly proclaimed that the CIA had enough professors on its payroll to staff a large university. Clearly, in addition to casting a critical and vigilant eye on anthropologists, we also need to be realistic of the many intertwining connections meshing American academia more broadly with the American national security state, and build a plan of action accordingly.

This past summer the National Science Foundation, with the support of the American Anthropological Association, successfully lobbied to administer $8 million of the Pentagon’s $75 million for Minerva, offering its seal of approval to projects by offering semi-independent peer review. The NSF boasted of its long service to the state: “To secure the national defense was one of the original missions we were given when we were chartered in 1950,” said David Lightfoot, assistant director of NSF’s Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, “We’ve always believed that sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and other social scientists, through basic social and behavioral science research, could benefit our national security. In fact, we’ve always done so through various research projects.” Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council, at a recent Minerva workshop organized and hosted by the Pentagon, went on the record cheerfully praising Minerva and calling for more ways of expanding the nature and range of academic collaboration with the military and intelligence communities.

The MRI has been accepting grant proposals, with the deadline passing on October 30 [2008], the results to be announced before the end of this year. Proposals are being accepted for projects that address any of the following areas: (1) Chinese Military and Technology Research and Archive Programs; (2) Studies of the Strategic Impact of Religious and Cultural Changes within the Islamic World; (3) Iraqi Perspectives Project; (4) Studies of Terrorist Organization and Ideologies; (5) New Approaches to Understanding Dimensions of National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation. The Pentagon will pay out awards to universities, and awards will range from $500,000 to $3 million (US) per annum, with the average award estimated at $1.5 million per annum.

One way in which this program can directly engage Canadian academics and universities is apparent from the fact that foreign universities are also encouraged to participate, as the Pentagon announced with the call for applications,

“This MRI competition is open to institutions of higher education (universities) including DoD institutions of higher education and foreign universities, with degree-granting programs in social sciences. Participation by foreign universities either as project lead or in a supporting role is encouraged”.

The Pentagon’s MRI calls on academics to themselves identify an organization or an ideology as “terrorist” without providing any guidelines or list of suggested organizations and ideologies, or even how it defines terrorist. The Pentagon announced in its call for research proposals that, “This effort will involve the development of models and approaches to study behavior networks, groups, and communities over time” — so surveillance is intended, over the long term, and anthropologists are specifically called upon, as “the relevance of context and situation may require field research”.

The Pentagon continues:

“there is an urgent need to be able to locate the points of influence and characterize the processes necessary to influence populations that harbor terrorist organizations in diverse cultures as well as individuals who identify with terrorist group figures”.

The Pentagon announcement states,

“Especially helpful…is understanding where organized violence is likely to erupt, what factors might explain its contagion, and how to circumvent its spread. Research on belief formation and emotional contagion will provide cultural advisors with better tools to understand the impact of operations on the local population. This research should also contribute to countermeasures to help revise or influence belief structures to reduce the likelihood of militant cells forming”.

In addition, Minerva’s “Iraqi Perspectives Project” involves the study of documents looted from Iraq by U.S. forces and private individuals and illegally relocated to the U.S., at such places as the Hoover Institution at Stanford. This is despite the repeated protests and calls for their return from the Director of the Iraqi National Library and Archives, and despite the fact that capturing and holding these documents clearly violates the 1954 Hague Convention. Academics are therefore being invited to violate international law and Iraqi sovereignty, in writing Iraqi history for the Iraqis, another classic act of colonial domination. In the meantime, no one can know which documents have been made to disappear or have been altered in the years that they have been in the hands of the Pentagon.

Hugh Gusterson, an anthropologist of military industries and national security, recently wrote a compelling overview of the many dangers of Minerva and other programs for the social role of academia. He writes:

“When research that could be funded by neutral civilian agencies is instead funded by the military, knowledge is subtly militarized and bent in the way a tree is bent by a prevailing wind. The public comes to accept that basic academic research on religion and violence ‘belongs’ to the military; scholars who never saw themselves as doing military research now do; maybe they wonder if their access to future funding is best secured by not criticizing U.S. foreign policy; a discipline whose independence from military and corporate funding fueled the kind of critical thinking a democracy needs is now compromised; and the priorities of the military further define the basic terms of public and academic debate”.

Given the ambivalent and unsteady reactions of academic anthropologists, these developments are undoing the past thirty years of effort of some in decolonizing anthropology, thereby threatening to return the discipline to an adjunct in the service of imperial power. As I said, reactions have been varied, with the American Anthropological Association (or AAA) going as far as issuing an executive condemnation of HTS as unethical, to proposing to revise its entire code of ethics by 2010 in order to preclude such involvement from the military from claiming adherence to professional, ethical standards. At the same time, the current president of the AAA worries primarily about whether Minerva research can live up to professional standards of peer review. Absent is any questioning of why there ought to be any “terrorism” research whatsoever — indeed a letter this summer from AAA President Setha Low to the U.S. Office of Budget and Management states very simply: “We believe that it is of paramount importance for anthropologists to study the roots of terrorism.” In the name of pragmatism, there seems to be a lack of a consistent critical discourse for dealing with state power and imperialism, and perhaps one should not expect this from a professional association as such.

As mentioned, the Pentagon is inviting foreign researchers and their universities to participate in the Minerva program. Conditions in Canada seem ripe for its spread here, given Canada’s own intervention in Afghanistan and the government’s collaboration with the U.S.’ “global war on terror,” and the relative paucity of social science research funding. A minority can hope to win a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and even fewer will ever get a grant close to the maximum of $250,000 spread over three years. Canada Research Chairs, fewer in number but with more funding, still cannot compete with the massive amount offered by Minerva, whose maximum grant is 12 times higher than the maximum offered by SSHRC as a standard research grant, and perhaps three times higher than that offered to Canada Research Chairs. With greater pressure from university administrations to secure more and more research funds, from all possible sources, it is just a matter of time before we find Minerva advertised by our own campus research offices, and taken up by researchers here. As for the Human Terrain System, it too has already made an appearance in Canada, for now relying on the service of civilian employees of the government. Some of you may have read recently that Canadian forces operating in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province have employed so-called “white situational awareness teams” to reportedly help troops navigate the complex tribal landscape of southern Afghanistan. As Tom Blackwell of CanWest News reported earlier this week:

“Drawing on information from Canadian civilians and troops operating in Kandahar, local cultural advisers and NATO allies, the team is trying to map out the movers and shakers of the province and how they relate to each other”.

That is exactly the same as HTS, indeed human terrain mapping has also been referred to as “white situational awareness” by its proponents in the U.S. Also, an American infantry unit operating under Canadian command has its own “human terrain” team, Blackwell reports. Elissa Goldberg, who is in charge of Canada’s civilian officials in Afghanistan, says that the deployment of the team is “a recognition that you really have to understand the human terrain of the environment, so you do no harm.” Refined targeting, focusing on enemy Afghans, is also a stated purpose of gaining a sense of local dynamics. When results of this first month’s trial mandate it, we should not be surprised when the Canadian military comes knocking on the doors of universities, and you already know that university presidents hungry for cash will warmly welcome them, while firmly prodding us to get more money, always more.

Towards the End of the White Discipline

I have mentioned that Canadian forces work with the US’s SOUTHCOM, we know they participate in Afghanistan, that a Canadian HTS is being developed, and that Minerva is open to Canadians. Canadian anthropology is not insulated from its American partner either. Many Canadian anthropologists, if not most, also belong to the AAA, and travel to the U.S. for annual meetings of the AAA and/or its member associations. We share the same space on editorial boards of journals. We often jointly organize conferences between the Canadian Anthropology Society and the American Ethnological Society. Some Canadian departments are modeled on the American four-field system. Prominent faculty in anthropology have served both in Canada and the U.S. We have undergraduates from the U.S., and a good number of our graduates earning degrees in anthropology in the U.S. We use the AAA’s code of ethics and its case studies as part of our teaching materials. We read and adopt texts written by our American colleagues. Even if none of the preceding were true the fact of the worldwide dominance of American anthropology alone would ensure an eventual impact on how our discipline is reproduced, presented to the wider world, and received (if at all).

The military’s cultural turn has focused attention on ethnography, in what Derek Gregory calls the rush to the intimate. Anthropology has been a victim of its lust for influence as Satia put it, and of its own success, having sold itself as the owner and master of ethnography, often wrongly equating anthropology with ethnography. Having claimed it had much to offer, now the national security state wants it. I believe we need to consider the ways we can make ourselves toxic to power overall, while rethinking, or even unthinking many things, such as the value and role of “fieldwork” (a despicably colonial and scientistic term), open access publishing, the funding of research, and the meaning of academic freedom. Without any response, the fatal uses of anthropology will likely marginalize and perhaps terminate what is arguably academia’s whitest discipline.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

More Photos from the U.S.S. Kearsarge and “Operation Continuing Promise 2008″:

TUNAPUNA, Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 25, 2008) Chief Steelworker Gerald Wheeler and Air Force Sgt. Scott Boucher, both embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), conducts a site survey before beginning engineering operations at Cyril Ross Nursery as part of the partnership between Continuing Promise (CP) 08 and Trinidad-Tobago. Kearsarge is supporting the Caribbean Phase of the humanitarian/civic assistance mission CP 08, an equal partnership mission between the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class David Danals/Released)

ARIMA,Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 25, 2008) Medical personnel embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) unload supplies from helicopters, preparing to assist health clinic personnel with patients as part of the partnership between Continuing Promise (CP) 08 and Trinidad-Tobago. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian/civic assistance mission CP 08, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Joshua Adam Nuzzo/Released)

ARIMA, Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 26, 2008) Capt. Fernandez "Frank" Ponds, mission commander for Continuing Promise (CP) 2008, greets a little boy at a local children´s home during a survey of the mission sites as part of the partnership between CP 08 and Trinidad-Tobago. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian/civic assistance mission CP 08, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gina Wollman/Released)

ARIMA,Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 27, 2008) - Capt. Fernandez "Frank" Ponds, mission commander for Continuing Promise (CP) 2008 and Capt. Walter Towns, commanding officer, USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), discuss humanitarian operations with U.S. Ambassador Roy Austin and Administer of Health Jerry Narace as part of the partnership between CP 2008 and Trinidad and Tobago. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian/civic assistance mission CP 2008, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Erik Barker/Released)

ARIMA,Trinidad and Tobago (Oct. 27, 2008) - Capt. Fernandez "Frank" Ponds, mission commander for Continuing Promise (CP) 2008 and Capt. Walter Towns, commanding officer, USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), discuss humanitarian operations with U.S. Ambassador Roy Austin as part of the partnership between CP 2008 and Trinidad and Tobago. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian/civic assistance mission CP 2008, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Erik Barker/Released)

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

The Canadian Presence with the U.S.S. Kearsarge during “Operation Continuing Promise 2008″:

TERRE DE NEGRES, Haiti (Sept. 24, 2008) -- Canadian Forces Cpl. Eva-Marie Rogerson, ‎currently attached to USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), talks with locals during a medical assessment ‎survey to determine what aid will be needed for future relief efforts. Kearsarge embarked ‎personnel from the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, along with medical ‎personnel from the U.S. Public Health Service, Canadian Army, Air Force and Navy, Brazil, ‎Project HOPE and International Aid are working together to conduct disaster relief operations in ‎Haiti. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Erik C. Barker/Released)‎

TERRE DE NEGRES, Haiti (Sept. 26, 2008) - Lt. Sophie Levoie, Canadian Forces Health Services Centre, currently attached to USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), meets with a local child before starting medical and veterinary aid at a neighborhood church. Kearsarge completed its humanitarian assistance/disaster relief mission in Haiti Sept. 26, delivering more than 3.3 million pounds of food, water and other supplies to communities devastated by several tropical storms and Hurricane Ike. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (SW) David Danals/Released)

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (September 18, 2008) - Canadian Army Lt. Stephanie Lavoie, ‎embarked aboard USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), speaks with members of the Haitian Red ‎Cross regarding medical care for citizens of Haiti who were displaced by recent storms. ‎Kearsarge is utilizing helicopters and amphibious landing craft to reach storm victims in ‎areas of Haiti where the roads are inaccessible. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass ‎Communication Specialist Seaman Ernest Scott)‎

BETANIA, Nicaragua (Aug. 17, 2008) Canadian Air Force Pvt. Tabitha Beynen, embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), uses a syringe to give de-worming medication into a child at the Betania medical clinic. Kearsarge is deployed supporting the Caribbean phase of Continuing Promise 2008, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Christopher Lange/Released)

PALMIRA, Colombia (Aug. 29, 2008) Air Force Tech. Sgt. Karen Merrow, right, embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), comforts a Colombian child as Canadian Army Capt. Ian Thornton extracts a tooth during dental services provided during the humanitarian assistance mission Continuing Promise (CP) 2008. Kearsarge is supporting the Caribbean phase of CP, an equal-partnership mission between the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Ernest Scott/Released)

SANTA MARTA, Colombia (Aug. 29, 2008) Canadian Army Capt. Maximilian Callahan, left, speaks with patients at a Candeleria medical clinic with the help of translator Aviation Machinist Mate 1st Class Emilio Trujuillo, assigned to the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), during the humanitarian assistance mission Continuing Promise (CP) 2008. Kearsarge is supporting the Caribbean phase of CP 2008, an equal-partnership mission between the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gina Wollman/Released)

SANTA MARTA, Colombia (Aug. 29, 2008) Canadian Army Capt. Kim Templeton, embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), gives a sticker to a young boy at a neighborhood clinic during the humanitarian assistance mission Continuing Promise (CP) 2008. Kearsarge is supporting the Caribbean phase of CP 2008, an equal-partnership mission between the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Gina Wollman/Released)

BAYAGUANA, Dominican Republic (October 5, 2008) - Canadian Air Force Capt. Jolene Cook, a medical augmentee embarked aboard USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), gives a local man a general medical examination at the El Deporte y Recreacion Derecho de la Poblacion during the humanitarian/civic assistance mission Continuing Promise (CP) 2008. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of CP, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, France, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class (SW/AW) William S. Parker/Released)

SABANA GRANDE, Dominican Republic (Oct. 15, 2008) Canadian Army Pvt. David Pivato, embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), administers an anti-parasitic medication to a young Dominican boy. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of the humanitarian assistance mission Continuing Promise 2008, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, France, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Joshua Adam Nuzzo/Released)

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Oct. 16, 2008) Canadian Air Force Lt. Col. Roger Scott, embarked aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3), examines a patient at the 27 Febrero medical site during the humanitarian assistance mission Continuing Promise 2008. Kearsarge is the primary platform for the Caribbean phase of Continuing Promise, an equal-partnership mission involving the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, Brazil, France, Nicaragua, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class William S. Parker/Released)

Not only has the ruling party,

• consistently and automatically backed Israel, without regard for international law or human rights, with a speed that approaches the instantaneous, on whatever issue at whatever time even when the U.S. criticizes Israel, declaring its bias openly against Arab Canadians and their national organizations (and pulling their funding);
• acted on purely ideological grounds to ban foreign speakers from Canada, while playing host to war criminals such as George W. Bush on at least two occasions since he left office;
• declared, in absolutely upside down logic, that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and is an “existential threat” to the whole of “Western civilization”;
  
• not only has Minister Goodyear refused to confirm whether he believes in biological evolution — remember, this is a Minister for science, he famously stated: “I’m not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate”;
• Minister Goodyear cut research funding to the social sciences and reoriented more of the funding to favour business, in line with the ruling party’s ideological agenda;

but now Minister Goodyear also directly intervened to try to stop funding awarded for a conference, purely on political grounds, and at the behest of the Zionist lobby, and in a clear violation of academic freedom. This is the situation we are dealing with now. These actions and statements have been in public and are documented for anyone whose ideological blinkers are not so firmly nailed into their skulls that they cannot see any of this.

And to some extent, it is we academics, and the wider citizenry, that are to blame. As detailed and discussed in greater depth in my series of essays on SSHRC funding, the Federal Government has no constitutional right to be funding education, which is the domain of the Provinces. In setting up something like SSHRC, the Federal Government violates provincial jurisdiction, and overly centralizes research funding, thereby reducing any room for autonomy in local decision-making. If instead of mumbling and grumbling in private, as the majority of us do — now check how many articles or blog posts are “out there” by Canadian academics critical of SSHRC — we should be organizing. Funding for research should be managed by those who know what to do with it, and that means that any funds that the Federal Government has been accumulating from the Provinces, and directing into research funding, should instead be returned to the Provinces, whose universities should be the primary if not sole arbiters about how to distribute and manage research funds. It makes sense — which means it will likely never see the light of day. In the meantime, we continue to allow ourselves to be held hostage to funding that is aligned with state power that is itself aligned with a ruling party.

Let us look now at the latest episode from Extreme Canada, concerning political intervention designed to stop SSHRC Funding for Conference at York University, “Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace,” beginning with those who complained about the conference, and responses from many academics in protest:

(1)

Gilles Gagné

The well attended presentation took place during the afternoon of 18 February 2009 and was titled: “The Funding of Universities in Quebec and the Corruption of Education“. The abstract presented for the presentation read as follows:

Do Quebec universities need more money? When one looks at the pipeline through which the money is delivered, one is not necessarily eager to answer in the affirmative. Laval University is a good example of the Quebec university system. A case study examining the evolution of this university’s funding over the course of the last 40 years can, therefore, be seen to have a representative value. Rather than examining the evolution of university funding by looking at the sources out of which the money comes, this presentation will consider what the money looks like on its point of arrival. To do so, the presentation will begin with a reflection on how higher learning is shaped by the “conditions” of its funding and will end with a discussion of the sorts of social and political preferences expressed in and through these conditions.

Les universités québécoises ont besoin de plus d’argent? A voir la tuyauterie par où il s’écoule, je suis loin d’être disposé à joindre cette chorale. L’Université Laval est un bon échantillon de l’ensemble du système universitaire québécois. Une étude de cas portant sur l’évolution de son financement depuis 40 ans a, pour cette raison, un caractère représentatif. Plutôt que d’examiner l’évolution du financement des universités à partir des nombreuses sources de l’argent, il est proposé ici une heuristique consistant à observer son allure à son point de chute. L’exposé partira donc de la question de l’orientation des universités par les «conditionnalités» de son financement et proposera une interprétation des préférences sociétales qui s’y expriment.

