Vicos as Cold War Strategy: Anthropology, Peasants and ‘Community Development’1
Eric B. Ross
ABSTRACT: This article examines how anthropology’s emphasis on the traditional values of peasants reflected the general precepts of ‘modernization theory’, the dominant de- velopment discourse of the Cold War era. It explores how such ideas lent credibility to the U.S. strategy of ‘community development’ as a central part of its response to radical rural change. Special attention is paid to the Cornell-Peru Project at Vicos in the Peruvian highlands, which attained legendary status as a case of applied anthro- pology, but is here examined in relationship to the strategies of the U.S. power elite and Cold War government policies.
KEYWORDS: modernization, applied anthropology, peasants, community development, Cold War
Introduction Harris 1968), cannot therefore be seen as a log- ical development of anthropology’s theoretical Despite the long standing role of peasant soci- history. On the contrary, it was a product of the eties in human economic and political develop- discipline’s place in the historical development ment, peasants themselves did not become an of Western political economy and specifically explicit subject of modern anthropological study of the impact of the Cold War on the social sci- until just after the Second World War (Foster ences (see Nader 1997; Price 2004). As such, the 1967: 4). Thus, when Ralph Linton had pub- growing interest in peasants that characterized lished The Study of Man in 1936, there was no anthropology—and that led to such famous proj- mention of peasants in the index. Twelve years ects as the Cornell-Peru Project at the Andean later, George Foster, then Director of the Smith- hacienda community of Vicos, to be discussed sonian’s Institute of Social Anthropology and below—was associated, openly or implicitly, author of a classic monograph on the Mexican with ‘modernization theory’, an influential body community of Tzintzuntzan (Foster 1948), still of writing through which Western academics wrote of rural Mexico’s ‘folk economy’, (Foster and policy-makers described certain goals as 1948) and, through the early 1950s, the few ar- desirable for the developing world (cf. Latham ticles on peasants that appeared in anthropo- 2000), which was largely dominated by peasant logical journals still generally referred to them communities. largely in terms of ‘folk culture’ (Lewis 1955: However, writing on modernization was also 145). a part of the West’s strategic and ideological re- The timing of the new post-war focus on sponse to a post-war world of insurgent peasan- peasants, which is scarcely accounted for in any tries whose aspirations filled it with profound major work on anthropological theory (e.g., anxiety (Ross 1998b, Cumings 1998). These aspi-
Anthropology in Action, Volume 12, Issue 3 (2005): 21–33 © Berghahn Books and the Association for Anthropology in Action AiA | Eric B. Ross
rations—and Western apprehensions—had been of the most influential determinants of U.S. growing for decades. Challenges to U.S. and global strategic thinking,3 the CIA, on the one European colonialism had been evident prior hand, and the Ford Foundation, on the other. to the Second World War and had even contin- As a place whose ‘ultimate aim’, according to ued during it. It was not surprising, therefore, its Deputy Director, economist Walt Rostow, that the West’s planning for the post-war era was ‘the production of an alternative to Marx- had often focused less on the immediate task ism’ (Rosen 1985: 27–29), CENIS became a ma- of how to defeat Nazi Germany than on how, jor source of the literature on the psychology of after that eventual defeat, to contain the Soviet development, through the work of people such Union and minimize its growing influence in as Daniel Lerner, Lucien Pye and Everett Ha- the Third World. Thus, as early as 1941, even gen, whose Weberian conceptualizations of the before entering the war, the U.S. had joined the so-called modernization process emphasized U.K. in planning for the long-term financial the vital role of groups with ‘a rationalist and stability of the world capitalist economy. By positivist spirit’, whose values were entrepre- the summer of 1944, the two allies had forged neurial (Lerner 1958: 45).4 These did not in- their chief institutional mechanisms to achieve clude peasants. Far from it, modernization was this at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. regarded as virtually synonymous with vigor- The ultimate importance of the so-called ous participation in the capitalist world market Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF and the economy, while the conflicts and disruption World Bank—reflected the fact that, in contrast which often accompanied it and in which peas- to the pre-war years, the threat posed by the ants were widely involved were, in the CENIS socialist model of development then had to be view, less the product of inequalities than of seen in terms of its potential attractiveness to the way that new