Today's Stories

December 30, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
May We No Longer Be Silent

December 29, 2008

Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza

Neve Gordon
What, Exactly, is Israel's Mission?

Joshua Frank
Obama and the "Special Relationship"

George Salzman /
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The War Against Palestine: Exception From Humanity

Norman Solomon
A Hundred Eyes for an Eye

Ewa Jasiewicz
Gaza Today: "This is Just the Beginning"

Rob Larson
The Banks Laugh All the Way to the Bank

Kenneth Libby
Arne Duncan's Dark Years in Chicago

Robert Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Elsa Johnson
High Noon at Black Mesa: Bush's Farewell Gift to Peabody Coal

Nicola Nasser
Resolution 1850: Bush's Parting Gift

Belén Fernández
Hanukkah Games

Worthy Group of the Day
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

December 26-28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The Medusa's Head

Dr Eyad Al Serraj
The Boming of Gaza: "An Earthquake on Top of Your Head"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Cancerous Air

Bradley Simpson
Obama's New Intel Chief, Dennis Blair, Ran Interference for Indonesia's Butchers

Ralph Nader
Government Without Laws

Gary Leupp
Obama and the Graveyard of Empires

Ellen Cantarow
Richard Falk, Israel and the NYT

Matt Landon
The Great Coal Ash Flood: a Report From Swan Pond Road

David Macaray
SAG's Terrible Dilemma

Patrick Bond
End of Neoliberalism? Sorry, Not Yet

Norm Kent
Invoking Bigotry: Obama and Rick Warren

Brian T. Ketcham
Fuel Efficiency is Easy--Just Don't Let Detroit Tell You How to Do It

Rannie Amiri
War Clouds Over Gaza

Larry Portis
Changing the Ethnic Vocabulary

Richard Rhames
Welcome to Soup Kitchen America

Stephen Lendman
29 Red Flags: Early Suspicions About Bernard Madoff

James L. Secor
Unheralded Coup

Ramzy Baroud
Iraq, the Plot Thickens

Harold Pinter
Art, Truth and Politics: the Nobel Lecture

Cpt. Paul Watson
Tracking the Cetacean Death Star

Howard Lisnoff
Nixon's Cambodian Shock Treatment

Michael Dee
The Bill of Rights, Killed in Action by the War on Drugs

Steve Conn
Eight Predictions for 2009

Poets' Basement
Valentine, Kaung, Moser and Graham

Worthy Group of the Weekend
United Mountain Defense

December 25, 2008

Judy Gumbo Albert
What Were Those 1960s Terrorists Thinking, Anyway?

Rev. William E. Alberts
The Sole of Christmas

Hannah Mermelstein
Caution: Settlers Ahead

Worthy Group of the Day
Citizens' Coal Council

December 24, 2008

Bill Quigley
Five Bailout Lessons From Katrina

Saul Landau
Then and Now: Venezuela and Cuba, 1960-2008

Sam Smith
Evangelism and Politics

Brian Cloughley
Torture, Slaughter and Lies

John Ross
Where's al-Zaidi's Pulitzer?

Eric Walberg
Cold War Shivers

Norm Kent
What Will Obama Do About Marijuana?

Stephen Martin
Reasons for Cheerfulness

Worthy Group of the Day
Collateral Repair Project

December 23, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Ponzi Paradigm

Michael Yates
The Tombstone Economy

Chuck Spinney
The New York Times Flames Out in Defense Dogfight

Vijay Prashad
India's Reckless Road to Washington, Through Tel Aviv

Brian Horejsi
Interior Decorating: Obama, Salazar and the Future of America's Public Lands

David Macaray
Obama's Best Pick?

Neil Watkins /
Sarah Anderson
Ecuador's Conscientious Default

David Michael Green
Hey, Reagan Democrats! Now Do You Get It?

Worthy Group of the Day
Focus on the Corporation

December 22, 2008

Pam Martens
Madoff's Money Trail Leads to Washington

Gary Leupp
Base Alienation: Obama's Team of Rivals

Mike Whitney
Bail Out the Economy? More Pay is the Only Way

Karl Grossman
Lost in Space: NASA at 50

Niall Meehan
Conor Cruise O'Brien: Historian, Politician, Censor

Steve Conn
Where Would Larry Summers Dump the Guantanamo Mess?

