Dorothy: It ranges from kind of front-line
activism through to people who see themselves
as advocates for a particular group or very
involved with some kind of NGO or community-based
organization to people who feel like—well,
their work by taking—looking at these things
through a critical lens, by bringing questions
of power and inequality and so forth to the
forefront in thinking through questions that
that itself is a kind of political move. I
think what they all share is that most of
us are looking at or using the methodological
and theoretical tools of anthropology to think
about questions that matter in the world,
that are involved in some kind of issue of
inequality or oppression or marginalization
in the world, be that here at home in the
United States, be that in other sites in the world.
Paul: The main legacy of anthropology is not
necessarily changing the world but is ethnography.
That's what we do. We have lots of different
kinds of theories that we put forward. These
come and go as time goes on. What was popular
when I was a graduate student, French Structuralism,
is no longer that much followed today. What
stays is ethnography: telling people stories,
describing people in their particular locale,
describing how they live, how they talk, their
conflicts, their passions, their lives. If
it is well done, that's the sort of thing
that has staying power to text—I like to
say, that will remain open to the world.
In telling these kinds of stories from an
ethnographic perspective sheds a lot more
light on questions of well-being because it's
nuanced; it's detailed. Sometimes the stories
can be profound. They can implicate profound
issues and philosophical issues.
Philippe: Anthropology should be studying
the urgent social problems of our time. For
me, that's what justifies taking up people's
time and getting paid for it. I always have
to wake up and pinch myself: "They're paying
me to do ethnography? This is just crazy."
It's a way then of being able to bring to
a wider audience the invisible suffering that
exists all over the world, especially among
the traditional peoples that anthropology
traditionally studied.
Daniel: Anthropology is not innocent. We work
with people—anthropologists work with people,
study people often on the margins of society,
often poor, vulnerable, right-less, indigenous,
or in various ways oppressed or subordinated
within larger social structures. From my point
of view, from I think an engaged or an activist
point of view, to just treat those people,
those communities as laboratories and to take
information out of them in order to produce
academic knowledge is not a legitimate practice
in the 21st century. By engaged or activist
work, I mean an anthropology that doesn't
just produce academic knowledge but tries
to, in some way, positively impact the conditions
that it is studying.
Gina: To me, the world is lost without this
discipline because it really is one of the
main avenues through which we can discuss
difference in the world in a way that is substantive,
and not just do it like a bullet point and
then it's like, “It’s this.” No. Really
do deep—hanging out in deep work.
Gerhard: More broadly, what role do you think
anthropology does or should play in studying
a vast network of people such as the Internet?
I mean, it's massive.
Sarah: Well, I think anthropology has a really
important role to play. I hope that in the
future we catch up. I think over the last
couple of years, there have been a lot of
anthropologists who have been more active
in considering digital media a viable area
for study.
When I began my project in 2006, people thought
it was absolutely crazy. They would say things
like, "Well, what has the Internet have to
do with politics? That's just something people
in the West use." Then around 2009 with what
was happening in Iran, and especially 2011
in the Arab world, people were like, "Whoa,
social media is important. The Internet is
important." They began to understand why I
was looking at what I was doing.
I think one thing that anthropology can do
now that's invaluable is kind of counter this
overwhelming emphasis on quantitative analysis
of online media. People look for things like
how often is a keyword repeated, how many
users are on a particular site, but they don't
look at what they're talking about. They don't
analyze the conversation. They take it out
of its context. I mean, that's what anthropology
is about. They're basically doing the kind
of armchair anthropology, these superficial
analyses of culture that anthropologists have
been working against for decades. I think
there's a real opportunity for anthropologists
to kind of embed themselves in these online
communities over a long period of time, really
get to know the participants, speak to them
directly, interview them about the stuff they're
writing, acknowledge that these two, these
online and off-line spaces work together.
There's not necessarily this separation, this
digital dualism, I think I've heard it referred
to, that people have. I think there's just
a wealth of possibilities for anthropologists
who are willing to do this.
Montgomery: I don't know. The role of anthropology—it's
a big question. I think it really depends
on what you think anthropology is. Is anthropology
a methodology? Is it a body of knowledge?
Is it a science?
Gerhard: What is it to you?
Montgomery: Is it a political platform?
Gerhard: What definition of that would you
use?
Montgomery: Because the way in which you answer
that question is going to determine, to some
degree, what you think the role of anthropology
is.
In my view, to answer your question, I think
anthropology is a science. It is the study
of man. It should be objective. The researchers
should, to the greatest degree possible, be
detached from the object of study and capable
of reporting what they're seeing in a way
that sheds some light on how people live their
lives.
Gerhard: What do you think the key asset of
anthropology has been in terms of the human
terrain system or in general working with
the military?
Montgomery: I think what makes anthropology
interesting and valuable both in a kind of
operational military way and also from a broader
strategic or policy perspective is that anthropologists,
unlike political scientists, especially people
who do international relations, are not focused
on the state. They're focused on the local
conditions of the people who live in a particular
place. It's a different kind of perspective.
It's from a view from the ground up instead
of a view from the top down.
Gerhard: Come back to public anthropology
as sort of three main tenets of it: accountability,
transparency, and doing good. Could you just
talk about those a little more?
Bob: Right. Let's take transparency. Transparency,
by the way, means: is this uncaring, this
critical pedagogy or this idea of really opening
up to the public what is going on? Supreme
Court Justice Brandeis famously said, "Sunlight
is the best disinfectant." He was a lawyer
fighting these capitalist bankers in the early
1900s. He was saying, to get these bankers
to behave, he had to bring their nefarious
ways out to the public. The idea in a democracy,
you need to really open up the people's behavior
and get them to be more moral by making it
more public. More public usually means more
moral. That's transparency.
Accountability is—yes, we have accountability.
In some ways, we get paid by universities.
We get funds from taxpayers, like you or me
or you. It seems to me that you should really
be—the focus of the discipline should not
be in publications but on trying to produce
benefits for others, not just yourself.
Gina: I actually think I'll be crazy without
anthropology because it allowed me to understand
things both personally and socially. How I
understand personal relationships is now social.
That's really a significant thing to realize,
that it's not all about you. You're part of
a broader social body. I consider anthropology
to be one of the most important things in
the world and in my world, which is one of
the reasons that I keep doing it.