ideas were said to clash with anti-colonialist movements throughout Africa the ‘stabilizing elements in traditional society’ and Asia. From this point of view, the triumph (Millikan and Blackmer 1961: 16).5 The main of the Chinese communists in 1949 fuelled a challenge, as Rostow, a hawkish White House sense of urgency that, in turn, brought mod- advisor during the Vietnam War years, would ernization theory to the fore in the following observe in a talk to the graduating class of the decades. That theory not only helped to define Counter Guerrilla Course at Fort Bragg, North the future of the developing world within the Carolina, was not to bring justice to the coun- market framework of the West, but also re- tryside, but for the West to use the moderniza- flected the latter’s sense of foreboding, which tion process to its own advantage, while cutting was so well expressed by former U.S. Secretary off the opportunities it offered to peasant or of Defense and ex-World Bank president Robert communist insurgency (Latham 2000: 167– McNamara, when he referred to a ‘sweeping 168). Hence, many of his CENIS colleagues surge of development … [that] turned tradi- offered their expertise to government agencies tionally listless areas of the world into seething engaged in counter-insurgency operations. caldrons of change’ (cited in Shafer 1988: 80). Such uncontrolled development—closely asso- ciated with the conviction that the chief source Problematizing Peasants of unstable and unpredictable change was Mal- thusian pressures—was widely regarded as an Before the Second World War was over, peas- invitation to communist influence.2 ants were already regarded as the problem at Hence, the academic focus of modernization the heart of most Third World insurgency. One writing, the Center for International Studies possible way to deal with this was to modify in- (CENIS) at MIT, was closely connected to two digenous cultural values—a goal that beckoned
22 | Vicos as Cold War Strategy | AiA anthropology, at a point when it was transform- experience of many professional observers, not ing itself into a modern professional discipline. least, the UN Economic Commission for Latin This was partly reflected in the reorganization America (UNECLA 1968) and writers such as of the American Anthropological Association Erich Jacoby (1949) and Daniel Thorner (Thorner (AAA) in the late 1940s, when the promise of and Thorner 1962), who firmly regarded land government and foundation funding—much as the salient issue at the heart of rural develop- of it related to the priorities of the Cold War— ment.6 Erasmus’s values, however, were those drove this process (Price 2004: 4–6). But, it also of a time when the Western power elite held that took place against the background of McCar- developing countries (and the West) would be thyism, when the AAA was under great pres- far better off, if they could only be refashioned sure, as one of its most eminent members, Julian in the image of the United States, and when it Steward, observed, to dissociate itself from any was being said in Washington by policy-makers, hint that it was anything other than a purely whose feet had never touched peasant ground, scientific organization without political orien- that ‘The ideal of every sincere agrarian re- tation (Steward 1954). At such a time, many former…is to produce a situation something anthropologists were not only reluctant to be like that in the United States, where on a rela- seen to voice criticisms of the West’s stance dur- tively small farm a family cannot only live but ing the Cold War, but often particularly eager live in comfort’ (Berle 1962: 55).7 The main prob- to benefit professionally by demonstrating how lem, in Erasmus’s view, was only for the U.S. anthropological research and analysis could to ‘make sure that we are providing sufficient contribute to the shaping and implementation incentive for those best qualified to help win of Western policy, especially in regard to the the race for free society’ against what he called ‘modernization’ of peasant society. ‘coercive society’ (Erasmus 1961: 331). The fact One early indication of this was the creation that the number of small U.S. farms (particu- of the Society for Applied Anthropology in larly those owned by Afro-Americans) had been 1941. Over the next twenty years, the view of in steady decline through most of the twenti- many of the most renowned practitioners in eth century (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1973: this subfield came to reflect dominant Wash- 59; Cummins 2006; Flanagan and Inoyue 2006) ington development policy, with its antipathy was obviously beside the point. to radical social and economic change. Thus, in Erasmus’s position was also hardly condu- 1961, Charles Erasmus, in a book entitled Man cive to an objective appraisal of the contradic- Takes Control: Cultural Development and American tions of market-driven rural development, the Aid, proclaimed that ‘[e]ven in countries that realities of peasant livelihoods or demands for