World Anthropology Day

I stumbled upon world anthropology day (2022) not through any particular celebration, but through an advertisement on Twitter [which I can no longer find]. As an undergraduate student transferring from social and cultural anthropology, I find it interesting to see calls for celebration of a field that has so recently been in the public eye for the systematic protection of sexual abusers, and has through history been behind the facilitation and enacting the worst crimes against humanity.

David H. Price, in his 2011 work Weaponizing anthropology, discusses contemporary weaponizing of anthropology through US Army Human Terrain Teams as well as the history of anthropology in the shadow of the Military. It’s an excellent text, and I highly recommend everyone interested in the field read this text, however the categorization of anthropology as something that is weaponized seems inaccurate to me. The history of dominant anthropology, that is to say the study of humans in Euro-american academic contexts built upon colonial systems and therefore containing an inherent coloniality (for more on this, I’ll refer you to the introduction and chapter 1 of Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science (Bejarano et al., 2019), has been the violent act of exposing and judging peoples subject to colonization by the very countries sponsoring academic “study”. Not only has the field of anthropology provided a “justification” for the violent acts, anthropology has participated in these acts directly. Perhaps the best example of the use of anthropology to facilitate colonial violence can be seen in E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s early career with the British colonial administration in Sudan. Evans-Pritchard’s work with the Nuer has been referenced in a number of courses I’ve taken in my undergraduate career thus far, with Evans-Pritchard’s role in the violent colonialism, and the fact that he ignored the effects violent colonialism inflicted on the Nuer in his writing, was mentioned in two classes. Similarly, Evans-Pritchard unabashed support of white supremacy and the concept of “the white man’s burden” only discussed as a belief that he had but grew out of, rather than a belief he held throughout his life that, either implicitly or explicitly, influenced his decision to “study” the people he worked with. The result of his actions are of more concern, though. His beliefs were reprehensible, yes, but the outcome of his work was the continued violent suppression and ongoing colonization of Sudan that has not yet been overcome. These acts of violence cannot be ignored, not in the teaching of anthropology nor in discussions of the ongoing effects of anthropology on the world.

But it is not just colonialism that anthropology has facilitated and enacted. Those that enacted and planned the Holocaust came from the field of anthropology. Both Josef Mengele and Eva Justin had PhDs in anthropology, and both used their training to carry out torture and genocide of Sinti, Roma, and Jewish people. The extensive use of anthropological methods during the Holocaust is something that is not discussed, or rather has not been discussed in any meaningful way, during undergraduate anthropology. This is a categorical failure of post-secondary education, not only because institutions of science across the board were used by the Nazi regime but also because institutions of anthropology laid the foundation of the holocaust through the institutional support for eugenics and “race” “science”.

Eugenics, as an institution, has ruined the lives of countless millions since its establishment until the present. Here in Alberta, the Alberta eugenics board violently sterilized people that the government decreed to be “defective” or otherwise “undesirable” from 1928-1972. These events are mirrored across Canada, and the world. These violent acts were perpetrated with the support of establishments of anthropology, and this violence was so common that I know several people who were affected by this type of violence. Not only were these policies in effect until very recently, but the effects of these policies will continue to be felt for generations to come.

Obviously this isn’t extensive, but it is frustrating to see calls to celebrate a discipline so steeped in crimes against humanity as the field of anthropology. That is not to say that there is no work to celebrate within anthropology, the work of activists within the field have certainly had a positive effect on people’s lives, but calls to celebrate the field as a whole strikes me as a form of denial of the violent history of anthropology.

In terms of my own positionality of writing this, I completed three years of undergraduate education in social and cultural anthropology. During this period, the overwhelming majority of my professors were white men and the overwhelming majority of papers/textbooks that were assigned for readings were written by white, male authors. This is an issue of reinforcing whiteness within an institution built on colonial structures, in a discipline rooted in violent white supremacy and colonialism, on stolen land. Whether this be an issue with the program, the institution, or the discipline, something must change. Anthropology, the weapon, is still in the hands of those who have used to colonize and uphold Cisgender, Heteronormative, Patriarchal, white supremacy. That has the capacity to change, and it is changing, but to celebrate the state of anthropology now is to make excuses for the violence inherent to dominant anthropology.