Uri Avnery
Israeli Elections: Spot the Difference

Corey D. B. Walker
The Politics of Freedom

David Swanson
The Purloined Constitution

Worthy Group of the Day
Socialist Worker

December 19 - 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
An Ethnic Cleansing in America

Jeffrey St. Clair
Salazar and the Tragedy of the Common Ground

Paul Craig Roberts
Country Without Mercy

Patrick Cockburn
The Baathist "Coup Plot"

Felice Pace
Green Myopia: Obama's Appointments Reveal What's Wrong with the Environmental Movement

Diane Farsetta
The Pentagon's PR Slush Fund

George Ciccariello-Maher
By the Time I Get to Arizona: ICE Raids and Resistance in Flagstaff

Eric Bergoust
Extinct Lifestyles: Redefining Prosperity

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Without Regrets: Cheney's Unrepentent Confession

Stan Cox
Clothes and Commentaries That Don't Fit

Michael Donnelly
Clinton III: Continuity We Can Believe In

Robert Weissman
The Auto Bailout

Ralph Nader
Excluded Democracy: Scholastic and the Two Party System

Alan Farago
Shock and Awe Economics

Sam Smith
Not All Public Work is the Same

Timothy G. Hermach
What Happened on the Way to the Inauguration?

Seth Sandronsky
Who's Not Getting By and Why

Rannie Amiri
All Quiet on the Gazan Shore

David Yearsley
Bach as Jihadi

Martha Rosenberg
Wyeth's Pay-to-Play

Dave Lindorff
White House Lied About Iraqi Yellowcake Buy (But That's Not the Biggest Scandal)

Christopher Brauchli
Weekend at Bernie's: the Confinement of Mr. Madoff

Missy Beattie
President Meathead

Richard Rhames
Corporatizing the Kids

Stephen Martin
Full-Spectrum Dominance of the Big Lie

Paul Krassner
Milk and Twinkies

Lorenzo Wolff
Does Coldplay Give a Shit Anymore?

Poets' Basement
Kathwari, Halling and Payne

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Heartwood

December 18, 2008

Phillip Doe
The Man in the Hat: Salazar and the Status Quo

Ronnie Cummins
Vilsack: Another Shill for Monsanto

Jesse Sharkey
No School Left Unsold: Arne Duncan's Privatization Agenda

Saul Landau
Postcard from Venezuela

Peter Morici
What's Next for the Fed?

Dave Lindorff
Prosecuting Bush and Cheney for Torture

Panos Petrou
Days of Rage in Greece

Jeff Cohen /
Norman Solomon
The 2008 P.U.-litzer Prizes: the Stinkiest Media Performances of the Year

Worthy Group of the Day
Organic Consumer Alliance

December 17, 2008

Peter Lee
Pushing Pakistan Over the Edge

Conn Hallinan
Angels and Demons in Mumbai

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Fatal Flaw

Jeff Halper
Obama and the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Alan Farago
The Audacity of Parkland

Peter Morici
The Big Hole

Norm Kent
Obama Lights Up

Col. Douglas MacGregor
The Price of Expediency

Margaret Kimberley
Blacks and Gay Rights

Ron Jacobs
The Myth of the Good Guy: Waiting on a President to Do the Right Thing

Worthy Group of the Day
Campaign to End the Death Penalty

December 16, 2008

Vicente Navarro
A Forgotten Genocide: the Case of Spain

Patrick Cockburn
Each Shoe was Worth a Thousand Words

Thomas Michael Power
Back to the Pump: an Economic and Environmental Dead End

Jason Hribal
Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo: the Story of Ken Allen and Kumang

Farzana Versey
Straw Warriors and the Pantomime of Patriotism

Wajahat Ali /
Ahmed Rashid
Indian Muslims: Defining Their Loyalty

Mats Svensson
The Order to Destroy has been Given

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Mumbai Terror's Afghan Roots

David Macaray
Workplace Violence and Termination Etiquette

Howard Lisnoff
Left Control of Academia? The Case of William Felkner

Worthy Group of the Day
AWR: the Last, Best Hope for Saving the Big Wild

December 15, 2008

Andy Worthington
Hit Me Baby One More Time: a History of Music Torture in War on Terror

Franklin Lamb
Why Hezbollah Stiffed Carter

Karl Grossman
Dr. Chu's Nuclear Prescription

Brian Cloughley
Land of the Free (To Torture and Imprison Without Trial)

Mary Lynn Cramer
Stiglitz's Foolishly Flawed Morality

Steve Early
From Nicky Pockets to Blago: Why Pay-to-Play is Bad for Labor

Thomas Christie
Pentagon Train Wreck Awaits Obama

Ken Paff
Remembering Ron Carey: a Great Labor Leader

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
What is India to Do?