“The Funding of Universities in Quebec and the Corruption of Education,” by Gilles Gagné: Notes

Dr. Gagné began by reminding us that the current mass consensus in Quebec, among university students, university administrations, and various faculty unions, is that the state should commit itself to “reinvesting in education”. (A note to readers: there are no private universities in Canada; while the provincial governments are in charge of education, it is also a fact that the federal government funds most of the research — see my posts on SSHRC here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

Dr. Gagné’s challenge to us was to suggest that this mass consensus is misplacing its sentiments and is misled about its goals. He did this by first introducing us to the historical context that has shaped research funding for and within universities.

Americanization, Modernization, and the Restructuring of the University

After the end of World War II, the United States became conscious of itself as the “victorious power,” whose victory in the war hinged to an important extent on scientific innovation directed toward producing technology used for the war effort. Science came to be seen as strategically valuable. Science had been declared “the Endless Frontier,” in a famous report bearing that title: “Science: The Endless Frontier,” A Report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945. The U.S. won the war with science, and so government should fund it.

Starting in the early 1960s, with the policy recommendations of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), which in 1961 was superceded by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), then later drawing on the impetus of the Washington Consensus, there was to be an overhaul of education that focused on supporting economic growth. The university was to become a site for schooling the middle-class, to train the middle-class for jobs that would sustain economic growth. From that point onwards, the university acquired new status, not as a place for an aristocratic elite to pursue knowledge as an end in itself as it might have been in private universities, now the pursuit of knowledge as a public good (our universities are public universities after all), but rather the mission of the university was now to lead the professionalization of middle-class cadres.  From then we see a 300% to 400% increase in student enrollments. The OECD, which became a vehicle for the modernization of the university, emphasized that universities had to adapt to “what was coming”. The battle to change the university became a battle to control it, as indeed state funding imposed conditionalities. With more students, more funding was needed and provided, and a new technocratic class was created within the university, separated from the rest of the university yet within the university.

So while we often proclaim “we need more money,” the question that Dr. Gagné poses is: Where is the money leading us? Economic policies, university budgets, and research ideologies combine to direct the university in which we currently work.

In Canada, as elsewhere, an American Fund Accounting model was adopted, which sorted out university funds into three separate categories:
(1) Unrestricted Funds (also known as Operating Funds);
(2) Restricted Funds (money given for a specific purpose); and,
(3) Capital Funds (to support building and infrastructure).

The restructuring of the university taking place in Canada today essentially involves taking money from the first category and placing it into the second, with only certain uses being favoured.

The restructuring of the university can also be seen with the new governance laws being proposed in Quebec which would have universities governed not by academics, but by outside administrators who have no ties to any given university. This is part of a campaign of neo-liberalism applied to the university, of converting a public good into what is a de facto private resource, managed by technocrats who have no connections to universities.

Three Universities in One: The Structure of Inequality

In effect, each university in Canada has the equivalent of three universities within it, three separate, differentially funded and empowered structures. The three universities are in a sense represented by their respective funding bodies, the three main ones that make up the “tri-council”: SSHRC, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council; NSERC, the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council; and, CIHR, Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In Canada, 68% of Bachelors students are in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). As the number of students in SSH has gone up, the number of professors in SSH has gone down. At Laval, where Dr. Gagné is based, 42% of Laval’s professors teach in SSH, teaching 62% of all of Laval’s students, while producing 71% of the graduate degrees. What we seen then is heightened productivity among professors in the humanities and social sciences, compared to those in the natural sciences, and yet less research funding and support. Indeed, the proportion of research grants goes in the contrary direction, that is, in favour of the natural sciences, and related areas. Overall, almost $400,000 is spent for each student in Health related areas, compared to $18,000 for students in the Social Sciences and Humanities.

Universities in Canada are not “underfunded,” argued Dr. Gagné, rather they are unevenly funded within. Students are valued differently, depending on their program — what does not matter, in the official calculus, is that most students are in SSH. Campaigns for more money, that do nothing to address this structure of inequality, simply seek greater funding for the inequalities. The Social Sciences and Humanities have been effectively downsized.

The “Corruption” of the University

When Dr. Gagné says “corruption” he means that in the Aristotelian sense. The corruption of the university involves pulling faculty out of teaching and putting them into the production of intellectual property that can be sold, having them engaged in consulting and working on contracts with private industry. Yet, Gagné informed us, Statistics Canada has found that such commercial endeavours by universities represent a net loss for universities.

In addition, the corruption of the university involves the corruption of the status of knowledge. Knowledge, rather than being viewed as a public good, is now privatized. The new motto of the new university ought to be, Gagné suggested with sarcasm: privatize or perish.

The corruption of the university also comes in the form of teaching, emphasizing a pedagogy that is little more than the mere transmission of information, and even automatic transmission, i.e. through e-learning. Teaching itself is corrupted in another way: by emphasizing research, as if this were the most important activity for a university, teaching is rendered secondary, as if it were easy. The undervaluing of teaching sees the greater number of courses being taught by graduate students and by colleagues paid far less, as contract faculty working part time.

Finally, we also witness the corruption of the university as a normative institution. If the university was at one time concerned with such values as truth, beauty, and justice, the emphasis is instead now on profitability and efficiency. Dr. Gagné ended by calling for principles of cultivated judgment to be revalued, not beholden to the bucks, and against the idea of the intellectual turned into a “professional”.

••••••• ••••••• ••••••• ••••••• ••••••• ••••••• •••••••

I was not able to stay for most of the discussion that followed the presentation. However, I am told that a number of faculty and students asked questions, for which later Dr. Gagné sent some follow ups by email. If you read French, you will find a lot of valuable insights in his responses to the last question he was asked at the seminar, to which he responds below:

En gros, cette dernière question était la suivante: «Vous faites un tel tapage contre la recherche que nous, les étudiants de 2e et 3e cycle qui nous attendons à (ou qui espérons) consacrer notre vie à la recherche, nous nous sentons mal de savoir que nous ne serons pas tous professeurs ». Vous pourrez dire à l’étudiante que je regrette d’avoir donné l’impression dont elle faisait état poliment, mais très certainement à juste titre, alors qu’en «fait» je crois le contraire. D’abord, et pour utiliser contre moi-même un argument ad hominem, j’ai parfois le sentiment de ne faire pratiquement que cela, de «la» recherche, allant des exportations des pays développés au financement de Laval en passant par l’origine de la pensée systémique et par une douzaine d’autres sujets; j’ai aussi le sentiment que c’est la même chose pour les 40 ou 50 étudiants de 2e et 3e cycle que j’ai dirigés, de même que pour la dizaine que je dirige actuellement; et que c’est encore la même chose pour les 8 ou 10 thèses ou mémoires que je «juge» à chaque année; et j’ai surtout le sentiment que c’est en gros de cette manière que les choses se passent à l’Université depuis au moins deux siècles. Je vous demande donc de dire à l’étudiante qu’en dépit de ce que j’ai l’air de dire je suis en réalité favorable à la recherche, puisque c’est de la recherche (de la sienne propre ou de celle des autres professeurs) que tout enseignement universitaire tire son inspiration, ses matériaux ou sa substance (notamment au 2e et 3e cycle).

J’ai cependant voulu montrer que c’est justement «la recherche» qui avait servi de justification et de moyen principal à l’effort de prendre le contrôle de l’Université, et cela: 1) en la réifiant à titre de pratique séparée commandant en retour une séparation de principe de l’Université (universités de recherche et universités d’enseignement); 2) en soustrayant aux institutions universitaires l’argent publique pouvant être consacré à la recherche et en le transférant aux individus; 3) en soumettant ces individus à des cibles, à des priorités, à des préférences et à des intimations contre lesquelles la résistance est difficile, même quand les objectifs imposés sont «visiblement» obscurantistes; 4) en laissant ainsi de côté un enseignement universitaire appauvri, instrumentalisé, subordonné de loin à des choix normatifs présentés dès lors comme étrangers à la nature même du savoir.

Mais tout cela laisse encore de côté une présupposition qui devrait être abordée pour elle-même: Pourquoi faudrait-il présumer, comme on le fait dans ce qui précède, que le contrôle de l’Université (que ce soit par la recherche, ou par la recherche subventionnée, ou par la recherche subventionnée orientée, ou par la recherche subventionnée orientée vers les innovations techniques, ou par tout autre impératif) soit une mauvaise chose? Autrement dit: Au nom de quoi devrions-nous redouter le contrôle des pratiques universitaires par des puissances de la société qui se présentent à nous armées de «nécessités supérieures»? Autrement dit encore: Quelles «nécessités supérieures» de notre invention pourrions-nous opposer aux nécessités supérieures réelles, celles qui ont les moyens de leur politique?

Peu de chose, à mon avis, si ce n’est une très petite «idée» philosophique et quelques enseignements disparates tirés de l’expérience.

L’idée philosophique est vieille comme la philosophie et elle touche à la contradiction performative: la connaissance, dont nous sociologiques disons qu’elle est un moment de la pratique, un aspect de la vie sociale, ne peut cependant garder son statut dans la pratique qu’en s’y montrant autonome et indépendante. L’Université, c’est-à-dire l’institutionnalisation de cette indépendance du savoir (qui est pourtant impossible sub specie aeternitatis, voir les sociologues), est donc une médiation, un intermédiaire, un filtre, un tampon, un délai, une temporisation dont la consistance réelle sert d’abri à un effort sans lequel l’indépendance de la connaissance serait impossible even under the point of view of our own time. L’Université ne peut donc pas assujettir aujourd’hui la recherche à des puissances qui lui seraient extérieures sans abolir du même coup la valeur dont elle se réclame et qui fonde l’intérêt qu’on lui porte (de même que le statut qu’on lui accorde): l’indépendance du savoir à l’égard des powers that be.

Quant aux enseignements de l’expérience, ils semblent allés dans le même sens : on enlève beaucoup de vigueur aux universités (et on les rend inutiles) lorsque l’on attend d’elles qu’elles préparent l’homme nouveau soviétique, qu’elles revitalisent le centre-ville dans le quartier de la grande bibliothèque, qu’elles réécrivent l’épopée de la race aryenne, qu’elles fournissent des moyens stratégique à la guerre contre le communisme, qu’elles produisent de la valeur ajoutée au profit de l’Axe Chaudière-Appalaches ou qu’elles décapitent les hérétiques. En 1980, les Américains ont pris de grands moyens pour entraîner les universités dans la «guerre des patentes» (en français on dit aussi «brevets») et le Canada a suivi 15 ans plus tard. Un groupe d’hommes d’affaires spécialisés dans l’économie du savoir a écrit alors la politique qui est la nôtre (Les investissements publics dans la recherche universitaire: comment les faire fructifier) en partant de l’hypothèse que les Canadiens ne pourraient tirer de bénéfices de la recherche universitaire que si cette dernière contribuait directement à la compétitivité des entreprises canadiennes par le transfert de «propriété intellectuelle».

Les résultats de cette stratégie de contrôle commencent à arriver. Un think-thank néolibéral (Bruegel) a voulu prouver récemment que la stratégie américaine était la bonne et que le contrôle de la recherche universitaire produisait effectivement de meilleures universités. En cours de route, les auteurs ont été obligés de montrer aussi que, compte tenu de leur population, la Suisse et la Suède (par exemple) obtenaient deux fois plus de bonnes universités parmi les 500 meilleures (selon Shanghai) sur les 7000 qui existent, et cela pour un fraction de ce qu’il en coûtait aux Américains (Philippe Aghion et André Sapir, Why Reform Europe’s Universities?, Bruegel Policy Brief, no. 4, septembre 2007). Que faites vous lorsqu’une «quotation» technocratique destinée à conforter vos opérations vous donne tort? Vous dites que ce qui compte vraiment, ce sont les 50 meilleures universités (et non les 500 meilleures) et que la domination américaine à ce chapitre prouve que «plus de brevets» et «plus de qualité Shanghai» vont ensemble. (Bref, on mesure mal la mauvaise chose pour prouver une connerie et on se plante quand même!) C’est pour cela que votre fille sera bientôt sourde comme un pot. et la nôtre aussi.

One Canadian Response

As part of a broader framework of Canadian responses to the militarization of anthropology, and in particular the potential for American influence in this respect on Canadian anthropology, I am pleased to announce that the subject occupies several pages of the current issue of Culture, the newsletter of the Canadian Anthropology Society (see below). The article can be retrieved below as well as at:

http://casca.anthropologica.ca/culture/documents/Culture_v2-2.pdf

and in the document box for this blog at

https://www.box.net/shared/u76slxpois

Background

“Militarizing Anthropology, Researching for Empire, and the Implications for Canada”

For the past two years, American anthropology has been the site of heated debates concerning the recruitment of anthropologists for the counterinsurgency program known as the Human Terrain System (HTS). Both imperial anthropology, and anthropologists as spies, are making a comeback. In addition to HTS, there is the National Security Education Program (NSEP) (also see here), the Intelligence Community Scholars Program (ICSP), and the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), the latter set up with the avid support of Dr. Felix Moos (anthropologist at U. Kansas). Meanwhile new campus intelligence consortia are also being formed. However with the recent implementation of the Pentagon’s new Minerva program, the import and impact of the militarization of the social sciences has now widened considerably even beyond these areas of concern, and beyond the social sciences in the U.S.

As of the end of July, the U.S. Department of Defense formally instituted what it calls the Minerva Research Initiative, and is now accepting grant proposals. The Pentagon outlined the following five areas of investigation that it supports: (1) Chinese Military and Technology Research and Archive Programs; (2) Studies of the Strategic Impact of Religious and Cultural Changes within the Islamic World; (3) Iraqi Perspectives Project; (4) Studies of Terrorist Organization and Ideologies; and, (5) New Approaches to Understanding Dimensions of National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation. The DoD awards will be paid out to universities, and will range from $500,000 to $3 million (US) per annum, with the average award estimated at $1.5 million per annum.

What is important to note, besides the size of the awards and the nature of national security research that is being promoted, is that foreign universities and foreign researchers are also encouraged to participate: “This MRI competition is open to institutions of higher education (universities) including DoD institutions of higher education and foreign universities, with degree-granting programs in social sciences. Participation by foreign universities either as project lead or in a supporting role is encouraged” (p. 4).

Military reviewers and government employees are looking specifically for proposals that are relevant to Pentagon goals. The focus of areas (2) and (4) is to “elucidate the relationships amongst social, cultural, political, religious and economic factors that interact to foster political violence, terrorism or insurgent behavior” (p. 17). The Pentagon notes the following disciplines as “relevant”: “anthropology, economics, political science, sociology, social and cognitive psychology, and computational science.”

This project also calls on academics to themselves identify an organization or an ideology as “terrorist” without providing any guidelines or list of suggested organizations and ideologies. Surveillance is intended, over the long term, and anthropologists are specifically called upon, as “the relevance of context and situation may require field research” (p. 20). The effort is aimed at studying “behaviour networks, groups, and communities over time” with an “urgent need” to locate terrorist organizations and populations sympathetic to them. “Especially helpful to the Department of Defense,” the document states, is,

understanding where organized violence is likely to erupt, what factors might explain its contagion, and how to circumvent its spread. Research on belief formation and emotional contagion will provide cultural advisors with better tools to understand the impact of operations on the local population. This research should also contribute to countermeasures to help revise or influence belief structures to reduce the likelihood of militant cells forming. (p. 21)

Recently, the National Science Foundation has partnered with the Pentagon in vetting applications for Minerva funds, submitted through the NSF for its $8 million share of Minerva’s overall budget of $50 million. The funding is still from the Pentagon and the award carries the seal of the Department of Defense.

As mentioned, the Pentagon is inviting foreign researchers and their universities to participate in the Minerva program. Conditions in Canada seem ripe for its spread here, given Canada’s own intervention in Afghanistan and the government’s collaboration with the U.S.’ “global war on terror,” and the relative paucity of social science research funding. A minority can hope to win a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and even fewer will ever get a grant close to the maximum of $250,000 spread over three years. Canada Research Chairs, fewer in number but with more funding, still cannot compete with the massive amount offered by Minerva, whose maximum grant is 12 times higher than the maximum offered by SSHRC to a researcher. With greater pressure from university administrations to secure more and more research funds, from all possible sources, it is just a matter of time before we find Minerva advertised by our own campus research offices, and taken up by researchers here.

Canadian anthropology is not insulated from its American partner. Many Canadian anthropologists, if not most, also belong to the AAA, and travel to the U.S. for annual meetings of the AAA and/or its member associations. We share the same space on editorial boards of journals. We often jointly organize conferences between CASCA and the American Ethnological Society (AES). Some Canadian departments are modeled on the American four-field system. Prominent faculty in anthropology have served both in Canada and the U.S. We have undergraduates from the U.S., and a good number of our graduates earning degrees in anthropology in the U.S. We use the AAA’s code of ethics and its case studies as part of our teaching materials. We read and adopt texts by our American colleagues, published in the U.S. Though the list could continue, one could add that given the dominance of American anthropology worldwide, even if none of the preceding were true this fact alone would ensure an eventual impact on how our discipline is reproduced, presented to the wider world, and received by it. Whether or not anthropologists will continue to be received and trusted by local hosts remains to be seen.

Related posts and sites:

• THE MINERVA CONTROVERSY (essays, debate, hosted online by the Social Science Research Council)
• Canada’s own Human Terrain System: White Situational Awareness Team in Afghanistan
  

Planned Actions for More Canadian Responses: CASCA-AES, Vancouver, May 13-16, 2009

With that background in mind, it was important to begin a Canadian initiative that in some ways paralleled the work of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, with the aim of developing specifically Canadian individual and/or institutional responses to the militarization of anthropology. There is the added problem of unknowing collaboration with American research partners who may themselves be funded in part under one of the programs mentioned above. The same applies to Canadian collaboration in reviewing articles, participating in conferences, advising on research proposals, etc., in situations where some funding from a U.S. military or intelligence agency may be present in the background, and that might find Canadian input useful. In addition, as the open access movement gains ground, and some speak of blogging as a research tool, we should not proceed naively as the case has been so far, where discussions of application of open access knowledge to nefarious ends has not yet been discussed outside of this blog.