have not yet had land reforms, I do not think agrarian justice. But it did help to make an- that the major problem is who owns the land thropology an obvious ally of Western policy- or how large the holdings are’ (Erasmus 1961: makers during the years of the Cold War, when 326). a significant number of anthropologists who That this was said with such startling con- sought to work for government agencies, often viction at a time when peasants around the under the heading of ‘applied anthropology’, world were engaged in armed struggles for aligned themselves with U.S. government pol- land and rural justice and in the first years of icy, without seeming to feel any need to criti- the Cuban revolution, when one of its priori- cise the aims of that policy. On the contrary, ties was land distribution, demonstrates how they appeared more than willing to demon- remote ‘applied anthropology’ could be from strate how anthropology could help to justify the vicissitudes and aspirations of peasant life. or make such policy more effective. This was But Erasmus’s view was also at odds with the certainly the import of the address to the twenty-
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third annual meeting of the Society for Applied founded over twenty years earlier (Taraqqi Anthropology in 1962 by Ward Goodenough, 2000). If Etawah succeeded, according to George author of Cooperation in Change: An Anthropolog- Rosen, ical Approach to Community Development (1963), It would serve as a model for meeting the revo- when he noted that anthropologists could meet lutionary threats from left-wing and communist a growing demand by government for the be- peasant movements demanding basic social re- havioural sciences, but that this required the forms in agriculture. (Rosen 1985: 49) discipline to be more operational if it was really to fulfil what he openly called the ‘intelligence- gathering function’ that he felt applied anthro- Community Development and pology did so well (1962: 174).8 ‘Controlled Change’: The Road to Vicos Meanwhile, anthropology was not lax. It was refining a view of peasants which emphasized, Meanwhile, in the United States, where univer- not their potential collective radicalism, but sities were lured by research money flowing their local, cultural conservatism. Thus, one of out of Washington on an unprecedented scale post-war anthropology’s most notable contri- during the early years of the Cold War, a new butions to the Western discourse of the Cold relationship was emerging between government War era—and especially to modernization the- policy objectives and the social sciences. It was ory, which seemed to provide a compelling encouraged by the major foundations, such as theoretical framework for Western policies— Ford, Rockefeller and the Carnegie Corpora- was its timely conceptualization of peasant con- tion, which, through the fifties, helped to turn servatism. Culminating in such constructions anthropology, sociology and psychology toward as George Foster’s ‘Image of Limited Good’ issues of foreign policy relevance (cf. Simpson (Foster 1965), anthropologists steadily elabo- 1998), helping to create what Lowen and others rated an argument that peasants were more have termed ‘the Cold War University’ (Lowen constrained by ‘tradition’ than by agrarian 1997). structures and, therefore, could not really be By the early 1950s, in the wake of the com- expected ‘to improve their living standards at munist victory in China, Cornell was a prime their own initiative’ (cited in Huizer 1972: 53). case of such an institution, so it was not surpris- It was a view that not only contributed signifi- ing that, with the sponsorship of Ford (which, cantly to the West’s efforts to defuse rural unrest by then, was also a major influence on India’s through what it called ‘community develop- Planning Commission) (Bowles 1954: 340), it ment’, but which, in the process, made an ob- was enlisted to introduce a major anthropolog- jective understanding of such unrest virtually ical project, led by Morris Opler, to examine ‘the impossible. impact of the community development pro- The concept of community development was gram at the local level’ (Rosen 1985: 35). By then, first applied in a significant way in India, which, however, the India Project had also become one from the war years onward, had seemed, in of a number of interconnected activities that Washington’s view, to be following the same were part of ‘an ambitious worldwide anthro- revolutionary process coming to fruition in pological undertaking’ by Cornell’s anthropol- China. India’s first experiment in community ogists to study ‘an accelerated process of global development therefore began in 1947 with a change’ (Doughty 1977: 144), not only in India, pilot project in the Etawah district in the state but also in Thailand, Peru and on a Navajo res- of Uttar Pradesh (then United Provinces), a re- ervation in the U.S. (Keyes 1994). This was in- gion with a long history of agrarian unrest and evitably embedded in the kind of moderniza- where the Communist Party of India had been tion thinking that Ford was promoting through