Dave Lindorff
A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

Alan Farago
The Artless Dodger

Worthy Group of the Day
Davis-Putter Scholarship Fund

December 12 / 14, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Hail to Chicago, Beacon of American Values

Michael Hudson /
Jeffrey Sommers
The End of the Washington Consensus

David Price
The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems

Jeffrey St. Clair
Nukes Up the Hudson

Frank Barat
An Israeli in Gaza: an Interview with Jeff Halper

John Ross
Writing a Thesis in Blood

Binoy Kampmark
Humanitarian Imperialism: Obama and the Genocide Task Force

David Macaray
Killing the Auto Bailout: a Dagger to the Heart of Organized Labor

Ralph Nader
Antidotes to Plunder: a Holiday Reading List

Eamonn Fingleton
Whatever Happened to Iris Chang?

Lawrence Velvel
Why Blagojevich Might Be Acquitted

Behzad Yaghmaian
The Housing Crisis: a Timebomb China Can't Defuse

Sam Husseini
Putting the Pro in Protest

Tom Barry
Incentives to Detain: How Immigrants Drive Prison Profits

Howard Lisnoff
Why I Went to Jail

Laura Carlsen
Mexico's Immigration Problem

Raj Patel
The WTO and Other Fairy Tales

Ron Jacobs
The Manufacturing of History

Paul Watson
Risky Business Down Under

David Yearsley
They Also Serve Who Only Pull or Tread

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Want Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star...

Kim Nicolini
Finally, a Vampire Movie You Can Sink Your Teeth Into

Susie Day
Proposition 1984: the Problem with Heterosexuals

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Lerch and Crete

Worthy Group of the Weekend
Energy Justice

December 11, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Total Defeat for U.S. in Iraq

P. Sainath
After Mumbai

Vicken Cheterian
The Zarqawi Generation

Ray McGovern
Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

Dedrick Muhammad
Post-Racial Racism at the Post: the Undying Obsession with Black Family Values

Lee Sustar
Victory at Republic

Peter Morici
The Big Drag

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
Must They Hate Us So?

George Wuerthner
Another Subsidy to Big Timber?

Christopher Brauchli
Mr. Berg's Strange Obsession

Worthy Group of the Day
Animal Balance

December 10, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Whose Interests Will Shape Obama's Change?

Mary Lynn Cramer
The Multi-Trillion Dollar Question

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Nuclear Weapons Obsolescence

Joshua Frank
Breaking the Stranglehold on Middle East News Coverage

Jack Ely
Stop Sobbing About Free Music Downloads: a Message to the Music Industry from the Lead Singer of the Kingsmen

Steve Conn
An Obama Public Works Program?

Lee Sustar
Republic Workers Target Bank of America

Glen Ford
The Die is Cast

Stephen Lendman
The Persecution of Syed Fahad Hashmi

Nadia Hijab
The Face of America

Dave Lindorff
We All Need a Union

Website of the Day
This One's For You, Senator Dodd

December 9, 2008

Mike Whitney
Card Check

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Us vs. Them

Ghada Karmi
The UN Resolution That Time Forgot

Dave Lindorff
A Car Dealer Explains Why the Bailout is a Raw Deal

Steve Breyman
Notes on a Green Economy: Managing Stuff in the 21st Century

Lee Sustar /
Nicole Colson
Raising the Stakes at Republic

Rev. William E. Alberts
God of Our Fathers

Martha Rosenberg
Bill Richardson: Secretary of Bloodsports

Sam Husseini
How Holbrooke Lied His Way Into a War

David Macaray
The UAW in Peril

Website of the Day
This Toxic Life

December 8, 2008

Steve Early
Is Obama Backing Off a Crucial Pledge to Labor?

Michael Hudson
Obama's Favoritism: Wall Street, Not the Auto Industry

Patrick Cockburn
Talking to a Lashkar Militant

Diane Farsetta
An Officer and a Conflicted Man: McCaffery, the Pentagon and Fleishman-Hillard

Paul Craig Roberts
Chapters in Imperial Hypocrisy

Daniel Gross
The Chicago Sit-Down Strike

Saul Landau
To Bail or Not to Bail?