Both Greg Feldman (Geography, University of British Columbia) and I are planning two events for the upcoming joint conference of the Canadian Anthropology Society and the American Ethnological Society, “Transnational Anthropologies,” to be held in Vancouver, May 13-16, this year. Greg Feldman is organizing a symposium, and I will be organizing an open discussion for CASCA members on the following day.

In addition, these issues have been raised directly with the executive committee of the Canadian Anthropology Society, and we expect to see some direct and active participation by it in these discussions.

The federal member of parliament for my area (I will not name either the area or the MP), belongs to the Bloc Québécois, the federal wing of the Quebec sovereignty movement. Having exchanged some correspondence concerning SSHRC he/she has agreed that SSHRC funding, a federal program, should be devolved to the provinces (“Nous croyons aussi que les fonds du SSHRC devraient aller aux provinces”).

Hopefully, slowly but surely, we can start to make some room for this issue.

To grossly summarize, my contention was that funding for education in Canada is a provincial matter, including higher education, and that SSHRC involves federal trespass on provincial territory. I also argued that the funding reinforces provincial inequalities, and that both aspects appear to go against either the letter or the spirit of laws and government policies regulating education, and access to education.

Why the Silence, Eh? Quietly Canadian.

One of the main concerns I have as I write these articles is that there is little in the way of criticism to be found online concerning the workings and structuring of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC/CRSH), which can mean many different things: that SSHRC’s position is so well entrenched that it is too far beyond questioning by researchers who take it for granted that this is the way things are, and maybe this is way things should be; that researchers do not take the time to post their opinions online, reserving them for private grumblings among colleagues (and there are many of these complaint sessions, as I have observed and participated in them); and, that academics in Canada, beyond unions, have not formed anything resembling a radical movement that directly grapples with transforming the social position and politics of the university. Given that SSHRC is largely run by scholars who volunteer for, or are invited to serve, and is constituted and funded by the state, the apparent lack of political “noise” by scholars will surely not prompt any significant changes within SSHRC. The wider public is simply not well informed, or not informed at all, about SSHRC, and hence there is rarely any mention of SSHRC in terms of public political debate in the mass media. SSHRC is simply not on the public’s radar screen. Inertia is always a factor. Of course the silence to which I allude is not absolute: it’s that the questioning is not vigorous, direct, and prominent.

I must point out that we do have the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS). The CFHSS was originally created by Canadian scholars in the 1940s and relied on funding from the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations, among other American philanthropic trusts, in order to survive. The CFHSS is supposed to act as an advocate for social sciences and humanities researchers, and has done so in select moments in the past — indeed, to date it has published numerous statements on open access, copyright, e-publishing, research ethics, and various position papers presented to the government concerning funding. Part of its own funding comes directly from SSHRC, and it represents a wide variety of interests, from researchers, to associations, to scholarly publishers, to universities — possibly too broad a spectrum for meaningful, transformative political action.

A basic structure for mobilizing scholars therefore does exist but could be better utilized. For now, the CFHSS is largely part of the status quo, with its most prominent functions being to sponsor gargantuan multidisciplinary conferences (the “Learneds” congresses) and to help fund various scholarly publications. In fact, one of the few “progressive” features of the CFHSS today is that it is directed and staffed almost entirely by women. Another positive feature has been its conversion to open access of books that have benefited from its Aid to Scholarly Publications Program and received its Scholarly Book Prize. Otherwise, I can attest, and will insist, that the CFHSS has been a minimal presence in my life as an academic in Canada — most times I am barely aware of its existence (I accidentally “re-discovered” it for the purpose of research for this article), and I have no idea how one even gets involved in the organization.

[Update: Thanks to a colleague for reminding me that the Canadian Anthropology Association is not a member of the CFHSS, and therefore anthropologists remain unrepresented at that level]

Two More Problems for Funded Research

In the previous articles I linked to above, I already delved into a series of problems and constraints posed for social science research by the nature of funding. Here are two more problem areas.

INNOVATION: SSHRC makes many claims about supporting innovative research programs and its creation of new funding opportunities. This is a problem in itself: with restricted funds, the multiplication of programs and the heaping of restrictions on each program means that basic research funding in the form of the “standard research grant” is increasingly strangled. Beyond this, it is very questionable that SSHRC supports research innovation when its grant application procedures have a heavy conservative bent, almost promoting stasis. For example, I have heard from too many colleagues that when they try to apply for funding to undertake a new research project, rather than continue an old one, they are almost always denied — their applications are rejected, at least in part on the premise that they have little or no research background in the new area of research that they wish to undertake. Let’s take a closer look at SSHRC application guidelines for the Standard Research Grant. Within the application guidelines we find the following:

CONTEXT
Situate the proposed research in context of the relevant scholarly literature. [But what if the scholarly literature is slim on a particular topic? Then reviewers have a choice to make: either they believe that the research program is truly innovative, or, as tends to be the case, they second-guess the applicant, and instead suggest that the literature review was inadequate. Moreover, this kind of language that SSHRC adopts promotes the kind of arid niche-seeking that is coming to dominate academia, with too many looking for research "gaps". Sometimes, some things have not been studied because they are simply not worth studying.]

Explain the relationship and relevance of the proposed research to your ongoing research. [And there it is, plainly stated. "I have no ongoing research, I wish to do something brand new, I am fed up and bored with what I have been doing. The proposed research is almost entirely irrelevant and totally unrelated to my past research!" One can just imagine how reviewers, who are in practice almost always conservative and blush indignant with any challenge, would receive such a statement.]

If the proposal represents a significant change of direction from your previous research, describe how it relates to experiences and insights gained from earlier research achievements. [There is more room for ambiguity here, perhaps. However, again the tendency for SSHRC is to tie you to what you did in the past, which again is not a recipe for innovation.]

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH PLAN AND PREVIOUS OUTPUT
C. Description of previous and ongoing research results
In this section, summarize the results of your most recent and ongoing research grants. Note, where appropriate, the relevance of each to the proposed research program.
[Once more, and this is at least the third time, SSHRC demands that you remain accountable to the past.]

MATCHING THE STATUS OF “SCIENCE”: As I understood the situation, thanks to Dr. Marc Renaud (Sociologist, U. de Montréal), a past President of SSHRC — more than two thirds of Canadian university students are in the social sciences, and yet funding for the social sciences is less than a third of what it is for the natural sciences. And yet SSHRC is challenged by one politician to account for itself in comparison to scientific-funding agencies. SSHRC public affairs chief Garth Williams said:

SSHRC’s peer review process matches up well with more science-oriented funding agencies: “Experts in the different fields evaluate the track records of the researchers [seeking funding] and the quality of the proposals. It’s rigorous and extremely competitive.” (McGill Reporter, February 8, 2001)

What Solutions am I Proposing?

A good question would be: “Hey Max, who cares about what you propose?” Another good question would be: “Hey Max, who asked you, eh?”

To answer the first question: Nobody. To answer the second question: Nobody. And that is precisely why I write in public, because my two answers here are identical to the two answers that would be honestly given by many of my colleagues in Canada, which is why they remain publicly silent (largely silent) as individuals, and why they are being represented by cautiously quiet agencies, and why they remain alienated by a system that governs them. Caution, care, silence: these might be effective for bringing about very slow change, but they are even better for bringing about no change at all.

Thus here is my provisional list of proposed solutions, my contingent manifesto:

THE DEVOLUTION OF RESEARCH FUNDING, ENHANCING RESEARCHER AUTONOMY:
These are public funds we are talking about, and if the public does not want any of its money to be in our hands, then the public ought to take back the money. Until the public does so, however, no one agency, no one university, can lay a greater claim to public money than anyone else. SSHRC has become a tool for the intervention of federalist politics, when the Provinces are supposed to be in charge of funding education. Therefore, at least (1) start by devolving all funding resources to the Provinces, at least on a per capita basis. SSHRC has also become a tool for maintaining regional inequalities, with already heavily funded and endowed universities getting proportionately more than others. These heavily financed universities are also located in the centres of Canadian economic growth and development (Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver). Where does proportionately less research funding go? Sydney (Nova Scotia), Saskatoon, Moncton, Winnipeg, and so forth. And yet the boast is that Canada offers its citizen students the same opportunities no matter where they happen to live, no matter where they were born in Canada. That is simply not true.

Given that some universities are overfed with public research funds, then at least (2) start by allocating research funds to universities on a per capita basis that combines the number of students and faculty in some reasonable form. And, as argued previously, (2a) consider creating permanent annual research funding for each professor with a research record. At the very least, the devotion of a vast number of working hours to preparing and/or reviewing funding applications would be better spent on research itself, or disseminating that research.

These two steps, combined, respect the autonomy of Provinces, and the autonomy of universities. Doing otherwise is contrary to the law, as a matter of fact, since both principles are enshrined in federal and provincial law.

Quebec, incidentally, has its very own funding agencies (see FQRSC and FQRNT), which is a very smart, big first step (of course, Quebec also has its own laws, its own foreign representation, its own media, etc.). Now it needs to devolve that research funding to its universities. Otherwise the question is: what is the state scared of? Is it afraid that academics might have their own ideas about how to fund their own work?

An aside:
I trust negotiations within my university about what to fund and to what degree, and what are the appropriate requirements, far more than I do SSHRC. Indeed, the positive results of local and internal decision making have been subverted by negative cultural practices that take the form of snobbery. Universities currently do have limited and minimal internal funding, and given that artificial and arbitrarily restrictive requirements are not in place as with most SSHRC programs, these much smaller amounts are usually easier for researchers to gain. But, as I was told by one university Dean during a job interview: “Don’t tell me about any internal grants you got! We all get those.” Well, that should be good news, and we should all get more of these. Are we really going to get picky, snobby, trendy, and elitist about research funding? That’s just a first step in research production — if you are going to be so crassly boastful, at least wait until you get prestigious awards for your work before you start blowing your trumpet. But this “tell me where you got your funding” attitude is one that I personally find is vulgar, almost grotesque, but perfectly adequate for what is, after all, a capitalist institution.

GENERAL RESEARCH FUNDS:
There are too many straitjacketed (i.e., specialized) research programs created by SSHRC, and all of them share one central assumption: that a researcher has one research program. Yet, many of us have a cluster of numerous small projects that do not necessarily tie into each other, short term projects that may result in single reports, that could occasion the hiring of student research assistants. While not dismissing funding for specialized research, I would argue that (3) we need to consider allocating “general research funds” that support multiple small research projects with no unifying theme in common. This is vital: researchers will, one hopes, have their curiosity stimulated by the unforeseen implications of a current research project, and begin to diversify and branch out, attempt a few small projects, delve into spin-off areas, or develop new interests altogether. If we want innovation, then we need to reconsider the current mode of streamlining.

CATER TO THE RESEARCH SPECIALTIES OF PARTICULAR UNIVERSITIES:
One of the most critical flaws of the current mode of centralized, federalized, research funding is that it assumes — incorrectly — that there is a single, universal research landscape in Canada (or maybe it does not assume it, but rather wishes to create it, which is more sinister). The fact of the matter is that, by either design or by chance, many universities have unique clusters of research interests and specializations that are not duplicated elsewhere. In anthropology this is an almost mandatory reality in Canada: we have a hybrid model of four-field anthropology departments, social anthropology departments, and sociology-anthropology departments. My university is currently developing what it calls “signature areas” that distinguish it from other universities, to attract students not because we do the same thing everybody else does, but because we do not. Those signature areas may not map onto SSHRC’s structure of research funding, perhaps not neatly, perhaps in some cases not at all. Therefore, I suggest that (4) we consider universities to be the best stewards for special and new research programs that better speak to their individual strengths, and that are in the best position to nurture and evaluate those research programs.

Collaboration between researchers across universities would still be possible, indeed there is nothing that has been put forth thus far that would raise any impediment to such collaboration.

The ability of autonomous, local decision-making structures would not only better help to foster new research programs, it would go some distance toward diminishing the alienation suffered by so many academics in Canada, for whom governance is not an opportunity, but a series of sour constraints. We need to get past the SSHRC model, of the unitary, federal brain that can envision and predict all possibilities, that seeks to administer and dictate from the centre. We need more than just “consultation,” we need direct participation.