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CENIS, with its close links to the CIA, and that pologists in particular would be credible allies the Carnegie Corporation of New York was also of Washington policy-makers and major U.S. subsidizing through support for an increas- foundations. Through the Cold War years, they ingly intimate relationship between the U.S. would reflect a common ideological and tacti- intelligence community and academia (Dia- cal commitment to modernization through di- mond 1992). rected change at the community level. In 1936, Lauriston Sharp had joined the Cor- Part of the Cornell programme involved a nell economics department (Bowen 2003: 4). field seminar in applied anthropology, centred He soon became Chair of the new Sociology on the Navaho, which was run by Leighton and Anthropology Department and at the end into the early 1950s. It was meant to ‘provide of the Second World War, during which he applied anthropology training for specialists briefly had worked for the State Department’s and administrators actively involved in the in- Division of Southeast Asian Affairs (Bowen troduction of new technology to underdevel- 2003: 4), he hired the psychiatrist Alexander oped regions of the world’ (Davies 2001: 317). Leighton, who had not only worked for the Of- But, it was particularly in the Peruvian side fice of Strategic Services (OSS)—the war-time of the programme that the idea of community pre-cursor of the CIA—and the Office of War development found unprecedented expres- Information (OWI) (Simpson 1994: 26), but sion. It was there that the Carnegie Corpora- also—as Chief of the Morale Analysis Division tion—already backing the general programme for the U.S. Navy Medical Corps—conducted developed by Sharp and Leighton—supported research on Japanese Americans in the intern- the creation of the Cornell-Peru Vicos Project, ment camp at Poston, Arizona, run by the War which leading figures in anthropology would Relocation Authority (WRA) (Davies 2001: soon extol out of all proportion to its substan- 321–322; Tremblay 2004: 7–8). (As it happened, tive achievements. his Cornell colleague, Morris Opler, had also worked for the WRA at the Manzanar camp and for the OWI as well) (Unrau 1996; Webster Situating Vicos and Rushforth 2000: 328; Price 2002: 18). Out of such similar wartime backgrounds, Leighton Goodenough, for one, characterized the proj- and Sharp (with support from Opler) ect as ‘a very visible example’ of where ‘cul- tural knowledge has been successfully used to developed a grand scheme to study and direct accomplish objectives that would have been un- culture change in the postwar world. According attainable without it’ (Goodenough 1962: 174). to Leighton, the new program ‘addressed the Taken along with Goodenough’s view that an- question of facilitating the introduction of mod- ern agriculture, industry, and medicine to areas thropology should make itself relevant to the that are deficient in those technologies.’ The pro- cause of counter-insurgency, this characteriza- gram attempted to do so without evoking hostil- tion of Vicos should long ago have invited ity towards the innovator. (Davies 2001: 323) deeper scrutiny of the project. Unfortunately, this has never been done. Nor has Vicos been Very much in keeping with the lessons discussed in the wider framework of Cornell’s learned through Cornell’s longstanding associ- Carnegie-funded cross-cultural study in mod- ation with agricultural missionaries (Thomson ernization (it certainly was not considered in 1969: 150), such a project, with its rather uncrit- Barbara Lynch’s USAID-commissioned assess- ical confidence in the benefits of Western tech- ment of the project in 1982), despite the fact nological innovation (Davies 2001: 327), helped that, in the late 1960s, Sharp’s work in Thai- ensure that Cornell in general and its anthro- land, which was part of this comparative proj-
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ect, raised many questions about its relation- as with Etawah in India, to develop Vicos as a ship to U.S. counter-insurgency efforts, in which model whose ‘anticipated results’, according to USAID was involved (Wolf and Jorgensen William Mangin, could be ‘diffused through- 1970).9 But, again, no such questions were ever out Peru and the world’ (Mangin 1979: 67). asked about Cornell’s project in Peru or, for However, did anyone involved in the proj- that matter, about the association of its direc- ect really take such rhetoric seriously? Accord- tor, Allan Holmberg, with the International ing to Lynch, the sublease of the hacienda to Cooperation Agency (ICA), the predecessor of Cornell by the Public Benefit Society—which USAID, although, according to Richard Adams, ‘represented the regional elite’ (Lynch 1982: 16)—required existing relations of production to [w]ithin the ICA, anthropologists in Bolivia and be maintained. In light of this, the rather grand southern Peru were, I