Harvey Wasserman
Why John Bryson is Unfit for Energy Secretary

Mike Ferner
The New Generation of "Non-Lethal" Weapons

Norman Solomon
The Silent Winter of Escalation

David Michael Green
The Other Foot

Website of the Day
The Remains of Detroit

December 5 / 7, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Honeymoans From the Left

Brian Cloughley
Shambles in Afghanistan

Paul Craig Roberts
Muslim Revolution: How Washington Arrogance Helped Drive the Mumbai Attacks

Liaquat Ali Khan
Mumbai and the Kashmir Tinderbox

Farzana Versey
Mumbai's Charge of the Lightweight Brigade

Peter Lee
Pakistan Nears the Breaking Point

Peter Morici
Slouching Toward a Depression?

Ralph Nader /
Toby Heaps
Junk Cap-and-Trade

Yinon Cohen /
Neve Gordon
Obama Could End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Will He Meet the Challenge?

Wajahat Ali
Perverse Justice: the Holy Land Foundation Convictions

Johnny Barber
Aswad's Story: Illegal Detention and the Declaration of Human Rights

Alan Farago
Fallout from the Pass-Through Economy

Jeremy Scahill
Obama Doesn't Plan to End Occupation of Iraq

Mike Whitney
Powergrab in Ottawa

Ranjit Hoskote
Jahiliyya Versus Jihad

Carl Finamore
Thank God I'm an Atheist! (Or Boy is Bill O'Reilly in for a Big Surprise)

Marjorie Cohn
Obama and Women's Rights

Norm Kent
Tommy Chong, the Unanticipated Warrior

Missy Beattie
What Lies Ahead

Binoy Kampmark
Committing Suicide On-Line: the Briggs Case

David Macaray
The Best and the Brightest Redux: Too Many Brains, Not Enough Humility

Nancy Stohlman
Relational Activism

Ron Jacobs
Irreverent Politics Then and Now

David Yearsley
Thematics From the Golden Past

Lorenzo Wolff
Troubled Songs of Home and War

Poets' Basement
Orloski: The Door Opener

Website of the Weekend
In Prison My Whole Life

December 4, 2008

Ece Temelkuran
Inside the Ergenekon Case

Ralph Nader
Turning Crisis into Opportunity: Who Will Seize the Moment?

Harry Browne
The Bush-Obama National Security Strategy

Eamonn Fingleton
The American Car Industry: a Riposte to the Knockers

Conn Hallinan
The Syria Attack

Mike Whitney
Fiasco in Somalia: Another CIA Cock-Up

Stewart J. Lawrence
Obama and Latinos: Richardson, Alone, is Not Enough

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Message to Obama: Stop Killing Afghanis

Karyn Strickler
Show Us the Green, Before We Show You the Money

Jennifer Matsui
Obama-Cola: the Great National Temperance Beverage

Website of the Day
"He Ain't Got Laid in a Month of Sundays..."

December 3, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
What's Wrong with the U.S. Military

Sheldon Rampton
Mormon Homophobia: Up Close and Personal

Robert Weissman
Nationalize GM

Yifat Susskind
From Mumbai to Washington

William Blum
The Obama Bummer: Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Alan Singer
The Ghost of the Defunct Economist

David Macaray
Trampled Under Foot at Wal-Mart

Martha Rosenberg
Born With a Statin Deficiency? Line Forms to the Left!

Mats Svensson
The Crimes Have No Period of Limitations

Website of the Day
Why Bill Richardson's Nomination Should be Opposed

December 2, 2008

Jeremy Scahill
Obama's Kettle of Hawks

Paul Craig Roberts
The New Arms Race

Ayesha Ijaz Khan
The Mumbai Terror Attacks: Is Pakistan to Blame?

Sarah Anderson /
John Cavanagh
Skewed Priorities: How the Bailout Dwarfs Spending on Other Global Crises

William Blum
The Mythology of the War on Terrorism

John Ross
Mexico's Drug War Goes Down in Flames

Dave Lindorff
A Tale of Two Terror Attacks

Nicola Nasser
A Peace Process That Makes Peace Impossible

Steve Conn
Operation Redskin Removal

Robert Bryce
Coal Hard Facts

Website of the Day
Country, Funk, Soul

December 1, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
From Baghdad to Mumbai, by Way of Pakistan

Damien Millet /
Eric Toussaint
Obama's Economic Team: Records of Failure

Vijay Prashad
The Fires in South Asia

Deepak Tripathi
Obama's Foreign Crises

Joshua Frank
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East

P. Sainath
The Unlikely Martyrdom of Free Market Jihad

Alan Farago
The Right's War on Regulators

Binoy Kampmark
Sydney's Ball and Chain

Chris Genovali
Silent Fall

David Michael Green
Hope You Die Before You Get Old

Stephen Martin
The Chinese are Coming, the Chinese are Coming!