1. Taking a Pause for the Cause
2. Punishing Publication, Banishing Ideas: YouTube Censors Your World for the CIA
3. Libya: What Revolution? Whose Revolution?
4. Libya and the Passive Repeaters: Deploying Depleted Information Warheads
5. The Humanitarian-Militarist Project and the Production of Empire in Libya
6. The Libyan Revolution is Dead: Notes for an Autopsy
7. Encircling Empire: Report #14—Foreign Military Intervention in Libya: A Report on Neo-colonial dependency and humanitarian imperialism
8. The Exodus Story and Western Conceptions of Progress, Movement, Revolution
9. Globalization, Compression, and the Desire for Intervention
10. Encircling Empire: Report #13—Revolution, Intervention, Anthropology
11. Sixteen Shares
12. On Libya: Why We Need Nuance
13. Empire and the Liberation of Veiled Women: Lutz & Collins
14. Declaring the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System a Success: Rereading the CNA Report
15. Congressionally Mandated Report of the U.S. Army Human Terrain System: Center for Naval Analyses Investigation is Online
16. Egypt and the Clinton Doctrine
17. UK NGO Seeks U.S. Army Funding: Somalia Opportunity, Shadow Anthropology
18. America, Guernica and the War of Terror
19. The American Anthropological Association and Egypt: It’s Mostly About the Artifacts?
20. Shadow Anthropology
21. Egypt Protesters Will Spark Global Mass Movements: Internet and Globalization’s Positives
22. Challenging America’s Pharaoh: A Revolutionary Movement and the Future of Egyptian (In)dependence
23. Encircling Empire: Report #12, FOCUS ON EGYPT: Revolution and Counter-Revolution
24. The Song of the Nonaligned Nile
25. Egypt: Real Change Comes from the Street
26. The Heroic People of Egypt
27. An Alternative Approach to Afghanistan
28. EE: Report #11, Focus on Egypt
29. The Fall of the American Wall: Tunisia, Egypt, and Beyond
30. Journalist, Hacker, Spy, Racketeer
31. American Educated Afghans and the Destruction of Afghanistan by the United States: The Case of Zal Khalizad
32. Encircling Empire: Report #10, 07—18 January 2011
33. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, 04 April 1967
34. The Big Society Bites Back
35. Hortense Powdermaker and the Mechanized Mind: The Problem of Method and the Prizing of Know-How
36. BLEAK
37. When it Comes to Political Violence, the U.S. Sets an Example for Itself
38. The Excuse is Wikileaks. The Object is Freedom of Speech. The Subject is Authoritarianism.
39. Encircling Empire: Report #9, 01—07 January 2011
40. U.S. Army Female Engagement Teams Expand: King Xerxes’ Queen Esther Cited
41. Recommended ISAF Guidance for Female Engagement Teams
42. 2010 In Review
43. Afghanistan: The Imperial Occupation’s Own Dancing Boys
44. This Christmas Leaks
45. Anthropology, Secrecy, and Wikileaks
46. So You Want to Join the Human Terrain System: Welcome, Anthropologist
47. Wikileaks and the Moral Dualism of the U.S. State Department
48. Caring for Aboriginals? The Politics of Anthropology in Australia
49. The Wikileaks Revolution, Part 2: Notes from the Insurrection
50. Zero Anthropology is Wikileaks
51. At AJP: Expanding the Human Terrain System and Militarizing Anthropology in Canada
52. U.S. Army Starving its Civil Affairs Functions: Prefers New Age HTS, PRT’s
53. WikiRebels: The Documentary
54. The Wikileaks Revolution
55. WikiLeaks Disrupts U.S. Propaganda Machinery
56. Julian Assange: The Truth Will Always Win
57. The Leavenworth Diary: Double Agent Anthropologist Inside the Human Terrain System
58. How to Find Wikileaks and Follow Cablegate
59. Professor Tom Flanagan: Glib about Murdering Julian Assange
60. Updates to U.S. Army Human Terrain System News
61. The Human Terrain System: Global Counterinsurgency, Global Espionage, Global Occupation
62. U.S. Army Human Terrain System News: Hamilton Deserves Credit, CG TRADOC in Trouble, Training Woes
63. Wikileaks: Intelligence Needs Counter-Intelligence
64. Just Released: The New Imperialism, Vol. 1: Militarism, Humanism, and Occupation
65. The Motion is Passed: The AAA on SOUTHCOM and Florida International University
66. In Afghanistan: Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?
67. Wikileaks: Defend Julian Assange
68. Where the Cure is the Disease and the Doctor Sickens the Patient: The Pathology of Occupation in Haiti
69. Welcome to Our Newest Blogger: Eliza Jane Darling
70. Deepwater Uni
71. Embedded Anthropology in Australia: The Debate Continues
72. Wikileaks Roundup: Man of the Year, Assange the Swede, Blocked at Harvard, Telling the Truth
73. Cultures of Militarization: In Canada and Beyond
74. Encircling Empire: Report #8, 21 October-11 November 2010
75. Cyber Warlords Push Counterinsurgency, Social Science: Human Terrain System as a Cautionary Tale
76. Militarism’s Tea Party
77. Justifying Corporate Welfare for the Military: What the Logic Sounds Like
78. Further Militarization of the Academy: Florida International University, SOUTHCOM, and Strategic Culture
79. Torturing the Whistle Blowers: The Case of Vance and Ertel in Iraq, Substantiated by Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs
80. The U.S. Cost of the War in Afghanistan
81. Roundup of Posts on Wikileaks: The Iraq War Logs
82. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: On War News Radio
83. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: The U.S. Government’s Crisis of Legitimacy
84. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post
85. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: Pentagon Response to Publication of Logs
86. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: UN High Commissioner Calls for Investigation Into War Logs Allegations
87. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: U.S. Troops Hand Over Detainees to Interrogation Squad
88. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: U.S. Apache Guns Down Surrendering Insurgents
89. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: Hundreds of Civilians Gunned Down at Checkpoints
90. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: One Day in Iraq: 128 Dead, Including Three Women and One Child
91. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: 15,000 New Civilian Deaths Uncovered in Leaked Files
92. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: The War in Numbers
93. Wikileaks: The Iraq War Logs Documentaries
94. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: Obama Administration Handed Over Detainees Despite Reports of Torture
95. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: 76 Cases of Abuse Challenges U.S. Report on Iraqi Prisons
96. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: Torture Widespread in Iraqi Detention Facilities
97. Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs: U.S. Troops Ordered Not to Investigate Iraqi Torture
98. What is Missing in Wikileaks’ Iraq War Logs
99. And There It Goes! Nothing to Report
100. Here It Comes! Next Wikileaks Release, More on the Human Terrain System
101. US Army Can’t Fix its Human Terrain System: How can it win multiple wars?
102. Encircling Empire: Report #7, 16-21 October 2010
103. Holy Mother of Israel
104. A Digital Face Lift for the Human Terrain System
105. Encircling Empire: Report #6, 09-16 October 2010
106. Defense Contractors from Dante’s Circles of Hell: Sequel to Human Terrain System I?
107. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM): Commemorating Columbus Day 2010
108. Ariel Dorfman: Christopher Columbus in Iraq
109. Ethnographies of Resistance Movements: Legible to the Authorities
110. Encircling Empire: Report #5, 01-08 October 2010
111. The University as Finishing School for the New Imperialists?
112. Sources Sought to Run Human Terrain System: Insiders Glevum and McNeil Technologies in the Hunt
113. Memo to the Parents of Cannon Fodder
114. The Nation Builders
115. Burlesque Afghanistan: Pulp Fiction from an Embedded “Reporter”
116. The Many Faces of the Human Terrain System in Iraq
117. Anthropology in Canada: Number of Students, Female Percentage
118. Are You Afraid of the Digital Taleban?
119. Encircling Empire: Report #4, 23-30 September 2010
120. Second Decade of the New American Century: A Clockwork Orange Meets American Psycho
121. What Ahmadinejad Did Not Say at the UN, that Some People Instead Chose to Hear
122. Encircling Empire: Report #3, 18-23 September 2010
123. Fear and Loathing of Margaret Mead
124. Protest the Repression of Dissent in Bahrain: Free Blogger Ali Abdulemam
125. Encircling Empire: Report #2, 11-18 September 2010
126. Ann Laura Stoler: Supporting Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel
127. If I Had a Trillion Dollars: Involving Youth in Discussions about the Costs of War
128. Colonial and Anti-Imperial Anthropology
129. Anthropology, Philanthropy, and Empire
130. Anthropology? Whatever
131. Encircling Empire: Report #1, 03-11 September 2010
132. Patriotism and Twitter Säuberung: Keeping the Wrong Words Out of View
133. The ‘Dirty Secrets’ that Purify a Dirty War: A Colonial Tale of Dancing Boys, a Journalist, and the Human Terrain System in Afghanistan
134. In the Conflicts Around Wikileaks, Is Julian Assange Really the Problem?
135. Montgomery McFate: Gone from the Human Terrain System
136. Neocolonialism: It’s Post-Independence, Not Post-Colonial
137. Withdrawing from Afghanistan: Three Movies on the Soviet Occupation
138. The Loaded Goat: Revisiting Pine Cone Anthropology in Afghanistan
139. Israeli Penetration of the American Media: Documents Released
140. Don’t Hide Behind the Women: What is Relevant in the Story About Julian Assange and the Rape Accusation?
141. Human Terrain System in the Media
142. The Diary of Ted the Tongue: Pinecone Anthropologist
143. The Pentagon’s Letter to Wikileaks
144. Wikileaks: Bradley Manning, Sweden as Safe Haven, and Pentagon Propaganda
145. Heroism in Doubt: Canadian War Mythology Takes a Hit from Wikileaks
146. Suppressed Realities in the American Media: The Uncensored Acts of War
147. Another Insider’s View of the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System
148. Bush’s Ugly America: Is It Obama’s?
149. Fidel Castro: A Call to the President of the United States
150. Is TIME’s Afghan “cover girl” really a victim of mutilation by the Taleban?
151. When I hear the word “culture”…
152. Diary Dig: Searching the Wikileaks Afghan War Diary Made Easy
153. Visual Intelligence: IED Attacks from Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary
154. Continued: Debating the Pros and Cons of Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary
155. News: IED Blast Strikes Human Terrain Team, Injuries Reported
156. Pride and Prejudice in U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System
157. Revealing the Human Terrain System in Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary
158. Human Terrain System in Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary: Searching for Evidence of the Positive
159. USA Fears Loss of Sri Lanka
160. Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary: Problems to Note, More to Come on Human Terrain Teams
161. Human Terrain Teams in Wikileaks’ Afghan War Diary: Raw Data
162. Andrew Garfield’s Commercial Plea for War Research, and the Reality of Ethics in Human Terrain Teams
163. America’s Defense Associations: Key Elements in US Security and War Machinery
164. Counterinsurgency: It’s Bloody Horrible
165. More European Press Coverage of the Human Terrain System
166. Saving Lives, or Ending Them? Martin Schweitzer on Special Operations and the Human Terrain System
167. Grace McFate: Anthropology, Avatar, and the Human Terrain System in the Italian Press
168. Defending the Indefensible: The Talking Points of State Terrorism
169. Causes and Consequences of the Destabilization of Afghanistan
170. Independent Assessment of Human Terrain System: Findings to Pentagon on 19 July 2010
171. Taleban–Not Taliban
172. The Killing Fields of Marja
173. Whose Hearts and Minds?
174. General Petraeus’ Magic Bag: Human Terrain System and Covert Ops
175. The Military’s Media Whores: On Ethics, Power, Rapport and Responsibility
176. Marjeh, Afghanistan: X-ray of McChrystal’s Bleeding Ulcer
177. Militarism and Democracy: More on the McChrystal Affair
178. General Stanley McTerror: The Shocking Admissions the Media Treated as Unremarkable
179. Center for Naval Analysis to Run HTS Independent Investigation: McFate Says, “We All Have Red Blood”
180. Worried about Iraqis writing their own history? Then let’s violate international law, again
181. USA Undermines Democracy in Turkey: It’s Turkey Stupid, Not Israel
182. Human Terrain System on War News Radio
183. Ghassan Hage: A Massacre is Not a Massacre
184. Collateral Murder, Part 2: Admission of U.S. War Crimes in Iraq
185. Senator Barbara Boxer Doesn’t Understand the Meaning of “Federal”: Turns Away Complaints about Human Terrain System
186. Human Terrain System Program Manager Dismissed: Georgia Tech Wants Out
187. Team USA at the 2010 FIFA World Cup: Motivation Unthinkable without the Military
188. Militainment: U.S. Military Propaganda in the News Media, Hollywood, and Video Games
189. Human Experimentation for CIA Torture: Physicians for Human Rights Videos, Petition, Write to Obama
190. Video Propaganda: Human Terrain System on National Geographic
191. Physicians for Human Rights to File Federal Complaint: On CIA-led Human Experimentation and Research to Design Torture Techniques Used against Detainees
192. Anthropology and the Representation of Migrations from Afghanistan
193. Georgia Tech Ends Relationship with U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System
194. A Major Report of a Minor Exception, or a Minor Report of a Major Problem? The American Anthropological Association’s CEAUSSIC vis-à-vis the Human Terrain System–Part 2
195. A Major Report of a Minor Exception, or a Minor Report of a Major Problem? The American Anthropological Association’s CEAUSSIC vis-à-vis the Human Terrain System–Part 1
196. Human Terrain System Managers, Contractors Inflating Costs: HTS Referred to as Shit, Active Duty Soldiers Maligned
197. Human Terrain System Video News: John Stanton, and the AGS Bowman Expeditions in Mexico
198. Human Terrain System: Senior Managers to Paris, Security Clearance Troubles
199. New Release: INDIGENOUS COSMOPOLITANS
200. HTS’ MAP HT Failure: People Not Being Paid, MAP HT Cost Overrruns
201. SCRATs: AFRICOM after the Human Terrain System
202. Changing Fortunes in Washington: The Evolution of House Armed Services Committee Reports on the Human Terrain System
203. The Pentagon’s “Other” Human Terrain System?
204. Time Line and FAQ for the Human Terrain System and Responses by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and the American Anthropological Association
205. Gun Running, Drugs, and Flamenco: U.S. Army Human Terrain System Has it All
206. Human Terrain System Criticized by U.S. Congress
207. Imperial Instruction: The Human Terrain System’s Academic Trainers, Part 2
208. Imperial Instruction: The Human Terrain System’s Academic Trainers, Part 1
209. Human Terrain Teams Feared More than CIA: John Stanton
210. The Perfect Gift for the Anthropologist with a Smart Idea
211. Iraq 1492
212. Coming soon on Al Jazeera.net
213. US Army Human Terrain System Smoke and Mirrors: John Stanton
214. US Army Human Terrain System Oddities: John Stanton
215. US Army Generals Not Informed HTS was Spy/Intel Program: John Stanton
216. Anthropologists for Justice and Peace (AJP)
217. Interviewed Today on Al Jazeera: Social Media, Soft Power, and American Empire
218. Welcome to our newest blogger, John Stanton
219. The Human Terrain System is a Military Intelligence Program: John Stanton
220. Collateral Murder: U.S. Soldiers Killing Civilians in Cold Blood
221. 100 percent (Militarized) American
222. Information, Communications, and Targeted Killing
223. Human Terrain System Leadership: Worst Ever? John Stanton
224. CIA Feminism
225. Mercenary Humanism
226. AFRICOM, Human Terrain, Empire, and Anthropology
227. Information Traffickers of the Imperial State: American Anthropologists and Other Academics
228. Human Terrain System Under Investigation: HTS Link to JIEDDO & US Death Squads
229. Innocently Informing State Terrorism: Journalism, Knowledge, and Counterinsurgency
230. Do professional ethics matter in war? Hugh Gusterson
231. Multiplying Human Terrain Dreams of Victory and Fortune
232. Mapping the Terrain of War Corporatism: The Human Terrain System within the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex
233. On the lighter side of darkness: “I LUV A MAN IN A UNIFORM!” is back
234. David Price: Human Terrain Systems Dissenter Resigns, Tells Inside Story of Training’s Heart of Darkness
235. HTS Hostage Issa Salomi Lived Off Base: John Stanton
236. Bibliography and Archive: The Military, Intelligence Agencies, and the Academy (with special reference to anthropology) – Documents, News, Reports
237. New Details Emerge in Salomi Hostage Case: John Stanton
238. Iraqi Insurgents Capture Human Terrain System Member: John Stanton
239. ACTION ALERT: Sign the Anthropologists’ Statement on the Human Terrain System
240. John Stanton: The New Face of the Human Terrain System
241. So much to write, so little time…
242. This Blog’s Top Posts for 2009
243. Where are the Pueblo Clowns?
244. Human Terrain System Suffers Another Casualty
245. Professor Richard Antoun, murdered Fri. Dec. 4, 2009: We Will Miss You, May God Bless You
246. 0.171: Anthropology and the Will to Meaning: Vassos Argyrou
247. 0.178: The Social Production of Science and Anthropology as Knowledge for Domination
248. 0.179: Imperialism, Americanization, and the Social Sciences
249. 0.18: Anthropology and the Rise of the Social Sciences within the Structures of Knowledge – Immanuel Wallerstein
250. 0.185: Terms of Incorporation, Concepts of Domination
251. Reality Check for the Human Terrain System: Marilyn Dudley-Flores Responds
252. Claude Lévi-Strauss: à la prochaine fois
253. Anthropology on Stage, Human Terrain System on Screen
254. 0.189: Stanley Diamond & Claude Lévi-Strauss on the Nature and Future of Anthropology
255. 0.19: Questions about Colonialism and Anthropology: Epistemology, Methodology, and Politics
256. 0.20: “Potentially Dangerous Implications for the Practice of Anthropology Today”
257. Is this Taliban video of an “annihilated” U.S. base a fake?
258. Afghan Vignette 7: How to Buy Peace in Afghanistan
259. News from the Military-Academic Complex: McFate’s PhD, HTS Contracts, Minerva Grants, Afghanistan
260. Welcome to ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY: The End of the Beginning of the End
261. McFate: “Does good anthropology contribute to better killing?”
262. John Stanton: US Congress Rewards Failure, Puts Personnel in Harm’s Way
263. Afghanistan’s Eighth Anniversary with Another Crumbling Empire
264. Afghan Vignette 6: What “Unwinnable” Looks Like (2.0)
265. This Fraud Is On You: The 2009 Afghan Elections and the U.N. Cover Up
266. U.S. Congress and the Human Terrain System
267. Harper Needs Somebody to Love
268. Torture for Democracy (1): Michael Ignatieff’s New Imperialism
269. Torture for Democracy (2): Video Post
270. John Stanton: U.S. Congress to Assess Human Terrain System
271. Permission to Copy Denied to the “Open Anthropology Cooperative” (OAC) (1.1)
272. Plagiarism on the “Open Anthropology Cooperative”
273. Afghanistan: The Unwinnable War
274. Obama as Opiate: Imperialism Denies Itself as Imperialism
275. (Re)Imperializing Anthropology and Decolonizing Knowledge Production
276. Public Propaganda, The Human Terrain System, and Staged Democracy in Afghanistan
277. Blind Spots: Ethical Research in the Midst of Counterinsurgency
278. This Be The Verse
279. Putting Schools in the Line of Fire in Afghanistan
280. Beloved Discordia
281. Afghan Vignettes 4 & 5: How to Build Trust
282. Noam Chomsky: Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect
283. Afghan Vignette 3: Protecting Civilians, Winning Hearts and Minds
284. Embedded With the Taliban
285. Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan
286. Afghan Vignette 2: They Are Animals!
287. Afghan Vignette 1: Those Cowardly Taliban
288. Afghanistan and the Emergence of the Taliban: Reviewed Works
289. Let the Clone Wars Begin: How the Open Anthropology Project can be Cooperative
290. A More Formal Welcome to the New Blogger: M. Jamil Hanifi
291. Misrepresentation: Prostituting “Open Anthropology” to the Military
292. Response: The OAC’s Name
293. The Particulars of a Name
294. There Can Be Only One!
295. Demonstration Elections
296. Afghanistan Elections 2009
297. Like a Diamond Bullet to the Forehead (2.0)
298. Questions about the Taliban: Struggle against the USSR; Reagan; how popularity was gained
299. Afghanistan’s Little Girls on the Front Line, Part 2
300. Capitalism Sickens Canadians
301. The Political Economy of the Bullet in Afghanistan
302. M. Jamil Hanifi: Questions for Military Anthropology
303. Bait & Switch from the Anti-Colonial Hearts & Minds
304. Glimpses of What the Mainstream Media Might Have Told Us About Afghanistan
305. We Are Protecting Afghan Civilians…from Ourselves
306. In Afghanistan It’s Now All About the Little Girls (1.5)
307. An Anthropological Preview of the Post-9/11 World
308. John Stanton: Human Terrain System in the Kill-Pacify Chain
309. Patricia Omidian, Applied Anthropologist in Afghanistan, on the Human Terrain System
310. R2P: Responsibility to Protect
311. Survey: Applied Anthropology and Military Engagement in the Human Terrain System
312. Conservative Anti-Imperialism
313. Links: Debates on Iran and Leftist Politics
314. M. Jamil Hanifi: Engineering Division, Instability, and Regime Change with Naheed, Neda, and Allah
315. M. Jamil Hanifi: Interrogating Conventional Wisdom about Terrorism
316. Dabashi is Wrong on the Left
317. M. Jamil Hanifi: Editing the Past: Colonial Production of Hegemony Through the Loya Jerga in Afghanistan
318. M. Jamil Hanifi: What Caused the Collapse of the State Infrastructure of Afghanistan?
319. Looking Back at June 2009, Looking Forward
320. Annotated Bibliography: Twitter and the Iranian Election Protests
321. Cross-Cultural Understanding for Peace: So why does HTS go to Afghanistan?
322. Does Wade Davis Do Gaza?
323. Fundamentalism versus Academic Freedom: More on Ward Churchill
324. Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens
325. Ward Churchill and American Justice
326. Iraq National Sovereignty Day: Irony and Promise
327. Congruent Methodologies: Impactful Pre-invasion Imperialist Guerrilla Warfare Tactics in Iran
328. Causation or Correlation, a Useful Crisis Notwithstanding: U.S. Democracy Promotion in Iran
329. Source Verification: Notes for Activists Using Photo and Video in Protests
330. America’s Iranian Twitter Revolution
331. Summary for May 2009
332. Extreme Canada: Ruling Party Interferes with Social Science Funding
333. Peru’s Amazonian Massacre: Links to Reports and Action Resources
334. Dis Location: Arrival as Independence
335. What are the Pentagon’s Minerva Researchers Doing?
336. The Peruvian Massacre and a “Socialist” Fig Leaf for World Capitalism
337. Resisting Free Trade, Racism, and the State: Peru’s Amazonian Indians Fight Back
338. John Stanton: “US Army’s Human Terrain System Like Swine Flu”
339. The Funding of the University: Shaping the Conditions for Higher Education
340. How to Get More Frequent Flyer Miles for Your Zombie
341. News: Militarizing the Social Sciences and Humanities in Canada
342. These Fine, Young, Humanitarian…Zombies
343. Zombie Humanitarians: It’s Obama’s Human Terrain System Now
344. David Price: The Press and Human Terrain Systems – Counterinsurgency’s Free Ride
345. Open Anthropology Cooperative
346. Single-Cell Resistance in the TimeSpace of Kairos
347. April 2009 in Review: Academic Freedom, Imperialism, and Militarization
348. Remix: Introducing Open Source Cinema
349. A Vehicle for Protest: The Van in Vancouver
350. Audio: Anthropology and Counterinsurgency
351. “Useless Anthropology”: Strategies for Dealing with the Militarization of the Academy
352. Canadian Responses to the Militarization and Securitization of Anthropology: Report #2 from the CASCA-AES Conference in Vancouver
353. On the Militarization of Anthropology: Report #1 from the CASCA-AES Conference in Vancouver
354. “Deep Obeah,” by Roi Kwabena
355. The War Criminals’ Roundup: Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Israel
356. No Time in Jail for a U.S. War Criminal: A Mercenary Gets Away with Murdering a Detainee in Afghanistan
357. Whitewashing a U.S. War Crime in Afghanistan: The Trial of Don Ayala, “Human Terrain” Mercenary
358. Here is not “West India”: Roi Kwabena
359. Anthropology, Militarization, and Canadian Responses: CASCA-AES Conference, Vancouver, 13-16 May, 2009
360. May Day 2009: International Workers’ Day and Montreal’s Festival of Anarchy
361. Dominating the Information Terrain of the “Human Terrain System”: John Stanton and this blog
362. When it comes to Israel, there can be no academic freedom or dissent? The case of William I. Robinson and UC-Santa Barbara
363. NATO and Afghanistan’s Shia Marriage Law: The Collapse of a Master Narrative
364. Happy Birthday to Mumia Abu-Jamal: We are all prisoners
365. Counterinsurgency for the Masses: Educating Americans for Campaigns of National Interest
366. Sour Chutney: The Ethnopoetics of Exploitation, Transplantation, and Violence
367. On Colonialism as Genocide: Ward Churchill Speaks at Concordia University, Montreal
368. March 2009 in Review: Academic Freedom, Militarization, Economic Crisis, and Jokes
369. Cheb Khaled (خالد حاج ابراهيم), King of Raï (راي‎): Algerian Freedom, Fusion, and Fête
370. Sex Beats Money, Hitler Beats Gandhi: More Google Insights
371. Worldwide Popular Interest in Anthropology, 2004-2009: Online Search Statistics
372. When Reality Strikes: Ward Churchill on Radio
373. Institutional Dementia: CU Plans to Challenge Ward Churchill’s Reinstatement
374. American Association of University Professors Calls for Ward Churchill’s Reinstatement
375. Academic Politics Gone Wild and Ward Churchill’s “Grand Slam”
376. Ward Churchill’s Court Victory: Benjamin Whitmer, Eric Verlo, Michael Roberts, and Juror Bethany Newill
377. Ward Churchill’s Victory is Our Victory
378. The Verdict is in: WARD CHURCHILL WINS !
379. US Army 101st Airborne Investigative Report on Human Terrain System
380. Ward Churchill’s Case is Now in the Hands of the Jury: Closing Arguments Concluded
381. University of East London Shuts Down Alternative G20 Summit
382. Ward Churchill, George Galloway: Speaking at Concordia University
383. Sugar Sammy’s Art: Making Jokes of Ethnicity, Sex, and Conflict
384. The next two posts about Ward Churchill…
385. Anthropologist Under Attack: University of East London Punishes Chris Knight Over His Public Speech
386. Ward Churchill v. “The Good Americans”: How Churchill’s Critics Made His Case
387. Ward Churchill Rests His Case: News from Days 12 and 13 of Churchill’s Wrongful Termination Suit Against the University of Colorado
388. Ward Churchill Testifies: News from Day 11 of the Churchill Lawsuit Against the University of Colorado
389. A Minor Bun Engine Made Benny Lava, May He Poop on My Knee: Cross-Cultural Translation Under Conditions of Contemporary Electronic Globalization
390. Economics Blogs in a Time of Crisis: Policy, Development, Globalization, and Transformation
391. The Twin Terrors: Financial Blowback Sweeps the Neighbourhood
392. News from Days 9 & 10 of Ward Churchill’s Lawsuit Against the University of Colorado
393. Islands of Shame and the World as a U.S. Military Base: A look at some of the work of David Vine
394. Anthropologists Against Human Terrain & Other Military Anthropology Abuses: On Facebook
395. News from Days 7 & 8 of Ward Churchill’s Lawsuit Against the University of Colorado
396. “Our Job is Repression…the Police is a Paramilitary Organization”
397. Washington Post: Nationalizing the Human Terrain System
398. News from Day 6 of Ward Churchill’s Lawsuit Against the University of Colorado
399. News from Day 5 of Ward Churchill’s Lawsuit Against the University of Colorado
400. Lt. Col. Bob Bateman “Apologizes for the Future”?
401. Nation-building, Democracy, Free Markets: A Note to the Occupiers
402. News from Day 4 of Ward Churchill’s Lawsuit against the University of Colorado
403. Frantz Fanon: “Concerning Violence”
404. Hugh Gusterson: “Empire of Bases”
405. News from Day 3 of Ward Churchill’s Lawsuit Against the University of Colorado
406. News from Ward Churchill’s Court Case Against the University of Colorado (Days 1 and 2)
407. Anthropology and the Military: Current Reports (Updated)
408. The Teacher is Not Your Friend: An American Teaches Iraqi Police About Loyalty to Iraq
409. Top Posts for February 2009
410. The 9th Annual Critical Race Conference: Compassion, Complicity and Conciliation The Politics, Cultures and Economies of ‘Doing Good’
411. The 5th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week is Now On
412. The Human Terrain System: Undermining the Military, Antagonizing Academics
413. The Deafening Silence of the “Milbloggers”: Inconvenient Truths?
414. “The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual”: New Book on Anthropology, Militarization, and the Human Terrain System
415. Some Breaking News on the Human Terrain System: Death Threats Against Female Colleagues
416. Attacking Ward Churchill…By Losing Your Marbles?
417. Questions and Allegations about Robert Young Pelton’s Reporting on a Human Terrain Team in Afghanistan
418. Misunderstanding and Misrepresenting the Charges Against Ward Churchill
419. Facts, Fictions, and Footnotes: Revisiting the Firing of Ward Churchill
420. Chomsky v. Dershowitz, 2005: On Israel and Palestine
421. Academic Freedom News: Ward Churchill, Joel Kovel
422. Robert Fisk at Concordia: “Obama, Us, and the Middle East Wars”
423. Pocius’ Theory of Human Value
424. Marketing the Martyr: Joan of Arc, Florence Nightingale…Paula Loyd
425. Unhappy New Year for Counterinsurgency’s Social Scientists
426. Teaching Gender Equality to Afghan Men: Using Gunshots to the Head
427. “American Radical”: Norman Finkelstein Movie in 2009
428. Beyond Molehills, the High Ground: Dershowitz, Finkelstein, Plagiarism, and Academic Freedom (1.7)
429. Dr. Rat: Defender of the Rat People
430. Against Occupation: Voices within Israel and the Diaspora
431. Latest News on the Human Terrain System: No Longer Private Contractors
432. The Genocide Apostles’ Creed
433. Show Me the Human Shields! The Propaganda has Expired for Israeli State Terrorism
434. Canadian Anthropology, the Human Terrain System, and the Minerva Research Initiative: Canadian Responses
435. Online Documentaries of the Israeli Occupation
436. University Students in Solidarity with Gaza: More News
437. Reflecting Genocide: Side by Side, Yesterday and Today
438. Students Celebrate Starthclyde Uni. Liberation: In Solidarity with Gaza
439. David Price interviews Roberto González on the Human Terrain System
440. Canadian Academic Boycott of Israel: Why We Need to Take Action
441. “Civilian Contractor” Pleads Guilty to Voluntary Manslaughter of Afghan Detainee
442. January 2009 in review (updated)
443. “In Complete World” at the International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec, 2009
