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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropology | 9/10 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T15:09:55.121817+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Military involvement === Anthropologists' involvement with the U.S. government, in particular, has caused bitter controversy within the discipline. Franz Boas publicly objected to US participation in World War I, and after the war, he published a brief exposé and condemnation of the participation of several American archaeologists in espionage in Mexico under their cover as scientists. But by the 1940s, many of Boas' anthropologist contemporaries were active in the Allied war effort against the Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan). Many served in the armed forces, while others worked in intelligence (for example, the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information). At the same time, David H. Price's work on American anthropology during the Cold War provides detailed accounts of the pursuit and dismissal of several anthropologists from their jobs based on communist sympathies. Attempts to accuse anthropologists of complicity with the CIA and government intelligence activities during the Vietnam War years have turned up little. Many anthropologists (students and teachers) were active in the anti-war movement. Numerous resolutions condemning the war in all its aspects were passed overwhelmingly at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Professional anthropological bodies often object to the use of anthropology for the benefit of the state. Their codes of ethics or statements may proscribe anthropologists from giving secret briefings. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (ASA) has called certain scholarship ethically dangerous. The "Principles of Professional Responsibility" issued by the American Anthropological Association and amended through November 1986 stated that "in relation with their own government and with host governments ... no secret research, no secret reports or debriefings of any kind should be agreed to or given." The current "Principles of Professional Responsibility" does not make explicit mention of ethics surrounding state interactions.
Anthropologists, along with other social scientists, were working with the US military as part of the US Army's strategy in Afghanistan. The Christian Science Monitor reports that "Counterinsurgency efforts focus on better grasping and meeting local needs" in Afghanistan, under the Human Terrain System (HTS) program; in addition, HTS teams are working with the US military in Iraq. In 2009, the American Anthropological Association's Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities (CEAUSSIC) released its final report concluding, in part, that: When ethnographic investigation is determined by military missions, not subject to external review, where data collection occurs in the context of war, integrated into the goals of counterinsurgency, and in a potentially coercive environment – all characteristic factors of the HTS concept and its application – it can no longer be considered a legitimate professional exercise of anthropology. In summary, while we stress that constructive engagement between anthropology and the military is possible, CEAUSSIC suggests that the AAA emphasize the incompatibility of HTS with disciplinary ethics and practice for job seekers and that it further recognize the problem of allowing HTS to define the meaning of 'anthropology' within DoD.
== Post-World War II developments == Before WWII, British 'social anthropology' and American 'cultural anthropology' were still distinct traditions. After the war, enough British and American anthropologists borrowed ideas and methodological approaches from one another that some began to speak of them collectively as 'sociocultural' anthropology.
=== Basic trends === Several characteristics tend to unite anthropological work. One of the central characteristics is that anthropology tends to provide a more holistic account of phenomena and is highly empirical. The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a particular place, problem, or phenomenon in detail, using a variety of methods, over a more extensive period than normal in many parts of academia. In the 1990s and 2000s, calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where their own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. These dynamic relationships between what can be observed on the ground and what can be inferred from compiling many local observations remain fundamental to any anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic, or archaeological. Biological anthropologists are interested in both human variation and in the possibility of human universals (behaviors, ideas, or concepts shared by virtually all human cultures). They use many different methods of study. Still, modern population genetics, participant observation, and other techniques often take anthropologists "into the field," which means traveling to a community in its own setting, to do something called "fieldwork." On the biological or physical side, human measurements, genetic samples, and nutritional data may be gathered and published as articles or monographs. Along with dividing up their project by theoretical emphasis, anthropologists typically divide the world into relevant time periods and geographic regions. Time periods are divided into relevant cultural traditions based on material culture, such as the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, which are of particular use in archaeology. Further cultural subdivisions by tool type, such as Oldowan, Mousterian, or Levalloisian, help archaeologists and other anthropologists understand major trends in the past. Anthropologists and geographers also share approaches to culture regions, since mapping cultures is central to both sciences. By making comparisons across cultural traditions (time-based) and cultural regions (space-based), anthropologists have developed various kinds of comparative method, a central part of their science.