presume, more than coin- aspirations of the Cornell anthropologists—so cidentally, utilized in areas where there were thought to be serious problems of communist ag- circumscribed from the outset—would seem to itation. (Adams 1964: 2) have been rather detached from Peruvian real- ity. The extent to which this was the case was Yet, as Adams also noted, even two decades indicated when Paul Doughty wrote: after its inception, much about the Vicos proj- Just why the conservative Odria dictatorship ect—including its sponsorship—was still not would permit such a project to begin with was entirely clear from what was openly published often conjectured by the [Cornell Peru Project] by its leading anthropological participants personnel, but plausible reasons or policy have (Adams 1973). The ‘fuller scholarly and re- never been identified. (Doughty 1987a: 441) search reporting’ that he hoped for and antici- pated over thirty years ago never materialised, and Dwight Heath’s observation in 1980, that Vicos as Cold War Strategy the Cornell work at Vicos was a ‘tangled skein of theory and practice, individuals and institu- Yet, it was not really that difficult. Land reform tions, progress and problems’ (Heath 1980: 455), in Peru, as elsewhere, had become a key aspi- remains just as true today. The contradictions ration of peasants since the end of the Second are only compounded by the fact that internal World War and had been stubbornly resisted Carnegie Corporation memoranda suggest that, by a ruling oligarchy which was now securely by, 1954, the foundation itself was already fed in power (Lastarria-Cornhiel 1989: 127). There up with the pretensions of the project, which can be little doubt that Holmberg and his Cor- far exceeded its actual output (Marvel 1954: 4). nell colleagues and their Peruvian partners were This, of course, raises the possibility that an- aware of such developments (after all, army alytical clarity was never the most important generals sat on the executive board of the Insti- aim of the project, which Holmberg initiated tuto Indigenista Peruano, which cosponsored the after Peru had been taken over in 1948 by a mil- Vicos project with Cornell) and, in fact, in a itary coup. By July 1950, when General Manuel 1962 paper, Henry Dobyns and others noted A. Odría, the leader of the coup, was elected that, in the departmental capital of Huaraz, president, without any effective opposition, there was resistance to the Vicos project from Holmberg already had plans well advanced to the Communist Party ‘which appears to recog- have Cornell rent ‘Hacienda Vicos and its 1800 nize that every success of the project diminishes peons for the going rate of $500 per year’ by that much their chances of fomenting a vio- (Doughty 1977: 144). Under a national admin- lent revolution’ (Dobyns et al. 1962: 112–113). istration which had seized power to forestall That this was perceived early as a major sell- fundamental reforms, his ostensible aim was, ing point of the Vicos Project is clear from the
26 | Vicos as Cold War Strategy | AiA proposal that the Cornell Anthropology Depart- Cornell’s intervention there not only was rep- ment submitted through Sharp (then the de- resented as offering a real hope to the campe- partment Chair) to John Gardner, Vice-President sinos of the Peruvian highlands—as well as to of the Carnegie Corporation, on 19 April, 1951, the policy-makers of Washington—but its pro- in which it was observed that: ponents even went so far as to imply that it was ‘nothing less than revolutionary’ (Doughty 1977: the hope of the Andean countries as a whole lies in the mountain regions where their masses of 144). Doughty and Dobyns called Holmberg ‘a hard-working Indians live, and unless these are truly revolutionary anthropologist’ and explic- soon given opportunities and assistance in chang- itly put him on a par with Jomo Kenyatta, the ing and improving their lot considerably, present leader of Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising (Adams conditions of rest and dissatisfaction are apt to 1973: 444) (who himself had been trained in lead to more and bloodier revolutions within the anthropology). next few years … We would like, therefore, to at- tempt to change these conditions in as controlled Since Mau Mau was a true peasant insurrec- a manner as possible. (Sharp 1951: 18–19) tion (cf. Furedi 1989), this was a quite extraor- dinary and rather presumptuous claim. But, This goal was certainly in accord with Gard- considering that, in the immediate aftermath ner’s views. A former member of the wartime of the Cuban revolution, Vicos was seen as a OSS, he wrote to Sharp in June: model for reclaiming political ground that the If native people are to be taught to take their fate United States had lost in some of the poten- in their own hands, then they had better be edu- tially most volatile regions of Latin America, it cated as to the various ways in which they can be may be understandable. So, Vicos, backed by gulled by unscrupulous leaders. This means, I Carnegie, was