444. An Unfolding Pattern of Genocide: Notes from Gaza
445. Gaza, West Bank: Settlements and Borders
446. Round Table: “The Anthropologist in Mined Fields” (updated)
447. AMERICAN COUNTERINSURGENCY, by Roberto J. González (U. Chicago Press, 2009)
448. Contemporary Colonial Scholarship and the Spreading Human Terrain System: AGS Bowman Expeditions, Zapotec Indians, and onto the Caribbean
449. Israel: What is being defended? Who is the victim?
450. Message to Obama: From an Undefeated Hamas
451. Gaza Q & A by Stephen Shalom
452. Boycott Israel: Montreal Professors and Academic Employees
453. SIXTEEN BRITISH UNIVERSITIES OCCUPIED IN SOLIDARITY WITH GAZA: Three Thousand Cheers for Student Protest!
454. Because They are Dirty Arabs…
455. Noam Chomsky: Obama’s position on Gaza is “approximately the Bush position”
456. Bumming a Ride with the Occupation Parade: A Look at Human Terrain Teams in Afghanistan
457. Why do “Leftist” Professors Predominate in Academia?
458. On which planet does the Associated Press live?
459. Kenneth Anderson: Imperial Clash on the Congo Resource Front
460. News from the War of Choice: Gaza Links for 18 January 2009
461. Obama as Intermission for Gaza: Mass Murder Hits the Pause Button
462. America’s New Counterinsurgency Doll: On Store Shelves this January 20
463. The Afghanistan Scam and the American Path to Failure
464. Get Ready Montreal for Sunday, January 25: Next Demonstration Against the War in Gaza
465. GazaTalk: New Media Resistance
466. Gaza is Dying: Global Movement to End the War
467. John Stanton: Hamas’ IT Tops Human Terrain System IT in Internet Capability, Savvy (2.1)
468. Campus Gaza: Academic Boycotts and Complicit Silence
469. Montréal Solidarity Demonstration for Gaza, January 10, 2009
470. Gaza Solidarity Protests Across Canada Today
471. Live Cam on Gaza
472. subMedia News for Jan. 9, 2009
473. One Year Later: Viva Roi Kwabena!
474. Uprising News for Jan. 9, 2009: Greece, Gaza
475. Gassing Puppies, Burning Women, and Playing Tennis
476. The Unreported Death of Staff Sgt. Paula Loyd of the Human Terrain System: Third Researcher to Die
477. Accepting the Might to Exist: Some Israeli Lessons for Anthropology
478. Currently Covering and Commenting on the Gaza Massacre
479. Tweets of Conflict in the New Online War Zone
480. The Two Terrors of 2008: End of Year Post
481. Avatara: Ethnographic Film in a Virtual World
482. Cyberspace Ethnography (2.0): Course
483. Anthropology, Counterinsurgency, and Poor Joan of Arc (1.4)
484. Christmas is for War and Poverty: Bending Values Toward the New Normal
485. Derek Walcott’s response to my question on the BBC
486. Christmas 2008: What a Riot!
487. Japan’s 2008 Riots: Rendered invisible?
488. Announcement of first awards under the Pentagon’s Minerva Program
489. Sock and Awe!
490. When the Shoes Dropped: Notes on a protest in Montréal (Updated)
491. Annunciando la prima edizione di «I migliori dei blogs di antropologia»
492. Québec-Vermont: An Even Better Union, Against State-Sponsored Fear
493. Transnational Shoes in Flight from Iraq to Quebec: Videos from a rally in Montreal
494. Best of Anthropology Blogging: Call for Submissions
495. Shoes @ G.W. Bush in Montreal, Dec. 20, 2008
496. Losing Confidence, Lacking Trust, Smelling Fear, and Ducking Shoes
497. New School Protesters Claiming Victory
498. Important Updates from the New School Occupation
499. Reclaiming the University: The New School Occupation Continues
500. Live Camera on Greek Protests Right Now
501. Occupation of the New School University, NYC
502. Another Banner Day for Greece: The Acropolis of Resistance
503. Going Global and Virtual: Greek Solidarity Protests in Second Life
504. “Everyone to the Streets!”- Greek protesters take over state television
505. The Greek Uprising Continues and Widens Here, There, Everywhere
506. Some “new” links for the Human Terrain System
507. Because there is a shortage of grenades in Baghdad…
508. Hannibal Lecter at Fort Leavenworth?
509. David Price: The Leaky Ship of the Human Terrain System
510. The Greek “Intifada”: News, Views, Overviews, Day 7
511. More on the Greek Uprising
512. Stay in touch with the Greek riots and international solidarity actions
513. John Stanton: Fraud, Abuse, Waste in the Human Terrain System
514. Human Terrain Handbook: Online Here
515. “Citizen journalism”: A Malaysian interviews protesters in Athens
516. Solidarity with Fire: The Insurrection to Come
517. Blackbird: Battles over a browser
518. Any sign of political climax in Greece?
519. “Anthropologize” This!
520. This is war also: U.S. bombing civilians in Iraq
521. “This is war”: More news on the Greek uprising
522. Blackbird: Browser for Black People
523. Anarchist News on the Greek Uprising
524. RAGE
525. Colonialism in the News: Roundup No. 2
526. Watching Oppression Burn: Across Greece, Across Europe
527. Dangerous Consent
528. Welcome to “Zimbabwe North” and the “Pro-Rogue” State: Stalling Regime Change
529. Rally for Regime Change in Canada!
530. “Top 100 Anthropology Blogs”? No, I don’t think so.
531. General Petraeus’ Favorite Mushroom: The US Army’s Human Terrain System
532. The Revenge of the Local, the Horror of the Provincial, and Western Cosmopolitanism at Risk
533. Mahmood Mamdani on the “lessons of Zimbabwe”
534. John Gledhill: “Anthropology and Espionage” and some comments on anthropology as ethics
535. Happy Belated Birthday, Claude Lévi-Strauss
536. UAE’s The National on the Human Terrain System (2.0)
537. Human Terrain System: Murder, Espionage, Paranoia
538. On the conduct of military “contractors” in Afghanistan: In the words of Paula Loyd (1.7)
539. Henry A. Giroux: “Against the Militarized Academy”
540. Who Is Still Running the World? An “Anthropologically Unjust” Reality
541. Gerald Sider: “Can Anthropology Ever Be Innocent?”
542. Canada’s own Human Terrain System: White Situational Awareness Team in Afghanistan
543. Me Today … You Tomorrow
544. Living in the Wasteland of the Free
545. Selectively Outraged, Half Humane, All American (1.7)
546. HTS “Contractor” Who Murdered Afghan, Now in Custody, Awaiting Trial (plus Stanton’s sixth article on the Human Terrain System)
547. Is the Human Terrain System Imploding? (Let’s hope so.) — John Stanton’s fifth article on HTS
548. The HTS Racket: John Stanton’s fourth Article on the Human Terrain System
549. If you cannot stand the heat…
550. If you don’t want to get burned…
551. Updated: Human Terrain Researcher Set on Fire in Afghanistan; plus new Articles on the Human Terrain System
552. Dance Fever: Obama, McCain, and Palin work it right out
553. Yes You Can. Yes You Did.
554. World Crisis, Theory Crisis
555. Anthropology’s Many Deaths and the Birth of World Anthropologies (1.4)
556. Panic about the world ending on Nov. 4, 2008
557. Pranksters, Jokers, Clowns … True Believers
558. Minerva Research Initiative Violates International Law and Iraqi Sovereignty
559. Oh no! The Kear Bears are Coming! (On the voyage of the intrepid USS Kearsarge in the Caribbean)
560. Curtains already? The Human Terrain System heads to a close in Iraq, but “revives” in other ways at home
561. One More Scholar to Bash…on the Way to the Dustbin!
562. PROGRESS
563. In Support of Bill Ayers
564. U.S. Marines in Trinidad & Tobago
565. MMM Pt. 2: “So you think you can be president?”
566. Too Much Madness for a Monday Morning
567. Derek Gregory: The Cultural Turn in Late Modern War and the Rush to the Intimate
568. Minerva and the Terrorism Industry: “The rule of experts as a means to covert imperial rule”
569. Hugh Gusterson: “Minerva Controversy,” and the SSRC
570. What do anthropologists care about cosmopolitanism?
571. Methodological Cosmopolitanism in Anthropology
572. Cosmopolitan Anthropology as Responsibility to the Other
573. Ethics and the Other
574. Monday Pre-Dawn Madness: Opposition Celebration, Creation Destruction
575. INTERFACE: A Journal For and About Social Movements
576. FIFEQ 2009: International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec, call for submissions
577. DIGITIZE THIS BOOK!: The Politics of New Media, or Why We Need Open Access Now
578. Priming the Propaganda Pumps: Four More Sales Pitches for the Spreading Human Terrain System (2.0)
579. The “Tree of Academics”: Introducing academia.edu
580. Reflections on Elections in Canada, Oct. 14, 2008: 1D4TW
581. Resisting AFRICOM, Part 2: Resources Against the New American Imperialization of Africa
582. Monday Night Madness: The End
583. American psychologists against torture, write to Bush; American torture sites; documentaries online
584. The Making of the Imperial Presidency, the National Security State, and the Transition to Authoritarianism, Part 3
585. The Making of the Imperial Presidency, the National Security State, and the Transition to Authoritarianism, Part 2
586. The Making of the Imperial Presidency, the National Security State, and the Transition to Authoritarianism, Part 1
587. The Imperial Presidency & the National Security State on 1D4TW
588. Preparing for Domestic War in the U.S.?
589. Cultural Self-Criticism: Escaping from Fear Fascism
590. Christian Clarity Opposes the Human Terrain System and Anthropology
591. The Pentagon’s Culture Wars: An Article in NATURE for Oct. 2008
592. AFRICOM: Africa, U.S. Imperialism, and Resistance
593. Resisting AfriCOM: The U.S. Military’s Imperial Reoccupation of Africa
594. Third Article by John Stanton on the Human Terrain System: More Colonial Madness
595. AAA Open Access: Good, but Not “Historic,” Not “Unique,” Not “Among the First”
596. Links for today: A failed ideology and a failed war
597. And You Think You Have it Hard Now, Just Wait…
598. Exploring and Expanding the Boundaries of Research Methods
599. New article by Hugh Gusterson: “The bursting global security bubble”
600. More on the Open Anthropology website
601. New website for Open Anthropology
602. “Suddenly everyone on Wall Street is a ‘socialist’…”
603. Chalmers Johnson, Dennis Kucinich: On Bailing Out Bankers and Butchers
604. Slavoj Žižek and Joseph E. Stiglitz: Chickenhawks Coming Home to Roost…in the Tent City
605. Turning the World Upside Down: The Monday Morning Madness of a Wall Street Bailout
606. A Crisis of Vast Quantities in Academia?
607. AAA Ethics Code Changes & the Militarization of Anthropology: “Imperialism makes you a dick”
608. Researchers “Fear” Pentagon “Will” Infiltrate Anthropology? Behind The Times
609. “Anthropology, the Military, and War”: Panel at the AAA
610. Suspect Media: Making Propaganda for the Human Terrain System (2.2)
611. More on Anthropological Research Ethics and Association Politics
612. AAA to Vote on Revising its Code of Ethics
613. A World Upside Down: Institutional Connections of Anthropology Bloggers
614. WordPress Responds
615. The Ethical Failure of Nerve at Canadian Universities
616. Review of Johannes Fabian’s Ethnography as Commentary
617. Your Nation on White Privilege
618. A Shadow in the Dark
619. (Surface) Images & Aboriginal Graffiti from Kahnawake: A Mohawk Rez outside Montreal, Canada
620. Images of Resurgence and the Everyday: Warriors, Iron Workers, Bakers, and Cigarette Vendors in Kahnawake, Quebec
621. “This is Your Nation on White Privilege,” by Tim Wise
622. The World is Flat? by Aronica & Ramdoo (Book website and readings)
623. Como protegerse contra un antropólogo: Un código de ética desde la base
624. David Price: On the Costs of Serving Empire
625. APA Votes to Ban Participation in Torture
626. Johannes Fabian: Ethnography as Commentary — Writing from the Virtual Archive
627. More on U.S. Militarization of Open Access
628. Open Access Journal Publishing in Anthropology
629. How to Protect Yourself from an Anthropologist: A Code of Ethics from the Bottom Up (2.0)
630. George Orwell has a blog!
631. UC Berkeley Begins Destruction of Native American Sacred Site
632. The “Culture” Virus: The Human Terrain System spreads to Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean
633. More on Eurocentrism: Jack Goody and The Theft of History
634. The Wrong Way and the White Way
635. Automatic Replay: “Two” Imperialist Speeches from the One Party State
636. American Teens “Exiled” Among the Savages
637. Welcome to Sevastopol
638. Independence, Nationalism, Indigeneity: Pride in Patrimony or Prostrate before Princes?
639. Italy Compensates Italy for Colonialism? Externalizing Injustice, Importing Rewards
640. Asserting the Liberty of Things over People
641. Calculating Colonial Injustice: Italy’s “Compensation” to Libya
642. Italy “Compensates” Libya for Colonial Injustices
643. Arresting Democracy Now
644. Survival International Wins Apology Over “Hoax” Tribe Claims
645. Italy Compensates Italy for Colonialism? Externalizing Injustice, Importing Rewards
646. Independence, Nationalism, Indigeneity: Pride in Patrimony or Prostrate before Princes?
647. Eurocentrism comes up for air in the Caribbean: “Keep Patois at Bay”?
648. Militarizing the Social Sciences: Tom Burghardt
649. (re)New(ed) Blog: Review of the Indigenous Caribbean Center
650. Human Quicksand for the U.S. Army, a crash course in cultural studies
651. Human Terrain System spreads to Africa: “Oil and Terrorism”
652. Derek Walcott Blasts Tourism at Carifesta X
653. A “Radical New Experiment” in “Anthropology”? What HTS is NOT
654. R.A.C.E. Conference: RACE-ING HEGEMONIES, RESURGING IMPERIALISMS
655. The New Blog: One Day for the Watchman (1D4TW)
656. Imperialism Reloaded: Media Roundup
657. “Fuck Fox News”: Uncaged Voices from Denver
658. Denver’s Real Democratic Convention: “Pockets of Sanity”
659. Stuff White People Like: Anthropology, apparently
660. Typographic “Errors” on Blogs
661. Time to Bifurcate: Shed Dead Skin, Take on a New Identity
662. NO TORTURE, NO COLLABORATION: Psychologists Rally Against Torture & U.S. War Crimes
663. Globalization, Democracy, and Canada versus the People of Haiti
664. Globalization, Democracy, and Canada versus the People of Haiti (original post)
665. Imperializing Open Access and Militarizing Open Source: “What’s yours is ours. What’s ours is ours” (1.4)
666. The McFarce Continues: Pravda publishes a second scathing article on the Human Terrain System; McFate feted by fliers
667. Reflected Hypocrisy: Russia Holds Up a Georgian Mirror (1.6)
668. Anthem of the Taíno Resurgence: Naboria Daca Ae Mayanimacaná
669. Announcing a New ANTHROPOLOGY – SOCIOLOGY blog of blogs
670. Indiana Jones’ Revenge: Stolen Taino Artifacts being sold from France; Conquering Garifuna Beaches; Undoing Columbus
671. Ethnographic Wining: A German in Trinidad
672. New Minerva article from Hugh Gusterson, plus congressional testimonies on HTS and national security research
673. Name that Scientist!
674. Minerva: Risks, Opportunities, Boycotts, and Mentally Handicapped Informants?
675. The Leftist Discipline Debates Its Right Wing?
676. Another Profile in Propaganda: Laurie Adler, U.S. Army’s “Human Terrain System” (2.0)
677. “The Mongoose” from a Trinidadian, Indian, Greek Point of View
678. “The Mongoose,” by Derek Walcott, has a bigger bite than one might think (1.2)
679. Scripting the Cosmopolitan
680. Resistance Blogging
681. Updates: Spy in Our Midst; Washington Post on Minerva
682. Spectroscopic Survey of Imperial (De)formations: A Wholly Dispassionate and Disinterested Report from the Links
683. Washington Post: Military’s Social Science Grants Raise Alarm
684. Secrecy, Anonymity, Spying, and Lying: An Overview of the “Ethics” of HTS Infiltration (1.2)
685. National Security Research and the Geopolitical Context of Knowledge Production
686. Wired: Anthropologists Launch ‘Human Terrain’ Probe
687. Latest Minerva and National Science Foundation News
688. Comments on “A SPY IN OUR MIDST”
689. A SPY IN OUR MIDST: Montgomery Sapone/Montgomery McFate
690. Scanning the Hard Drives of the Softest “Science”? Why are the irrelevant so relevant…and interesting?
691. The New Imperialism: Max Boot, Niall Ferguson, Michael Ignatieff
692. The Retreat of Globalization? The Possible Impacts on the Future of Anthropology
693. Alien Abduction: Doing Calypso “the Right Way” in the USA
694. HTS deletes criticized page
695. Minerva Project and Looted Iraqi Documents (2.0)
696. Pravda Publishes a Scathing Report on the Human Terrain System
697. Italy to pay “billions” in compensation for colonizing Libya; Sanctions augmented against Zimbabwe
698. Anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani, among Top 10 of World’s Public Intellectuals
699. Hugh Gusterson: “When Professors Go to War”
700. Current (Anti)Colonialist Discussions in the News: African Focus
701. The Issue Joined
702. Resistance Studies, Networking Futures, and Jeffrey Juris
703. Enter the American Psychological Association: On Support for Torture
704. Michael Taussig: The End of the Masterful Explanation
705. A Shift Toward the Center (of Fascism)
706. Finally, Ward Churchill’s lawsuit goes to court in 2009 (1.5)
707. Show Me Your Motion! (Of Mentors, Peers, and Mimesis and Alterity in Trinidad)
708. A few more notes on “wining”
709. Amitabh Bachchan in Trinidad
710. Jorgensen and Wolf: On Anthropological Counterinsurgency, Scientific Objectivity, and Imperialism
711. “The Rendez-Vous between Fear and Opportunity”: David H. Price (notes and comments)
712. More Minerva News and Discussion (2.1)
713. Re-Animalizing the Human / Humanizing the Animal
714. Political Reactions to SSHRC Funding: Bloc Québécois
715. More on Caribbean Reactions to Zimbabwe
716. “You can’t shoot kids … but you can pound them” — How insurgents are made
717. Pragmatism in the “Shitstem” and Singing for Obama
718. Monday Morning “Mor Tor”: Wine it up just so…for the Video Notes from the Indian Diaspora, Part 2
719. Questioning the “Top Misconceptions” About the “Human Terrain System”
720. Sucker for an interesting name: “Monkey Smashes Heaven”
721. “Why can’t we shoot these kids?” (1.6)
722. The U.S. military: weaponizing culture
723. (Video) Notes from the Indian Diaspora, Part 1: Responding to Modernity and the Tyranny of Tradition
724. “Head-Decay-Shun”: Literacy, tool of the dependent and displaced?
725. The enigma that is Mugabe, internationally and in the Caribbean (1.2)
726. 1968 – 2008: From Vietnam to Concordia
727. Encounters and conflicts within and between disciplines: Experimental philosophy and ethnography (1.3)
728. Stockholm Bollywood: “Jumma chumma de de” and Memories of a Cultural Shock
729. Ataklan Walks Naked
730. And then McFate Retreated…
731. Two Ways of Doing Anthropology, Maybe a Third, and Still Losing
732. A second HTS Researcher has been killed
733. “The Field”: Doing “Anthropology” (1.2)
734. Attack Iran, Elect McCain, Wait for the Punch(line)
735. Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies and Practices
736. National Aboriginal Solidarity Day: Montreal
737. National Security Research, Imperialist Emergencies and the Minerva Research Initiative: Some Further Consideration (1.1)
738. Minerva Project Now Official and Ready to Begin (1.1)
739. “Me so horny, me love you long time”: The Phallo-Fascism of a Vainglorious Anthropologist in the Academilitary
740. Left “Speechless” by “Deathpower”
741. Navajo Nation Steelpan, and Aboriginal Reggae
742. Another Caribbean musician “endorses” Obama
743. Aboriginal Film Festivals, 2008: Montreal, Winnipeg, London, San Francisco
744. Apology to Native Americans in the U.S.: current discussions
745. The Romance of Anthropology & Getting Real Public Attention
746. The Sun Starts to Rise
747. Rapsure Risin
748. RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS FOR ABORIGINALS IN CANADA: Links to Key Resources
749. Repossession, Decolonization, and Anthropology: The Return of First Nations Remains
750. Canada’s Apology to Aboriginals (3.1)
751. The Ethnographic Adventure of a “Rogue Sociologist”: Gang Leader for a Day goes Hollywood
752. Indiana Jones and the Colonial World
753. “Why can’t we move on? Why do we have to live in the past?”
754. What is “American Art”? Thin-Lipped Gravitas
755. “Canada” — Dealing with the Hate Crime: Prime Minister’s Apology to Aboriginals this Wednesday (2.2)
756. Decolonizing Japan?
757. “Canada” — The Name of a Hate Crime
758. Walk Cautiously Where Shame and Confusion Lurk
759. Barack Obama and American Indians: “You will be on my mind every day I am in the White House”
760. A Caribbean Love Affair with Obama? “We Need Barack! Jehovah Guide Him”
761. When does reciprocity not matter? When you’re a journalist and not an anthropologist
762. Is the “lone researcher” a myth?
763. And what if I do not want to do “collaborative anthropology”?
764. Colonialism and the Archaeological Wild Man: Canadian anthropologists react to Indiana Jones
765. Joshua Marx, Anthropologist Among the Nationalists, Jumbies, and Whores of the Postcolony
766. That’s Just Ole Rum Talk…
767. They Fell For It (Suckers): “New Tribe Discovered”
768. Questions about Race, Indigeneity, and Photography
769. Daniela Drinks with “Darkie”
770. Four New Tribes Discovered: 3 in the USA, 1 in Iraq
771. More Publications on Anthropology & Counterinsurgency
772. American Anthropology & the Pentagon: Let’s Professionalize “Terrorism” Research (1.6)
773. The United States’ Colonial Armed Forces: “Un-American” Troops? (1.2)
774. Fidel: Obama, the “Empire’s Hypocrite” (1.4)
775. Revolution (3-Canal): “This land is ‘mines’ “
776. Restoration: More Indigenous than the Ancestors, in the Eye of the Poet
777. Project Updates (2.0)
778. KOBO•TOWN: The Promise of Independence
779. Toward a More Public Social Science
780. Toward a Globally Connected, Public Social Science
781. Structures of Knowledge, the Social Sciences, Decolonization, and the World-System
782. Erkan Saka: Blogging as a Research Tool (1.1)
783. Australia: Social Sciences Robbed of “Usefulness”
784. More on RECLAIM THE ANTHROPOLOGIX
785. The Craft of the Online Anthropologists: The New Medium is the Message
786. Looking Beyond SSHRC: Decentralizing and Opening Research Funding (1.3)
787. Apologies to The Queen, on The Day of Her Royal Highness
788. Marlon’s Monday Morning Medication
789. Eye Candy? Sweetie?
790. Caribbean Musicians for Barack Obama
791. RECLAIM THE ANTHROPOLOGIX
792. Rethinking Academic Conferences
793. Human Terrain System: Video on YouTube
794. Useful Anthropology (and “Political Gonorrhoea”)
795. Anthropology is Dead, Long Live Anthropology! (Who Wants to Leave those Golden Rule Days in the Jungle?) – 1.3
796. Not Radical Enough: Disengaged Anthropology (1.5)
797. Talk Yuh Talk, Mocking Pretenders
798. Book Review: Citizen Indians: Native American Intellectuals, Race, and Reform
799. HTS Researcher Killed in Afghanistan
800. Dominica Carib Chief Seeks Legislation Barring Intermarriage
801. Academic Blogs: Purposes and Benefits?
802. Debating Public Anthropology: American Anthropologist
803. Disappearing disciplinary borders in the social science library – global studies or sea change?
804. Institutional Limits on Collaborative Anthropology: More on SSHRC Funding in Canada
805. Social Science Research Funding in Canada: Additional Notes (4.3)
806. Social Science Research Funding in Canada (2.0), or: “Where Devils Dare to Defecate”
807. SSHRC: International Collaboration?
808. Humour, Obscenity, and Localized Globalization(s)
809. It’s a 1-8-7 from the Undercover Blog…
810. CNN’s “Mondo Cane”: Screaming Muslim Babies in India, and Gawking Journalists (updated)
811. Maurice Bloch: “Reluctant Anthropologist” or “Anti-Anthropologist”?
812. CONCEPTUAL Challenges of Multi-Sited Ethnography
813. On “The Ivory Tower”: Marc Bousquet speaks with Tiziana Terranova
814. The Distraction of the Everday
815. Call for Papers: THEORY IN ACTION
816. Dreaming of a New World (Movement²)
817. The New OPEN ANTHROPOLOGY Website
818. Wikipedia, Scholarpedia, Citizendium, knol: Open Knowledge Production and Access
819. Shame on You, Barack Obama? More on Clinton’s (and the Mass Media’s) Racism (5.0)
820. The Changing Self: Fear of Death?
821. A White Woman’s Burden: Hillary Clinton, Imperialism, and Racism
822. New•World•Knowledge: A Caribbean Legacy and a Future Anthropology
823. Aimé Césaire Has Passed On
824. Public Anthropology or Anthropology in Public? (2nd update)
825. Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency: Paper Abstracts
826. 09-11-1984, The Calculus of Fear: When Trivial Terrors Become the “Real Threats”
827. Reviewing the AAA’s Report on Anthropology and the Military
828. More News on Anthropology and Counterinsurgency
829. American Anthropologists against Counterinsurgency: Part Two
830. Open Source & Open Access Textbooks
831. The Military-Academic Complex in the U.S.: “The Minerva Consortia”
832. Distributed Creativity and Design
833. Interviewing the Electronically Archived “You”
834. George Marcus: “No New Ideas” (2.0) & the After-Life of Anthropology (1.1)
835. Indigeneity, Créolité, and Independence: Mylène Priam
836. Plagiarism or Collaboration?
837. International Student Ethnographic Film Festival, 2008, London
838. International Survey of Open Access Journals, and the case of KACIKE
839. Theory in Action: Call for Papers
840. Internet Indigeneity & Anthropological Advocacy: text of a presentation at the University of South Florida (March 19, 2008)
841. Questioning ICTs in the Classroom
842. Banning “Secret Research” in Anthropology
843. Academic “Social Network Sites”: Very Preliminary Impressions
844. Recent Internet News: Net Neutrality, the End of Netscape, Google’s Site Builder
845. The Library as Open Access Publisher, and Digital Publishing 2.0
846. Anti-Indigenous Film Broadcast in Sweden
847. Dr. Roi Kwabena Has Passed On
848. The Australian Apology to Aboriginals: News Extracts
849. Text of the Australian Government’s Apology to Aboriginals
850. Australia to Apologize to Aboriginals
851. Republic of Lakotah
852. More Developments and Debates on Open Access Scholarship…and One Outrageous Proposal
853. Articles on Open Access Anthropology
854. International Journal of Internet Science
855. Digital Scholarship: Roundup from Inside Higher Ed.
856. Turcisce Carnival by Ivo Kuzmanic: Comments from FFEM 2007
857. International Ethnographic Film Festival of Quebec: Comments
858. Cape Town Open Education Declaration
859. E-Textbooks — for Real This Time?
860. New course: CYBERSPACE ETHNOGRAPHY
861. How the University Works
862. New Book: Hans Staden’s True History
863. Indigenous Section of the AAA Approved
864. Exposing the Network
865. If we reject the dogs of war then surely we will not accommodate their fleas
866. LAKOTA NATION DECLARES INDEPENDENCE
867. Anthropologist on Uncyclopedia: Mousy Pedant? Moi?
868. Canis Homo
869. New Journal: Collaborative Anthropologies
870. Of Mirror Images, Fanatics, and Cartoon Characters: Militarizing Anthropology
871. Government retreats on copyright reform
872. “Led by the military, war-weary US awakens to ’soft power’”
873. “Anthropologists on the Front Lines”
874. Ethnography: Entanglements and Ruptures
875. The First Australopithecus War
876. Riposte to Imperial Anthropology in Iraq: On the Civility of US Forces
877. France’s Imperial Leader Explains Africa to Itself
878. David Maybury-Lewis Passes On
879. The Narrative of Imperialism: Revisiting the Ugly American (Anthropologist)
880. Secrecy and Anthropology
881. Initial Reactions to AAA Report on Anthropologists & Counterinsurgency
882. Engagement of Anthropology with Security and Intelligence Communities
883. “Man Dies from Heart Attack in Second Life”
884. Indigenous Resistance/ Indigenous Reality: from The Fire This Time
885. “NZ anti-terrorism laws branded incoherent after raid fiasco”
886. On “Native Terrorism”: A Reader Responds
887. Indigenism and Essentialism, 2
888. Defeated Howard Worries that Recolonization is Over
889. Why Ethnography is Needed
890. Goodbye and Good Riddance John Howard!
891. HTS “Anthropologists”: Predictable & Contradictory Arguments
892. Fieldwork: Not an Inalienable Right, but an Expendable Rite
893. “Alleviating Harm”: Which Side are Anthropologists Supporting?
894. Cyberspace News, 1
895. Transforming Academia with New Technologies
896. Open Letter to Richard Shweder
897. Transforming Academia
898. The Political Economy of Academia
899. “I gots me a big new grant!”–Cha-Ching!
900. Dominica, Caribs, and a German U-boat? The problem of why “we always get people like you.”
901. Paths Ahead, 3: Decolonization and Open Knowledge
902. Paths Ahead, 2: Questions about “Academic Colonialism”
903. Conversation on Journals and Open Access Publishing
904. Bloggers Reacting to the American Anthropological Association’s Online Statement
905. Empty Scholasticism at its Best on the AAA Blog
906. Job Ads for Counterinsurgency Support on AAA Website?
907. Why is Anthropology Linked to Counterinsurgency?
908. Politics and Ethics: Anthropologists and Human Terrain Systems
909. Anthropologists React to the AAA Statement on the Ethics of Counterinsurgency Research
910. AAA Executive Board on Human Terrain Systems
911. ASAonline
912. Radical Anthropology
913. The Ethics of Conference Attendance
914. To “Abu Muqawama”: Tilting at Shadows of an Ivory Tower
915. Counterinsurgency Field Manual: Links to Discussions
916. What is Public Anthropology?
917. “A Surge in Plagiarism”…Or How to Make a Molehill out of a Mountain
918. “Important Ideas” in Anthropology
919. The Ethnographer’s “Job” Makes a Little Boy Laugh
920. Militarizing Anthropology: Links to news, essays
921. Paths Ahead? 1
922. “Models” of Anthropological Colonialism?
923. David Price: Anthropology, Counterinsurgency, the Kill Chain, and Plagiarism
924. Montgomery McFate: The New Heroine for a Collapsing Discipline (1.1)
925. Impermanence, II
926. Impermanence & Re-animalization
927. Visualizing Online Collaboration, Live
928. Shweder’s “True Culture War,” Part II
929. Richard A. Shweder: A True Culture War
930. Indigenous Decolonization
931. SSHRC Policy on Open Access
932. More Hysteria over the “Native Terrorist”
933. More Inconvenient Truths
934. Type P-A-I-N
935. Anti-anti-essentialism. 1
936. “Deep Hanging Out”? Yeah right.
937. Amorphography, 1
938. Who is my audience? What am I doing here?
939. Yes Master, Ethnography is Truth
940. “We Have Ethnography”
941. BBC News: US Army Enlists Anthropologists
942. David Price: Anthropologists as Spies
943. In the world of the mercenary, colonialism is past, present, and future
944. From Apter (1999): Fabian’s Dialogical, Performative Ethnographic Experiment
945. Anthropology and Colonialism: More from Diane Lewis (1973)
946. Another Revolution Missed: Anthropology of Cyberspace
947. Open Access: Statements from 2004
948. “It’s very easy to be an advocate…”
949. The Prisoner of Agenda
950. Diane Lewis: Anthropology and Colonialism
951. Network of Concerned Anthropologists: Online Pledge
952. “Extinction” isn’t what it used to be
953. Post-Tribal Stress Disorder
954. Guanaguanare: Universal Aboriginality
955. The Yanomami Controversy
956. The Colonization Will be Televised
957. Indigenous Activism at the United Nations
958. Against Recolonization: Australian Anthropologists Speak Out
959. Anthropology and Indigenous Sovereignty
960. American Indians confront UC-Berkeley over remains
961. Senate Panel Revisits Kennewick Controversy, Sides with Tribes
962. Anthropology’s Dirty Little Colonial Streak
963. Introducing the beginnings of the Open Anthropology Project