Website of the Day
Robert Rubin: Coward, Liar or Both?

November 28-30, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
In Time of Trouble

Mike Whitney
The Obama "Dream Team": Rubin Clones and Other Fakers

Ted Honderich
What is the Meaning of Obama's Election?

Tom Kerr
Preserving Filthy Lucre (Or Becoming My Dad)

Mike Ely
The Conquest of New England

David Yearsley
Hymns of the Conquest

Deepak Tripathi
Uproar in Police-State Britain

Sonja Karkar
Gaza's Death Throes

Ramzy Baroud
Salvation in a News Broadcast

Robert Weitzel
Israel's Settlement on Capitol Hill

Robert Roth
Can We Create a Movement for Change?

Carlos Fierro
Obama and the End of Racism?

David Macaray
How to Kill a Union

David Rosen
A New Sexual Agenda

James Cockcroft
Indigenous People Rising

Stan Cox
The Most Disappointing Gift

Steve Conn
Talking Turkey About College Basketball

Stephen Martin
The Electromagnetic Pulse and Economic Warfare

Richard Rhames
Busty Bimbettes, Bombs and Brand Obama

Kim Nicolini
Women as Products and Cannibalistic Achievers

Lorenzo Wolff
A Battle Cry for the Confused and Vulnerable

Poets' Basement
Woods, Harrison and Corseri

December 30, 2008

How "Yes, Sir" Necessarily Becomes "No, Sir"

Ted Downing and Troublemaker Anthropology

By BRIAN McKENNA

Censorship and suppression of one’s work are among the worst things that can happen to a writer, bureaucrat or cultural worker.

Ted Downing, former Society for Applied Anthropology President (1985-87), experienced this and more. In 1995, Downing wrote an evaluation report describing the s evere social and environmental impacts likely to be suffered by Chile’s Pehuenche Indians from a proposed dam project underwritten by the World Bank. After his report was censored Downing demanded that the World Bank publicly disclose his findings. The Bank responded by threatening “a lawsuit garnering Downing’s assets, income and future salary if he disclosed the contents, findings and recommendations of his independent evaluation.” (Johnson and Garcia Downing). As a result of his whistleblowing, Downing was blacklisted from the World Bank after 13 years of consulting service.

“Personally, I was blackballed for 10 years for filing, what turned out to be 3 human rights violations charges against the IFC (private sector arm of The World Bank),” said Downing in an interview. “The experience left me only the devil’s alternative, to get involved in politics.” Literally.

Downing went on to serve two terms in the Arizona legislature from 2003-2006. He rejected corporate contributions and collected hundreds of $5 contributions to qualify for public campaign financing. Downing introduced bills to protect the integrity of the election system, co-authoring a bill requiring hand count audits of electronic voting machines. He increased financial support for university and community college students, protected animal rights, improved energy efficiency and more. Eighty-six of Ted's co-sponsored bills became law, a spectacular achievment for a Democrat in a Republican controlled legislature.

"Yes sir," or "Yes, but," or. . . .just "No!"

Many Ph.D.s never find solid employment in the academic world in this age of university downsizing and so offer their wares as evaluators, consultants or "applied anthropologists" to non-profits or the corporate world. A good many aim to foster social change but are unprepared for how best to do it. This is especially true for my field, anthropology which at this point in time has more Ph.D.s working in applied fields than the university.

Some years back Harvard anthropologist Kris Heggenhougen argued that the strength of anthropology in collaborating with other disciplines lies in saying, "yes, but. . .and to critically examine the decisive factors affecting peoples' health including power, dominance and exploitation." (Heggenhougen 1993)

Yes, but. . . . while that sounds good, more needs to be said.

First of all, we spend much more time saying “yes, sir” than “yes, but” in paid employment. This is necessary if we wish to stay employed. The workplace is a not a democracy but a hierarchy in which academic freedom does not apply. As Downing evinces, there are penalties for speaking one’s mind. Workers have to gauge the cultural politics in any given context so as to not unnecessarily risk censure, reprimand or worse.

Sometimes, like Downing, they must be prepared to simply say no sir and go with the consequences. Sometimes getting fired leads to new paths that can result in greater accomplishments. Much of it has to do with the right attitude.