elevated to a high status in the should think, fairly intensive indoctrination in West’s Cold War strategy of ‘community devel- local forms of ‘democratic’ group action with opment’ and John Gardner’s call for a ‘fairly strong emphasis upon active and realistic politi- cal participation. It seems to me that without this, intensive indoctrination in local forms of ‘dem- the whole effort to raise the status of backward ocratic’ group action with strong emphasis upon peoples may be the greatest device ever invented active and realistic political participation’ was for playing into the hands of unscrupulous dem- suitably translated into the academic jargon of agogues. (Gardner 1951: 2) the Cornell anthropologists and their most em- inent collaborators as ‘directed value accumu- There is little doubt that Washington, whose lation’ (Lasswell and Holmberg 1969). power brokers Gardner knew very well, was One of those collaborators was Harold D. becoming increasingly aware of the possibili- Lasswell. The fact that an author or editor of ties inherent in the community development some of the major works on the psychological model that Vicos embodied. But, so, too, were dimension of modernization thinking over a many anthropologists. Within a decade, the Vi- period of three decades (see Lasswell and Lerner cos approach was being unambiguously situ- 1951; Lasswell, Lerner and Speier 1979), a mem- ated in the context of the Cold War by such ber of the planning committee which directed figures as John Gillin who, in his comments to the disbursement of a substantial Ford Foun- the Society of Applied Anthropology, observed: dation grant for CENIS’s communication stud- The experience of Vicos contains numerous sug- ies—which, as Simpson observes, ‘were from gestions for the ‘cold war.’ Through our foreign- their inception closely bound up with both overt aid programs, I presume that we are trying to and covert aspects of U.S. national security strat- bring the peoples of the modern world to our side. The numerous defects in our national programs egy of the day’ (Simpson 1994: 82–83)—a long- 10 can be corrected on the basis of the experience of term consultant to the RAND Corporation , Vicos. (Informaciones 1961:142, my translation) and a member of the influential Council for For-
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eign Relations, came to be the coauthor of one from Vicos actually supported a very different of the most important works to emerge out of view: that its inhabitants were just pragmatic the Vicos Project, underscores the relationship and that their resistance to change was dictated of the latter to the ideological and strategic as- more by economic factors than by traditional pects of the Western development model dur- cultural values (Lynch 1982: 78). In a similar ing the Cold War. That Lasswell himself would vein—and, again, contrary to the assumptions write an article in Human Organization in the of the Cornell anthropologists—the community early 1960s (Lasswell 1962) highlights the im- was not isolated from the national economy. portance that such tactical and influential ‘Prior to the project,’ she wrote, thinkers attached to applied anthropology and its practitioners. Vicos had not been a highly stable, traditional society, but a society constantly adapting to the changing consequences of its integration into Pe- ruvian national society on extremely unequal Conclusions terms. (Lynch 1982: 75)
The real value of Vicos, during the Cold War, By the 1940s and 1950s, a worldwide process was that it seemed, like Etawah, to offer a way of market-driven unequal development was to counter radical rural change. But the deeper giving rise to peasant mobilizations from Peru import of the Cornell-Peru project, for anthro- to the Philippines. Yet, the point of such com- pology at least, is that it represented a ‘road munal action was effectively obscured by the not taken’. As William Foote Whyte, an associ- Cornell anthropologists, when they grandly de- ate of the project, and Giorgio Alberti wrote, scribed their project at Vicos as ‘one of the few long after its hey-day: programs of planned change which set about to employ a truly holistic, anthropological ap- Provocative as the Vicos case is, it hardly pro- proach’ (Doughty 1977: 145), yet, at the same vides an intervention model that can be widely time, paid little attention to the structural link- used. There just are not enough available people or institutions with money to invest in taking ages between those communities and the wider over haciendas for the purpose of transforming political economy and to how and why the lat- them into progressive, democratic communities. ter’s impact had given rise to rural struggles (Whyte and Alberti 1976: 247) for change. This was possible because anthro- pology’s sense of ‘holism’ was highly localized It would have been far better, in their view, for and therefore rarely questioned the relationship an outsider to between local culture and global system or, as a result, the origins and consequences