The following papers emerged from or
were directly related to the goals of the project. Otherwise, the
project was not one that was oriented toward typical, expected
academic outcomes.
Militarizing Anthropology, Researching
for Empire, and the Implications for Canada
CULTURES (newsletter of the Canadian Anthropology Society), Vol. 2,
No. 2, Fall 2008: 6-10
"Useless Anthropology": Strategies for Dealing with the
Militarization of the Academy
Paper presented at the joint conference of the Canadian Anthropology
Society (CASCA) and the American Ethnological Society (AES) at the
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 15 May 2009.
Internet Indigeneity &
Anthropological Advocacy: text of a presentation at the University of South
Florida (March 19, 2008)
(Re)Imperializing Anthropology and
Decolonizing Knowledge Production
For the THE 8TH ANNUAL CRITICAL RACE and ANTICOLONIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE OF RESEARCHERS AND ACADEMICS OF COLOUR FOR
EQUALITY (R.A.C.E.), NOVEMBER 14-16, 2008, Ryerson University, Toronto
ABSTRACT
For the past two years the Pentagon has actively sought to recruit
anthropologists in its twin wars of occupation and counterinsurgency in Iraq
and Afghanistan, taking the form of the Human Terrain System and now the
much wider Minerva Research Initiative, recently advanced with the active
participation of the National Science Foundation, both of these adding to
the already established Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program, and an
array of private think tanks that link social science research to the
so-called “global war on terror.” Given the ambivalent and unsteady
reactions of academic anthropologists, these developments are undoing the
past thirty years of effort in decolonizing anthropology, returning the
discipline to an adjunct in the service of imperial power. Anthropology is
not alone in being targeted as a discipline of value to counterinsurgency,
nor are the phenomena of Pentagonizing knowledge restricted to the United
States. This paper will provide a condensed outline of the recent
transformations of institutional knowledge production in the light of
imperial reoccupation of the university, with observations on the current
political economy of academia, and the deeply problematic outlook for the
future of disciplines such as anthropology. The paper will conclude by
outlining possible steps to take, in the near and long term, individually
and collectively, to impede the militarization of social and cultural
research at the centre, while supporting the need for increased vigilance
and resistance from the periphery.