Imported entries that pre-date this blog:

1. The Binding Symbolic Value of the UN Declaration
2. UN DECLARATION ON RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES: APPROVED
3. UN Draft Declaration on Indigenous Peoples Rights
4. UN General Assembly to take action on Indigenous Declaration
5. Commemorative “Indigenous Days” without Indigenous Rights
6. Twelve percent American Indian?
7. Blogs for Indigenous News and Commentary
8. The Imperialist Drive
9. Indigenous Peoples and the USA on Trial
10. Recolonizing Australia…or why Trojan horses never say “sorry”
11. Ottawa to Appeal Expansion of Indigenous “Status”
12. Canada: New Developments in Indigenous Status
13. Canada, the UN, and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
14. Aboriginals in Australia: Still the Worst Off
15. Who Is An Indian? Race, Blood, DNA, and the Politics of Indigeneity in the Americas
16. News from Australia
17. Indigenous Activism at the United Nations
18. Brazilian Indigenous Leaders Condemn Pope
19. Pope Against Indigenous Religious Traditions
20. The Vatican and Indigenous Cultural Revival
21. Vive la xénophobie: Cannibal myth-making…again
22. Wade Davis: Cultural Conservation Rights
23. Ward Churchill and the Witch Hunters
24. Unfair Trade: EU against Africa, Caribbean & Pacific
25. Interpreting the Gli-Gli
26. Canadian Government and Native “Terrorists”
27. Does Arima Matter?
28. The Catholic Church and the Caribs in Trinidad
29. Does Trinidad Recognize Its Indigenous People?
30. Seminole Tribe Purchases Transnational Corporation
31. Cherokee Nation News Release
32. Cherokee Nation Revokes Citizenship of Freedmen
33. Cherokee Nation Expels Native Citizens with African Ancestry
34. Dialogue: Newest Issue
35. New Book: Quest for Caribbean Unity
36. Abu Ghraib, Trinidad & Tobago
37. Apocalypto Aside from “Accuracy”
38. Apocalypto
39. Rosa
40. Words of Wisdom from Guanaguanare
41. Australian Aboriginals Win Claim to Perth
42. Caledonia, Ontario: Beware the Big Bad Indian
43. Garifuna Protest at Disney: Photographs
44. “You Got Recognition”
45. Letter from Cristo Adonis (Carib, Trinidad)
46. Addendum: Caribs & Santa Rosa, 2006
47. Caribs and the Santa Rosa Festival, 2006
48. Venezuelan Aid for American Indians
49. Rejecting Papal Bull
50. “Natives” and “Terrorism”: Keeping the Hysteria Raw
51. Farrakhan: Common Struggle with Navajos
52. Trinidad Debates Eurocentrism and Indigeneity
53. Garifunas Speaking Out Against Disney
54. Pirates of the Caribbean: Commentary by Claire Yashar
55. Soca Warriors, Amerindian Masking
56. The UN’s Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
57. SEARCH FOR IDENTITY: ESSAYS ON ST.VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES
58. Breaking Bread
59. Garifuna Protest Disney, Anaheim, CA, June 24
60. “Canada” Opposes UN Draft Charter for Indigenous Peoples
61. The Reclamation of an Indigenous Continent
62. Boycott Disney, Pirates of the Caribbean
63. Soca Warriors! Trinidad Pride at World Cup 2006
64. The Native “Terrorist”: Anti-Indigenous Vocabulary in 2006
65. What is Happening in “Canada”?
66. “Canada”: The Name of an Invasion
67. Dr. Roi Kwabena: Indigenous and African Heritages
68. Calls to Change Dominica’s Name
69. Cosmetic Respect for Indigenous Culture in Trinidad
70. New Book: America is Indian Country
71. Cannibalism: Interview with Neil Whitehead
72. Seminoles With African Ancestry: The Right To Heritage
73. Disney and Carib “Cannibals” Continued
74. Freedmen descendants use DNA to show Indian blood
75. Being conscious of origins in Indian affairs
76. Cannibal Stories
77. Cannibalism as Cultural Libel
78. Indigenous Protest Against Disney
79. Disney’s Carib Indian cannibals deserve boycott
80. News-Dominica article: Pirates, Caribs & Cannibals
81. Aboriginal Australians Charge Government with Genocide
82. Indigenous Rights in the Caribbean
83. Indigenous peoples oppose National Geographic & IBM research project
84. Trinidad Express: Caribs Speak about Disney
85. Carib Community of Trinidad Joins Indigenous Condemnations of Disney
86. National Garifuna Council of Belize Protests Disney’s Cannibalism
87. Garifuna Poetry
88. The Dying Planet
89. Dominica’s Minister of Tourism Defends Disney, Feb. 18, 2005
90. Protesting Disney’s Cannibalism in St. Vincent
91. In Memoriam: Hilary Frederick, past Chief of the Dominica Caribs
92. Disney and its Cannibals
93. Statement from Chief Charles Williams of the Dominica Carib Territory re: Disney
94. Dominica Caribs Exoticized as Cannibals: More News and Other Links
95. Caribs of Dominica to be Portrayed as Cannibals in Disney Film

Recently I have been considering the prospects for a collaborative (action) research project between myself and some of the younger members of Trinidad’s Carib community who have years of working experience in the local media and local publishing industry — bright, articulate, committed individuals with an eagerness to implement their own training in research, to conduct their own local archival research, to produce their own video documentaries, and finally to learn how to create, manage and host their own website (and “wrest” that function from me). The project would have been titled something like “Recovering Indigenous Heritage“, and would have involved the training of Carib youth to, among other things, research 200 year old baptismal registers of Trinidad’s 16 former mission villages, to create a genealogical database for all Trinidadians of Carib ancestry especially in light of the government’s refusal to admit any category on the national census for people of who wish to self-identify as indigenous, Amerindian, or Carib. In addition, an aim would have been to create an online network linking Caribs in Trinidad with those in the diaspora, to set up local conferences and national gatherings, to archive indigenous self-knowledge, and to disseminate it, while critically investigating how images of indigeneity have been disseminated to date. It had the potential for being an important project that could have led to valuable local transformations — keep in mind that the Carib identity has historically been one of the most stigmatized in the Caribbean, the result of the institutionalization of shame that has formed one part of the cultural process of genocide that has caused many families to suppress their identities.

But what would have been a vital part of such a project was to work in tandem, and at least on par with Trinidadian Carib counterparts, as formal co-researchers, as equals in the administration of research funds, especially since they are based in Trinidad and would be coordinating events “on the ground” in ways, and for a duration, that I could not possibly do at a distance. So what’s the problem?

SSHRC’s Notions of Collaboration: Fear of the Non-Academic Other?

As I have already mentioned, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada remains one of the central, if not exclusive sources of funding for anthropologists in Canada. Most anthropologists will tend to apply for the “Standard Research Grant” (SRG). The SRG does allow for collaboration, of sorts. Let’s look at what SSHRC considers to be appropriate and applicable “collaboration” in terms of applying for and managing grant funds.

First, there is the definition of the role which I would occupy:

Applicant (principal investigator/project director): an individual who has primary responsibility for the intellectual direction of the research and who assumes administrative responsibility for the grant. In the case of team research, the principal investigator/project director is understood to be responsible for the overall leadership of the research team. Eligibility requirements may vary with specific programs. In most cases, applicants for SSHRC’s research, strategic and communications grants must be affiliated with a Canadian postsecondary institution.

Second, various complementary roles are then outlined:

Co-applicant (co-investigator): an individual who makes a significant contribution to the intellectual direction of the research, plays a significant role in the conduct of the research, and who may also have some responsibility for financial aspects of the research. In the case of the Standard Research Grants and the Research/Creation in Fine Arts programs, the eligibility criteria for co-applicants are the same as those for the applicant. (What that means is that a co-applicant must also be an academic based at a Canadian university, end of story.)

Collaborator: a scholar or researcher who may play various roles in a research project or program of research, including participating in setting its intellectual direction. Collaborators do not need to be affiliated with a Canadian postsecondary institution.

Other assistants and support staff: individuals employed to assist the research team to conduct its research who are neither students nor members of the research team. Research assistants must be citizens or permanent residents of Canada unless it can be shown that qualified candidates are not available in Canada or that the proposed research requires the hiring of assistants abroad.

What this means then, in light of the kind of project I outlined in the first section, is that my Carib partners could, at best, be classed as “assistants” or “support staff.” All one needs to add here is: “This is the bucket, and this is the mop, finish the floors by 5:00pm.” It simply is nowhere near adequate, acceptable, or even ethical to work with collaborators who are meager subordinates, and who have no decision-making power of their own, and no funds to manage on a day-to-day basis. The only way to do this is, quite plainly, to circumvent SSHRC’s guidelines, ignore the labels above, and simply transfer the funds under various guises…and then be caught in “wrongdoing and misconduct” and either be blacklisted by SSHRC or even be sued for the return of the funds. And monitor they do: this the organization that pinpointed my purchase of pens as an ineligible expense (I am not allowed to write fieldnotes with SSHRC funds), among thousands of expense reports it had read during an audit at my home institution, and that had “questions” about a cocktail that I organized for colleagues at a seminar I hosted in Montreal (and for which I paid out of pocket). They learned of the cocktail from a document on my project website — amazing that they were the only ones in the end to have read the contents of the site so carefully. Therefore, it is not a good idea to try to be clever and engage in flexible interpretations when dealing with SSHRC.

Surely, there are other options?

Yes, indeed. One may work with community, voluntary, and non-profit organizations. So then that should solve the problem. At first SSHRC implemented what it called the “Community-University Research Alliances” scheme, and until very recently, the “community” had to be a Canadian one (so much for globalization, transnationalism, immigration, diaspora, etc.). Now it has the “International Community-University Research Alliances ” — SSHRC is dynamic after all, the reader will exclaim, and only a cantankerous naysayer could persist in finding fault with SSHRC.

But wait, the International CURA comes with one very big string attached: it must be conducted in alliance with one of the Government of Canada’s international development arms, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). As a result, only a finite and short list of acceptable areas of work are permitted, that fit within developmentalist goals, goals that again are predetermined and not negotiated in partnership with a community — where is the collaboration? We set the goals, we create the plan, we administer the funds…and you collaborate.

In addition, the domestic and international CURA schemes are far bigger arrangements than “a Canadian researcher and his Trinidadian Carib counterpart”. These are major productions, involving multiple disciplines, and multiple scholars from the Canadian university’s side (I can’t think of even one other person in my entire university who would even be vaguely interested in Carib anything, let alone participate as an active researcher). CURAs are associated with academic units within a university, such as a department, more than one unit ideally, and not a single researcher within the university.

Debating Collaboration

Clearly there is a spectrum of possible notions of collaboration. In the colonial context, the collaborator, as typecast in works such as Frantz Fanon’s, was a lowly, subservient pawn who aided the colonizers to reduce the threat to his or her own existence. The old ethnographic fieldwork situation, where the researcher asked the questions and the native supplied the answers, is also collaboration. In fact, let’s take matters to the absolute extreme: I own all resources, I occupy all offices of authority, and I give commands…and if you play any role, even as a groveling servant, you are still collaborating with me.

I do not think, however, that when we speak of anthropological collaboration, and develop notions of partnership, consultation, and negotiation as can be found in our professional codes of conduct, that we are looking for groveling servants. Agencies such as SSHRC, which monopolize public research funding — and it’s a federal body, in a country where the provinces are supposedly in charge of funding university education, so something is unclear to me here — have clearly “stacked the deck” against applicants such as myself who would truly like to take collaboration to new levels. Any new avenue proves to be a new dead end.

What also remains unclear to me — and this kind of information SSHRC definitely does not publish — is who are the persons and agencies responsible for deciding which programs SSHRC will create and fund, and how they are created, and who decides the criteria for eligibility and why.

As far as I can see at present, one initial solution would be for a decentralization and devolution of research funding to universities themselves, with public funds allocated equally on a per capita basis to each institution. In this manner, we can hold discussions among parties who are familiar to one another, who are in more or less regular contact within the university, and who can discuss and negotiate at length and produce tailor-made funding to suit the specificities of individual research projects, instead of the current model of “we create the schemes, you figure out how to fit in.” That is not how to support “research innovation” — and I suspect that if we set aside the glossy hype, it will be revealed that SSHRC has as much of federal political plan as anything else.

Blogging about complex topics about which little has been researched and published obviously confronts and presents some serious limitations. I am referring here to the previous post on funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Trying to understand, let alone convey, the complexities of shifting memberships of disciplinary review committees, changing executives in charge of SSHRC, the impact of new decisions made by the Federal Government which allocates SSHRC’s budget, the pressure from universities and individual faculty, transformations in the level of funding and the number of applications, and the changing landscape of research interests, all together present an almost dizzying array of possibilities that render any conclusions tenuous. To then simplify further in the form of a brief blog post can be even more problematic.

SSHRC Facts and Figures

SSHRC has moved to a much greater degree of transparency in terms of disclosing statistics on previous levels of funding and who received funding, as well as providing the names of those who serve on disciplinary committees. Thus one document indicated that Regna Darnell served as the chair of the anthropology committee in 2007-2008, which does not tell us anything about her role, her influence if any, and so forth, but simply indicates that one of Canada’s better known and most senior anthropologists was at the helm.

I was also able to gain a detailed view of the tremendous funding constraints on social science funding in Canada, from publicly released SSHRC statistics. With reference to the latest results of faculty competition for Standard Research Grants, this year SSHRC received 2,731 applications, of which it funded only 904. The total request for funds amounted to more than $331 million (CDN), with just over $76 million actually awarded. In other words, 33% of the proposed projects were funded, and 23% of the requested funds were allocated. Of the $76 million that was awarded, Ontario universities got $30 million, and Quebec universities got $22 million, so that together they received about 68% of the available research funding — this has consistently been the case for the past decade at least. The most heavily funded universities in Canada are, in descending order: the University of Toronto, McGill University, and Université de Montréal (see below for more about this).

The “main disciplines” funded by SSHRC are:

1. Archival Science
2. Classics, Classical & Dead Languages
3. Communications and Media Studies
4. Fine Arts
5. History
6. Library and Information Science
7. Literature, Modern Languages and
8. Mediaeval Studies
9. Philosophy
10. Religious Studies
11. Anthropology
12. Archaeology
13. Criminology
14. Demography
15. Economics
16. Education
17. Urban and Regional Studies, Environmental Studies
18. Folklore
19. Geography
20. Industrial Relations
21. Law
22. Linguistics
23. Management, Business, Administrative Studies
24. Political Science
25. Psychology
26. Social Work
27. Sociology
28. Interdisciplinary Studies

I then did a comparative search of the statistics of funding, by discipline, for a few of the usually most prominent disciplines, from 1998 through 2006, which breaks down as follows:

Sociology — $35,124,062
History — $33,933,984
Political Science — $32,997,977
Economics — $22,535,221
Anthropology — $20,252,622
Law –$13,560,255

Ontario and Quebec were again almost identical in the amounts they received for anthropology funding, with the two combined taking 70% of all payments made by SSHRC in that time period.

[Update: Thanks to a colleague for informing me that at the 2008 meeting of Canadian Graduate Program Directors in the Canadian Anthropology Association it was revealed that in all of Canada SSHRC had awarded only 13 doctoral fellowships in anthropology. Quebec separately funded 12 doctoral fellowships in anthropology within the province. This was noted as a serious decline from past years of SSHRC funding. In addition, anthropology doctoral fellowship applications are reviewed by a committee titled, "Culture, Politics, and the Environment."]

CENTRE VS. PERIPHERY: SSHRC Funds Reinforce Regional Inequalities

In keeping with the previous post of those who have a large pile attracting even more — the University of Toronto is already the holder of the largest private endowments in Canada, even as it receives more public funding for research than any other university in Canada. U of T possesses as of 2005, over $1.4 billion in endowments — by its own admission, these endowments go to support teaching and research (p. 22).

However, in order to obscure its preeminence within Canada, the same report published by U of T claims: “the University’s endowments are not large in comparison to our public university peers. When we consider the top 30 endowments at Canadian and US public institutions in 2004, Toronto ranked 18th in terms of size, and when compared with the same Universities in terms of endowments per FTE (Full Time Equivalent) student, Toronto only ranked 27th. Including the endowments of the federated universities, Toronto ranked 12th in terms of size and 22nd in terms of endowment per FTE student.” The fact of the matter, even as indicated in the report’s own statistics is that U of T has no Canadian peers which even come close to its position — of the 30 institutions to which it compares itself, all are American except for McGill, which itself possesses almost $800 million in endowments (p. 22-24).

A critical political issue is being suppressed here: how is that that so much public funding is concentrated on an already wealthy university, with restrictive admission policies, located in a single city, when the Government of Canada repeatedly claims to be committed to ensuring that all students everywhere in Canada have access to the same quality education, so that no regional disparities and inequalities are reinforced and perpetuated? It is interesting to see the extent to which SSHRC mirrors other areas of public policy, which themselves carry the traces of the workings of world capitalism and the divisions between centres and peripheries. No wonder, then, that “national” unity is treated as a largely empty slogan in many parts of Canada — and not just in Quebec whose universities are actually faring extremely well in this system, and better than most universities outside of the University of Toronto.

Aid to Open Access Research Journals? (2nd draft)

Finally, I spoke in a previous post about SSHRC’s alleged support for international collaboration, which over emphasizes the need for a large Canadian presence in such projects. This tendency can be found as well in SSHRC’s new “Aid to Open-Access Research Journals” fund. This should be something worthy of celebration among those espousing open access, independent academic publishing, except for three major problems in the way SSHRC has arbitrarily limited the scope of the journals it will consider.

1. SSHRC insists that the majority of members of the editorial board of the journal be affiliated with a Canadian university;
2. SSHRC insists on the model of peer review that all of the journals it funds must adhere to; and,
3. SSHRC demands that the journals be already well established, with at least four issues published, a minimum of 250 regular readers, and proof from citation databases that articles published have had an impact.

In purporting to support open access journal publishing, SSHRC’s policy seems to have missed one very critical ingredient: the Internet.

With open source collaboration on the Internet there is no reason why Canadian scholars would or should cluster together rather than form invisible colleges with colleagues from across the planet…that’s kind of the whole fun of the Internet.

Secondly, collaboration is usually based on negotiation and some sort of working consensus. When SSHRC imposes its preferred model of peer review, this minimizes the room for academic independence, academic freedom, and the ability of scholars to create the model that they think will work best.

Thirdly, while not impossible, how does one prove the exact identity of readers to know that 250 of them are “regulars”? How do we know they are reading, and not just downloading?

Finally, citation databases that I have seen tend not to cover electronic journals, and cover only a minority of the print journals, opting instead to cover the most highly cited ones instead. This limitation is not a secret: some companies that compile the citations boast about this happily (see this also).

I suspect that both fear and conservatism are at work in SSHRC’s open access support plan. SSHRC is adopting models of status, reputation, and formatting derived from old, closed access, print journals. SSHRC’s caution borders on outright suspicion. SSHRC’s funding of open access journal lags behind the creation of these journals — that much is acknowledged in the way the program is constructed to fund already existing journals. That such journals were launched without SSHRC assistance raises the question as to why they would need SSHRC assistance now, and for only year. To me this seems like an attempt by SSHRC to insert itself in the open access landscape and to actively intervene in reshaping it to better match its own biases. If the funding is lagging in temporal terms, the nature of the funding decision seems to be conceptually lagging as well, chasing/luring open access creators with closed access constraints.

SSHRC’s one year of funding for a journal is both too little and too much: why so much money for one year (up to $25,000!), and why for one year alone? The underlying nationalism of SSHRC is deplorably counterproductive, and really cannot be justified on scholarly grounds — indeed, quite the contrary. SSHRC does not do Canadian scholars any favours by isolating them unto themselves. In addition, its attempt to impose one single model of peer review is problematic as, ultimately, it counteracts academic freedom.

While SSHRC has actually funded several open access journals in Canada, for some who read these various restrictions, the sub text might be: “serious applicants need not apply.”

]]> http://zeroanthropology.net/2008/05/09/social-science-research-funding-in-canada-additional-notes/feed/ 2 maxforte http://zeroanthropology.net/2008/05/07/social-science-research-funding-in-canada-or-where-devils-dare-to-defecate/ http://zeroanthropology.net/2008/05/07/social-science-research-funding-in-canada-or-where-devils-dare-to-defecate/#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 06:30:12 +0000 Maximilian Forte http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/?p=551 ]]> Despite the broad sweep of the title of this post, this is most definitely not a detailed historical overview and statistical analysis of the current state of research funding for the social sciences in Canada. As this post goes through various stages of revision, some of these details and relevant documents will possibly be added. For now I only wish to comment on some key details that have impressed me as someone who has worked in Canada full time as a professor for the past five years, and as an applicant for five research grants, and recipient of three. My objective is not to write praises, but to write about problems, otherwise one cannot hope for any improvement if we simply busy ourselves with congratulations. (Warning: this post will only be of interest to those with much more than a passing interest in Canadian academic research funding.)

Let me start with an “old Italian saying” that my mother used to share with me when she would say in a Roman dialect, “il diavolo caca sul mucio grosso.” Another version is: “il diavolo va sempre a cagàr sul monte più alto.” The translation of the first version would be “the devil shits on the big pile” and in the second case, “the devil always goes to shit on the highest mound.” The idea, more evident in the first version, is that an already big pile of excrement is very attractive to the devil, who will add more to what is already in place. I have a dog — by no means a devil — who also sniffs out where other dogs have defecated, so he can join the chorus, so to speak. In essence, it comes down to an idea about capitalism itself: those who have a great deal already, can expect to gain much more, and those who start with little or nothing, can expect to end up with little or nothing. It’s not an “American Dream” view of the world, it is a much more sober persistent poverty view of reality.

There is something about systemic discrimination in the allocation of research funds in Canada that brings to mind devils and shit. When I was a tenure-track assistant professor in Cape Breton, I learned that the consistent trend was for excellent applications for funding to be approved…but denied funding by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (our primary and often only source of research funding). In other words, they came ‘just short’ — there was nothing seriously deficient with the proposed projects in the minds of reviewers, but they were put aside in a pile of projects to be funded if there were sufficient funds. Universities in Atlantic Canada tend to be small (with some major exceptions), often rural, and several do not have graduate programs but do have very intensive undergraduate programs where students can do a fair amount of research in partnership with faculty. (One example being the number one rated university for undergraduates in all of Canada which has consistently been St. Francis Xavier, in a small, easy to miss town in Nova Scotia called Antigonish; in terms of the overall quality of the student experience, the number two university is grossly underfunded Cape Breton University, where students get much more direct research experience than their counterparts in larger and better funded universities–but student research is undervalued, or lumped under the heading of “teaching” for some bizarre reason.) The implicit notion at work is that there are primarily teaching-oriented universities in Canada, and those that are primarily research-oriented (usually the very large, older, metropolitan universities such as the University of Toronto and McGill University), and that there is a way of weighing applications to favour the latter.

Thus one problem is that of structural discrimination that favours metropolitan universities, and that retains peripheral universities in a funding backwater. Research becomes the occupation of the privileged and knowledge creation is effectively restricted to special geographic zones.

The additional problem that derives from this situation is that for a primarily teaching-oriented university to expand and develop graduate programs it will immediately be hamstrung by a low level of predetermined research funding that is available, based on that university’s past research record. That means that fewer scholarships are made available for graduates in that university. In addition, faculty will have a harder time securing funding. If the university is poorly funded, it will rely on faculty to generate research funds so they can hire graduate students as research assistants, and thus supplement the students’ incomes, because the university itself will offer little in the way of scholarships, which means there are fewer inducements to attract and retain graduate students to begin with. No secrets are being revealed here — it is that very fact, that this knowledge is public, that makes the maintenance of this system of inequality all the more interesting.

Back in 2003-2004, the directors of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) toured Canadian universities with an ambitious proposal to seriously transform the landscape and structure of research funding in Canada. I was one of those at Cape Breton University who met with them. One of their wonderful ideas, that I enthusiastically endorsed, was to establish a system of permanent research funding for all faculty in Canada. What that would mean in practice is that if a professor could show that she or he maintained an active research record, they would be assured funding year after year, for the rest of their careers. The way to do that would be to essentially take the total amount of social science research funding available in Canada, and divide it equally among all professors. Who opposed this? The big research universities of course. The idea that a professor could no longer compete for a $250,000 grant to cover three years of research (and maybe fail to gain the grant, or perhaps only gain a fraction of what was sought), and instead have to settle for maybe $10,000 annually, was roundly rejected. Those professors want the big research teams, the small tribe of graduate researchers, the labs, and so forth.

Inequality in funding leads to the mainstreaming of research priorities:

The vetting of grant applications by SSHRC committees that comprise scholars who serve voluntarily, means that with the artificial scarcity of funding caused by the bloated $250,000 applications and the lack of a system of equitable distribution, there is a tendency to fund projects that best satisfy the interests, priorities, and prejudices of reviewers. Inequality demands that review committees be in place to judge who gets what, and who gets naught. With committees in place, and no automatic funding, then active selection and exclusion takes place. The result can be that “unpopular” and unorthodox projects are sidelined, with a greater tendency toward mainstreaming research. From the inequality of public research funding, which should belong to all researchers in publicly funded universities (nobody can can claim to have more of a right to taxpayer funds), comes the inequality in distribution of research interests.

One can be certain that the large research universities, with researchers with heavy axes to grind in terms of defending particular research agendas, are well served by such a system. The contrary scenario, of shared funding, means a diminished profile, less clout, fewer students to serve as clones, and to add insult to injury, the threat of heterodox research projects suddenly coming to light.

(Update/Revision: One needs to do some research, or examine any published documentation, before coming to any firm conclusions as to what kinds of research agendas are tending to prevail, and to what extent one can establish a general set of trends. The additional step is to then determine whether the peer review of grant applications leads to the entrenching of established research trends, whether these trends are reinforcing themselves, whereby previously funded scholars, who have gained respect with proven research records, are then being called to act as peer reviewers and thus using their positions to discriminate in favour of research areas better suit their perspectives — drawing any direct links may be very complicated and may offer uncertain results. Making the tasks even more complicated, we need to figure out at what level to look for prevailing research trends: at the level of preferred theoretical approaches? methodological approaches? philosophical assumptions? The term used above, mainstreaming, may in fact mask something more complicated: a hierarchy of preferred research agendas, among a cluster of differing research projects — in other words, we might find both dominance and diversity, rather than homogeneity. I would be interested in learning about how many identifiably social constructionist projects are being funded, compared with post-structuralist projects, etc. In addition I am interested in learning the rate of approval for Canadian-based ethnographic projects compared to projects in non-Canadian settings. This could end up being a monumental research agenda taking years, and access to mounds of archived documents, and some solid statistical analysis. I am offering none of that in this post — in this case, I am offering speculation, guesses, questions.)

A second problem has to do with the dissemination of research paid for by Canadian taxpayers.

The directors of SSHRC proposed different forms of research dissemination that ought to be more valued: newspaper articles, websites, etc. Among others, I actively advocated for open access research dissemination in statements directed to discussions of the SSHRC transformation. Canadian taxpayers had already paid for the research, and print publishers were profiting without having made the initial investment. Why should taxpayers have to pay for the same research twice, which is what they would be doing whenever they bought a researcher’s book, or whenever their children had to pay fees for coursepacks? The system as it stands struck me as unethical to say the least. Since then, SSHRC has come up with a weak statement that nominally supports open access, without mandating it.

A third problem has to do with notions of “peer review”, and the cover for university operating costs.

Here I will be sparing with details of who said what or where, for obvious reasons. Let me just say that I have been exposed to the argument that one must seek research funding because it is solid proof of “peer reviewed research.” I continue to be amazed by this statement. I will attest that the slimmest forms of peer review that I have ever received were from commentators on my grant applications –which are not in themselves research, but proposed research. Comments were either brief, or by individuals with little knowledge, or no comments were forthcoming at all, just a letter announcing the award.

This is instead better understood as a case where university administrators use the carrot as a stick to motivate faculty. The reason for doing so is that financially strapped institutions siphon off the research funds for general university operating costs, which then frees them to pay administrators more, to offer them pay raises in the double digit percentage range, while granting only meager raises, if any, to staff and faculty. How can they do that? When a researcher is awarded a grant, his or her university gets in some cases 40% for every dollar awarded in addition, supposedly to cover the “indirect costs” of research, i.e., the need for office supplies. What the university can then do (and actually does in some cases) is to say, sorry, we need that money, we have a deficit, you make your own arrangements for office supplies. This can mean that a researcher goes out of pocket to fund some of the real costs of research…and that is while they actually have a research grant.

The result is that researchers who win grants, in an underfunded university seeking to develop graduate programs, pay for university operating costs and research assistantships, so that we effectively end up paying the university from our efforts, which can almost appear to be that we are paying for our own jobs to a certain degree.

A fourth problem is bureaucracy, that is, time spent in non-productive activity.

Anyone who has had the dubious fortune of winning a research grant in Canada will remember, with pain, the months spent on nothing other than producing the application (aside from teaching). That is not the end of it. Once you get the grant, a complex system of accounting and management comes into force, and you can find yourself inundated with paperwork on a regular basis: expense reports, time sheets, cheque requisitions, vouchers, balancing funds, accounting for funds spent, reports on funds spent, etc. In some of the busiest times of the year, I have devoted entire weekends to doing nothing else except filling out expense reports.

The question then is: why bother applying for a research grant? When it comes down to it, everything is much simpler, and there is less of a scam, when one is funding-free…so why bother? Obviously there are many reasons: in some cases, such as mine, the very purchase of a computer is only possible with a research grant, since the university provides none. There are status issues as well. And, let’s not forget, the thrill of doing research.

In some cases, however, it is better to be free. SSHRC has recently begun to fund open access journal websites. In my case, I prefer not to apply: I cherish my independence too much to suddenly make years of my work accountable to a government agency.

SOLUTIONS?

I do not trust that the system will change from within universities, certainly not entirely. To some extent we need better educated taxpayers who actively seek to inform themselves on how their money is being handled — how they pay for research twice, as explained above. I do not advocate that we make researchers accountable for what they seek to research, but I do think that government agencies need to be held to account for how they handle the funds, how the universities handle the funds, and for how the research is disseminated. In the meantime, tenure and promotion committees, especially in the social sciences and humanities, need to start valuing non-peer reviewed research dissemination, online publishing, websites, and so forth. I have a lot to say about peer review, but this is not the time and space for that (yet). Researchers themselves need to start thinking less in terms of dollar figures and status, and more in terms of independence, and look for avenues of doing research that is light in cost, or free of costs, or independently financed, or collaboratively financed with those at the centre of the research. Lastly, we need to actively militate against the vetting of grants by SSHRC, and have public research funds equally distributed among faculty in Canada, with severely reduced application procedures and less of the accountancy. Right now we have great accountancy and poor accountability.

Now as globalization heightens its importance, collaboration is crucial to sustaining excellence in Canadian research and training. It secures access to the world pool of knowledge, helps us address critical national and global issues, and provides training opportunities that prepare Canadian students to thrive in an increasingly interdependent world.

SSHRC also refers specifically to its International Opportunities Fund (IOF) — a monster of an application process that can suck up a year’s worth of non-teaching time and can span several hundred pages by the time it is complete (who reads all of this material is largely a mystery).

In practice, what SSHRC actually requires is that half or more of the participants in an “international” working group must be Canadian citizens. Given that a working group could consist of anything from one to two dozen persons, and given the limitations of a small pool of local scholars who have not blanketed the world, it means that certain research topics are certain to not be funded since most of the experts will be “foreign” thus diminishing the “distinctive Canadian contribution.” This is a tremendous pity, and ultimately a shortcoming of blinkered nationalism, which SSHRC of course does not admit to in its glowing self-assessment. The result is that if the research has no distinctively Canadian basis to begin with, and does not involve Canadian researchers in substantial numbers, international collaboration is rendered largely off limits. This is the “Canadian content” reflex that one finds in the Canadian media and other spheres of Canadian public life. (I don’t mean to diminish the benefits…I grow up with melancholic TV documentaries on the habits of the Woodchuck, priceless stuff.)

A similar problem is in place with respect to SSHRC’s Aboriginal research awards, which are currently under review. Aboriginal has been effectively treated in SSHRC’s practice as Aboriginal in Canada only, meaning that any comparative work on indigenous populations elsewhere in the world cannot be funded by this program (someone in that program wrote to me to ask why I was not submitting any grant applications to them since I have research interests in “aboriginal issues”–when I indicated Caribbean aboriginals were at the centre of my research, the discussion ended in silence). The effect of this, contra globalization propaganda, and contra the reality of indigenous communities and organizations linking up in various transnational fora, and discovering very important commonalities, is that SSHRC confines and constrains aboriginality to a remote, local isolate.

In a sense then, government-funded research agendas are meant to mirror government-directed aboriginal policy, which historically has been designed to splinter, fragment, and divide aboriginal nations into tiny local pockets, and to keep “Canadian” issues of aboriginality far removed from international currents.

Canada voted against the passage of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples last September, one of four neo-colonial settler states to do so (the others being the United States, Australia, and New Zealand). The government, via SSHRC, is interested in ‘globalization’ only until Aboriginal issues come into play, when, all of a sudden, “Aboriginal” is treated as an exclusively Canadian notion.

These problems need to be discussed openly, and not through the usual quiet Canadian routes of silence here, and a nod there, and a glossy magazine filled with smiling officials.

Read more at:
http://tillje.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/sshrc-policy-on-open-access/