of the [h]elp organize the peasants against the hacen- Western development model. dado and link them with other outsiders in this struggle. In other words, he must become a leader On the contrary, by lending their expertise or supporter of a peasant movement. (Whyte and to the emphasis on local cultural values and con- Alberti 1976: 247) trolled innovation at the community level, an- thropologists such as those in the Vicos Project By the late 1940s, when the Cornell project ensured that peasant aspirations for systemic at Vicos had begun, such highland communi- change simply were not their starting-point. ties were already far from being the isolated Had it been otherwise, as Huizer has noted, they exemplars of ‘folk culture’ that modernization might have ‘come to help [local people] to strug- thinking—or Holmberg and his colleagues— gle against the repressive system, rather than presumed. Indeed, in her USAID assessment of with minor improvement schemes’ (Huizer the project, Lynch concluded that the evidence 1972: 53). But most tended to adopt the Rostow
28 | Vicos as Cold War Strategy | AiA model, with its roots in the CENIS view of Population Research (OPR), who claimed that modernization. To the extent that anthropolo- it was ‘the glut of people in the poorer areas’ of gists like Holmberg subscribed to such a view that region that made them ‘conducive to com- munism’ (cited in Wilmoth and Ball 1992: 647). of the development process, it certainly ‘in- 3. MIT had been chosen as the site for CENIS be- creased [their] employment possibilities’ (Bon- cause of its existing associations with the U.S. fil Batalla 1966: 91) in the eyes of Washington military and industrial establishment (Snead policy-makers. A focus on communities—and 1999: 56–57). The Advisory Board on Soviet Bloc on the shifting of their attitudes and values to- Studies at MIT, for example, included Allen ward a Western standard—rather than on their Dulles of the CIA (Horowitz 1969) and MIT president James Killian, who had played a cen- structural context, undoubtedly gave anthro- tral role in Project Troy, which had been one of pologists a unique and useful vantage point the first important post-war efforts to incorpo- that ensured them a professional role in the bur- rate social scientists into the U.S. Cold War pol- geoning, foundation-supported community icy and intelligence process (Needell 1993: 405ff.; development field. It just did very little to place 1998). As a direct product of Project Troy, the anthropological expertise at the service of the first head of CENIS was the economist Max Millikan, who had worked on Troy before he dispossessed (cf. Stein 1985: 249). became assistant to the director of the CIA Eric B. Ross lectures at the faculty of the Institute (Rosen 1985: 28; Needell 1993: 415–416; Bird 1998: 139). He remained a consultant to the of Social Studies in The Hague, The Netherlands, agency while the head of CENIS (Simpson 1994: where he is Chair of the MA programme. His 82). Meanwhile, the Provost (later Chancellor email is [email protected]. and President) of MIT, Julius Stratton, went on to become a member of the Ford Foundation’s board and the Foundation’s president in 1966 Notes (MIT Libraries 1995). 4. The focus on the modification of traditional 1. This article was presented in the session, values not only meant that CENIS scholars ‘World War Two Anthropology: Reconsidering placed great emphasis on communications the- the War’s Past in the Present’, at the American ory (cf. Simpson 1994). In 1951, Lerner, for ex- Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, ample, had edited Propaganda in War and Crisis: Washington, D.C., 30 November–4 December Materials for American Policy, and twenty-five 2005. It was adapted from a longer essay, ‘Re- years later would write an article, ‘Is Interna- flections on Vicos: Anthropology, the Cold War tional Persuasion Sociologically Feasible?’, for and the Idea of Peasant Conservatism’, which the U.S. Army publication The Art and Science of is still being developed. Through its many forms, Psychological Operations: Case Studies of Military this article has been indebted to a variety of Application (1976). friends and colleagues, among them: Haroon 5. For McNamara, this was especially troubling Akram-Lodhi, David Barkin, Janice Harper, because the Soviet Union and China seemed to Helen Hintjens, William Mitchell, David Price, regard such clashes as ‘an ideal environment Karen Woodards and David Stoll. I am especially for the growth of Communism’ (McNamara grateful to the Columbia University Rare Books 1968: 147). and Manuscript Library for the opportunity to 6. However, both Jacoby and Thorner paid a price look at the archives of the Carnegie Corpora- for their intellectual positions. Born in Ger- tion of New York and to the University of Illi- many in 1903, the former fled to Denmark in nois Archives, Urbana, for access to letters from 1933 when Hitler came to power, and fled Eu- their collection of the Julian H. Steward Papers. rope in 1940 when Germany invaded Denmark. 2. Cold War Malthusian thinking was exemplified Back in Denmark after the war, his book Agrar- by the prominent demographer Frank Note- ian Unrest in Southeast Asia generally was looked stein, who became director of the Rockefeller- on with disfavour because it drew connections sponsored Population Council, and his col- between U.S. colonialism and rural poverty, league, Kingsley Davis, at Princeton’s Office of while in Denmark, as he wrote, ‘it was proba-
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bly feared that my critical analysis of American References colonialism would damage the financial contri- butions being made by large American founda- Adams, R. 1964. ‘Politics and Social Anthropology tions to Danish scientific research’ (Hvidt 2002: in Spanish America’, Human Organization 23 (1): 99). Daniel Thorner and his wife and collabora- 1–4. tor, Alice, were compelled to settle in India, the ——— 1973. ‘Review of Peasants, Power and Applied area that was the focus of much of their work, Social Change: Vicos as a Model (H. Dobyns, between 1952 and 1960 (when they moved to P. Doughty and H. Lasswell [eds])’, American Paris), as a result of McCarthyism (Patel 2005: Anthropologist 75: 443–444. 6). He lost his teaching position at the Univer- Berle, A. 1962. Latin America—Diplomacy and Reality, sity of Pennsylvania—in no small part, because New York: Harper and Row, (for the Council on of pressure from the Carnegie Corporation— Foreign Relations). and had his passport confiscated after he refused Bird, K. 1998. The Color of Truth. McGeorge Bundy to name names for the Senate Internal Security and William Bundy: Brothers in Arms, New York: Sub-commitee (Gardner 1951; Patnaik 2005). Simon and Schuster. 7. Adolf Berle, a prominent member of FDR’s gov- Bonfil Batalla, G. 1966. ‘Conservative Thought in ernment, close associate of Nelson Rockefeller Applied Anthropology: A Critique’, Human Or- and member of the Council on Foreign Rela- ganization 25 (2): 89–92. tions, also said that proper respect must be Bowen, J. 2003. ‘The Development of Southeast shown to the large-land owner because ‘under Asian Studies in the United States’, in D. Szan- his management the land produces more per ton (ed.) The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies man and per acre than it does in the hands of and the Disciplines, University of California the small farmer’ (Berle 1962: 51). The result Press/University of California International and was that U.S. development policy tended to Area Studies, Digital Collection, Edited Volume make the needs of large-land owners more cen- No. 3,
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Dobyns, H., P. Doughty and H. Lasswell Harris, M. 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: [1964](1971) (eds) Peasants, Power, and Applied A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Social Change: Vicos as a Model, Beverly Hills, Thomas Crowell. CA: Sage Publications. Heath, D. 1980. ‘Review of Long Term Field Research Doughty, P. 1977. ‘Review of Directed Culture Change in Social Anthropology, edited by George Foster in Peru: A Guide to the Vicos Collection, by Debo- et al.’, American Anthropologist 82 (2): 455–457. rah Wood’, American Anthropologist 79: 144–146. Huizer, G. 1972. The Revolutionary Potential of Peas- ——— 1987a. ‘Vicos: Success, Rejection, and Redis- ants in Latin America, Lexington, MA: Lexington covery of a Classic Program’, in E. Eddy and W. Books. Partridge (eds) Applied Anthropology in America, Informaciones 1961 Peru Indigena 9 (20–21):141–143. New York: Columbia University Press, 438–469. Jacoby, E. 1949. Agrarian Unrest in Southeast Asia, ——— 1987b. ‘Against the Odds: Collaboration New York: Columbia University Press. and Development at Vicos’, in D. Stull and J. ——— 2002. ‘Twice Refugee in Denmark: 1933–40 Schensul (eds) Collaborative Research and Social and 1946–47’, in H. Kristian (ed.) You On Us: 25 Change, Boulder: Westview Press, 129–157. Foreign Views of Denmark From 845 to 2001, Erasmus. C. 1961 Man Takes Control: Cultural De- Copenhagen: Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign velopment and American Aid. Charles J., Uni- Affairs, 92–101. versity of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. Keyes, C. 1994. ‘Lauriston Sharp and the Anthro- Flanagan, M. and L. Inoyue 2006 U.S. Small Farm- pological Study of Thailand: Some Reflections’, ers and Racism. Oxfam America. http://www Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter 25 (June), .oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/where_we_work
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Lowen, Rebecca 1997 Creating the Cold War Univer- Patel, S. 2005. ‘Alice Thorner’, The Guardian, 12 sity: The Transformation of Stanford. Berkeley: September. University of California Press. Patnaik, U. 2005. ‘Alice Thorner 1918-2005’, Lynch, B. 1982. The Vicos Experiment: A Study of the Monthly Review (September), 32 | Vicos as Cold War Strategy | AiA www.geocities.com/aipsg/1200kanpur.htm>, