Nuremberg, Covid, and Anthropology: Never Again

Today, August 20, 2022, marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the trials of medical professionals at Nuremberg. Central principles and fundamental rights were enshrined as a result of the trials, which were then encoded in international law, domestic laws, and the codes of ethics followed by institutional review boards in US universities, the […]

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Trump and Anthropology

“We are the new Indians…there are people today who want to discover us again, who want to conquer, enslave, and colonize us, and who want to use us like the conquistadores once did….The Indians were sacked for centuries…we are the new Indians and we need defenders. “We are doing worse than our Indians did during […]

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Cosmopolitan Imperialism: Obama Does Anthropology in Laos?

“Obama, the cerebral son of an anthropologist”—this is how the Associated Press touted soon to be ex-president Barack Obama on his visit to Laos this week. The AP went even further, declaring Obama’s approach “soft diplomacy”. One has to wonder where all of the “soft diplomacy” was in the seven brutal wars simultaneously fought by […]

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US Anthropology: Political, Professional, Personal, Imperial

Part One of: “Canadian Anthropology or Cultural Imperialism?” Recent events have called into question how a discipline can be commanded on an international plane, and represented in a singular and universal fashion. Those events are useful for inviting meditation on questions of national traditions, the power to globalize a claim to preeminence over other national […]

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Debating the End of the Human Terrain System, Part 1

The year 2015 finally saw the final public confirmation of the termination of the US Army’s Human Terrain System, which apparently has ceased to be an effective reality since late September 30, 2014 (Vanden Brook, 2015). The “controversial social science program,” as HTS came to be called by the formerly enthusiastic mainstream media, has not […]

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BDS, the AAA, and Academic Imperialism

We Disagree to Agree Support for a particular cause can come from numerous sources and points of view, each representing different interests. Similarly, people can arrive at the site of a demonstration, united in protest against an injustice, having arrived there from many different routes (whether the routes are understood in terms of physical transportation, […]

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Instrumental Partners: An Imperial Science of Agency

For an empire whose imperialism is still denied by many, a striking number of terms and concepts have been generated by US leaders that nonetheless are premised on the root idea of “force” in achieving or securing US “global leadership”. These terms command the language of US military, political, and corporate spokespersons, and they have […]

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Weaponizing Anthropology: An Overview

Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State. By David H. Price. Published by CounterPunch and AK Press, Petrolia and Oakland, CA, 2011. ISBN-13: 9781849350631. 219 pages. For students already in anthropology and those interested in perhaps becoming anthropology students, for those researching the history and political economy of the social sciences, and […]

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Anthropology: The Empire on which the Sun Never Sets (Part 3)

Within the question of the professionalisation of the discipline lies a still largely unexplored area of how Anthropology serves as a western, largely white, middle-class mode of ‘consumption’, specifically the consumption of knowledge about the world that has been ‘appropriately’ filtered, organized, and translated. Of course getting a degree in Anthropology is not just like any other form of consumption, just as it is not merely an expression of curiosity: the process results in formal certification.

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Surveillance, Dissent, and Imperialism

The Inner-Outer Dialectic of US Imperialism There are many ways that imperial expansion abroad can tie in with the socio-economic conditions and political relations that primarily pertain to the domestic sector of the imperial state. On the other hand, it is not worth overemphasizing the separation of the “domestic” and “foreign,” a fact widely recognized […]

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General Carter Ham’s Case for Dismantling AFRICOM

There is enough evidence that the US Africa Command has increased resource exploitation and imperial expansion, instigated more violence, intensified regional conflicts and undermined the authority of regional organizations and the African Union. First published as: “Dismantle AFRICOM! General Carter Ham makes the case?” By Horace G. Campbell Pambazuka, 2012-12-13, Issue 610 INTRODUCTION On Saturday […]

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