Dr. Downing has the right attitude. He retains that probing, cantankerous spirit today. "I have no idea what ‘yes, but’ means having not read Heggenhougen,” he said. “The reference to ‘collaboration to other disciplines’ makes no sense to me – as I work on problems and am Undisciplined. I don’t think anyone would consider me a “yes man – which has helped and cursed me . . . . .But, I insist, fighting within a bureaucracy is part of being a good applied anything.”

In Downing’s anthropological journey, when “yes, but” didn’t work, he progressed, reluctantly, to “no, sir.” In fact this happens to many applied anthropologists but most do not have the resources, support or disciplinary guidance to assist them in their struggles. They might become whistleblowers but their careers suffer. And their stories are untold. We do not have a good accounting of how often this happens to anthropologists, but we need to learn more about this. In any case, resisting censorship is, as Downing says, “good applied” anthropology.

Like a Skilled Surgeon

“Good applied” anthropology harkens back to one of the masters of social science, Robert Lynd. In 1939, Lynd, author of the groun dbreaking Middletown studies (the first full bore ethnography of a U.S. city), wrote a book that is less well known, but just as important. Knowledge for What? The Place of Social Science in American Culture, is as relevant today as the moment he penned it.

In it he wrote that “[T]he role of the social sciences to be troublesome, to disconcert the habitual arrangements by which we manage to live along, and to demonstrate the possibility of change in more adequate directions . . . like that of a skilled surgeon, [social scientists need to] get us into immediate trouble in order to prevent our present troubles from becoming even more dangerous. In a culture in which power is normally held by the few and used offensively and defensively to bolster their instant adv antage within the status quo, the role of such a constructive troublemaker is scarcely inviting.”

“Troublemaker” is of course the pejorative term emanating from within t he dominant culture, targeting those who refuse to keep quiet in the face of injustice. “Yes but” is an ample part of their vocabulary. Anthropologist Barbara Johnston has wr itten about the work of being an anthropological troublemaker, especially in relation to doing environmental justice work. But she warns about associated risks. Environmental justice work “requires confronting, challenging and changing power structures.” When someone is involved in this work, says Johnston, “backlash is inevitable.”

“When environmental justice work involves advocacy and action – confrontational politics – a number of professional bridges are burned. . . .’Cause-oriented’ anthropology suggests people who make trouble. Troublemakers are celebrated in this discipline when t heir cause succeeds and justice prevails. But often ‘justice’ is elusive, success is hard to gauge, and action results in unforeseen adverse consequences. (Johnston: 2001, 8).

Because most anthropologists usually enter organizations as change agent s of some kind they need to be aware that they are especially at risk of being labeled a “troublemaker” at any time. If the label sticks it can lead not only to getting fired; it also can lead to a vicious form of bullying that can make one’s life unbearable.

Beware of the Mobbers

Anthropologist Noa Davenport knows this very well. In 1999 she coauthored a book with two other professionals called, “Mobbing, Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace, (1999). In the book’s forward Davenport and her colleagues noted, “This book came about because all three of us, in different organizations, experienced a workplace phenomenon that had profound effects on our well-being. Through humiliation, harassment, and unjustified accusations, we experienced emotional abuse that forced us out of the workplace.” Often the mobbing begins soon after the professional challenged a superior in some area. In other words, it’s often a “yes , but” interrogative. Today Davenport conducts workshops on mobbing and counsels people who have experienced such abuse. She turned her private suffering into a public issue and has advanced the culture.

In my research, “mobbing” has a great deal of unconscious group behavior associated with it. To understand it one must research the realms of psychoanalysis and group dynamics (Bion 1961, Armstrong et al 2005, Grotstein 2007). Often the abuse had the tacit approval of upper management who themselves are often behind it.

All terrains of employment in capitalist culture operate in a sea of conflict. For a critical applied anthropologist then, one is in dangerous waters from the first day on the job. As Kincheloe and McLaren underscore, critical ethnographers need to critically analyze how larger domains of power, including global and local capital, define one’s job and inhibit the possibilities of social science practice.

In the applied field, anthropologists are always trying to discern the location of what I call “the line of unfreedom,” the place where speaking up may cause reaction. Here’s a story from a veteran medical anthropologist that illustrates the pressures to conform to the “yes sir.”

“I've recently been eased off of a multi-million dollar grant that I co-wrote and am (supposed to be) the co-investigator on. My 5 year participation was cut off at year 1 by the Primary Investigator who was getting really nervous about w hat affiliating with me would do to his career. In a nutshell, I wrote a paper that he thought would offend his superiors and so didn't want to have any links to me anymore. So he revised the budget and cut me out - without actually telling me until about 9 months into year 1 - and only finally because I directly inquired as to where my subcontract for years 2-5 had gotten to. Ultimately he's the PI. He was the MD, I was the PhD. He was the insider at the 'very large integrated healthcare system' where the research is sited, I am not. So yes, he has decision making power - yes he could do that. Of course, that doesn't make it 'right', but that's how it is. Ironically, the higher ups liked the paper, which was really quite non-threatening.”

What would happen if this applied anthropologist made a work issue over this? He won’t. From experience he knows that it might not turn out well.

On the Job Which are You First: Employee, Professional, or Citizen?

Indeed, as I tell students in my “Doing Anthropology” course, there is an inevitable and permanent tension between three key aspects of “applied” work as: 1) an employee, 2) a professional and 3) a citizen. As an employee you sell your labor power to an employer. As a professional anthropologist you seek to abide by the goals, rules and20ethics of your discipline. As a citizen you are most interested in advancing democracy and public education. These subject positions conflict and overlap in numerous ways. But one can be sure that an employer is more interested in your value as an employee than a citizen.

I teach the Ted Downing story as an instructive for students own applied work. Like Downing, applied anthropologists have to be prepared to travel the road from “yes, but,” to “no, sir” in order to better serve the public interest. Unions are a vital part of this work, as is a keen awareness of how workers are proletarianized. Harry Braverman's "Labor and Monopoly Capital" is a core text.

David Price continues to catalogue the perils of activist applied anthropologists, demonstrating how, in the 1930s through 1970s, they were subject to surveillance, marginalization and worse for their work. Anthropologist Mich ael Blim, in summarizing the Price book concludes, “Emerson’s adage that all it takes for evil to triumph is th at good people do nothing is here confirmed. Based on Price’s book, one might also add: ‘if you try to change your society, trust not your state, your university, or your profession.’”

“I am not sure the issue is simply that anthropologists are ‘not sufficiently educated about how to protect themselves when challenging authority’ - as that assumes that historically our anthropological teachers have the means and experience to educate their students,” said Barbara Johnston. Johnston said that anthropology faculty, in general, do not have the “seasoned understanding of power and backlash,” as it occurs in the non-academic world. This is so, she said, because they are still immersed in the “generic disciplinary reality of the ivory tower cocoon.” She argues that “ political naïveté is built into the dependency relationship between the discipline and the university structures that sustain the discipline.”

It's an uphill battle. As Henry Giroux discusses in his writings, universities are turning into military-academic-industrial complexes where hierarchy is more entrenched and emboldened. Academics need to model “good applied” anthropology in their own workplaces (the knowledge factories of higher education) to be more convincing to their students. So how do we better protect ourselves in a harsh work environment?

Downing says, “Telling the truth is the most important thing – scientific credibility is critical. I document my reports with hundreds of references pointing directly to documents and footnotes. No embellishment – extra adverbs or adjectives – use the words of the documents. Facts, numbers, uncertainties, etc. Good science is your best defense as an activist. If your methodology is approved ahead of20time…and leads to an unexpected result – you are on good grounds. Good science gains respect, which becomes a shield….but not impermeable. Keep close to the overall organizational objectives of your clien t or organization – in the case of the World Bank, poverty alleviation.”

Downing, who is today a research professor of Social Development at the University of Arizona, said, “Whistleblowing is a last resort – since once it is done, your effectiveness as an internal change agent – moving the organization in the direction that it needs to go – is finished. I always feel a sense of personal failure when I had to take that last step. It was quite painful. There are other ways t o release information to the outside without blowing the whistle. For example, a freedom of information request or demand for an open meeting may crack opens an issue without the need for self-destruction.”

“I learned this during my two terms as a State lawmaker. And, above all, maintain a sense of humor on your self-importance. Aw ards are not given and statutes are not erected to whistleblowers!”

“I have been booted out of several count ries and organizations,” said Downing. “And be assured, the minute a whistle is blown, any weakness in your scientific and professional abilities will be questioned. It is a last resort after you have tried your best to change the organization. I have 3 feet of internal correspondence on the Pangue case going on for over a year before I field my first human rights violation charges against the World Bank (IFC) - trying to set things right so the Pehuenche Indians would not be harmed.”

Still, Barbara Johnston is not optimistic about academic culture’s abilities to prepare students for the perils of non-academic applied work. In an interview she said that the “ever-expanding continuum of engagement,” that is currently underway in anthropology will likely result in more censorship and backlash against applied anthropologists.

Academic Culture Trivializes Activist Work

Johnston points out that academic culture “trivializes the importance of this work,” while, at the same time, the engaged anthropologist struggles to find disciplinary support in dealing with backlash, which can range from papers that cannot be=2 0published (and thus cannot advance careers) to disinformation campaigns, character assaults, threats, even murder. She cites the execution of Colombian anthropologist in 1999 after studying displaced persons from a proposed energy development. He was shot by three masked gunmen at a faculty meeting. But the more common forms of retribution and retaliation come in the form of lost jobs, lost careers and lost health.

“While anthropology is a powerful social persona (in Hollywood, public consciousness, legally mandated reviews, etc.) in terms of numbers, it is a very minor discipline. The AAA has only about 11,000 member s compared to the American Economic Association with 21,000, or the American Psychological Association with over 150,000. This means that when it comes to power (who gets the most research grants, who gets to serve as the dominant social science voice in the corridors of power, etc), anthropology is a very minor afterthought.”

And yet there is much room for resistance, she adds.

“We have an unusual power because as a social personality anthropology/ists have captured the public imagination. There is a cachet to the title, to the opinions emanating from An Anthropologist.’ So backlash is not only a matter of an unprepared, unforeseen, poorly played hand, but also a matter of threat, and how be st to silence that threat. Anthropology is a very loud mosquito buzzing around the head at night. There is a lot of power there.”

Indeed, as Rylko-Bauer and Singer (2006) argue, the historical successes of “pragmatic engagement” must be reclaimed for the 21st century. “For applied anthropologists, the commitment to action is a given; the challenge lies in continuing to find ways of acting more effectively and ethically while linking the specificity of local problem solving to larger sociopolitical contexts.”

“Yes, but,” is only one way to act. It’s often not effective. In response to Heggenhougen’s challenge, we need to become better prepared to support colleagues who find themselves in circ umstances where, “no, but,” is where they must go.

A version of this article was originally published in the Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter, Vol. 19:3, Tim Wallace, editor, August 2008

Brian McKenna lives in Michigan. He can be reached at: mckenna193@aol.com

References

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2005 Group Relations: An Introduction. London:Tavistock. Onlinebook:
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Bion, W. R.
1961 Experiences in Groups. London:Tavistock.

Blim Michael
2007 Review of “Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists,” Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture 6:3.
See: http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_6.3/blim_printable.htm

Davenport, NZ, Schwartz RD, Elliot GP .
2005 Mobbing: Emotional Abuse in the American Workplace. Collins, IA: Civil Society Publishin g.

Downing, Theodore,
2008 See website for professional profile and writings at www.ted-downing.com

Giroux, Henry
2007 The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex. Boulder:Paradigm

Heggenhougen H. K.
1984 Will Primary Health Care be Allowed to Succeed? Social Science and Medicine 19 (3):217-224.
1993 PHC and Anthropology: Challenges and Opportuni ties.
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 1993, 17:281-289.

Johnston, Barbara
2004 “The Pehuenche: Human Rights, the Environment, and Hydrodevelopment on the Biobio River, Chile” by Barbara Rose Johnston and Carmen Garcia-Downing in Indigenous Peoples, Development and Environment edited by Harvey Feit and Mario Blaser (Zed Books). 2004:211-231.

Grotstein, James S.
2007 A Beam of Intense Darkness, Wilfred Bion’s Legacy to Psychoanalysis. London:Karnac.

Johnston, Barbara
2001 “Anthropology and Environmental Justice: Analysts, Advocates, Activists and Troublemakers” by Barbara Rose Johnston, in Anthropology and the Environment, Carole Crumley, ed. (Walnut Creek: Alta Mira) 2001:132-149.

Kincheloe, Joe and Peter McLaren
1994=2 0 Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research. In Handbook of Qualitative Research. Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, eds. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage

McKenna, Brian
2008 "Melanoma Whitewash: Millions at Risk of Injury or Death because of Sunscreen Deceptions," in "Killer Commodities: Public Health and the Corporate Production of Harm," Merrill Singer and Hans Baer, eds., AltaMira Press

Price, David
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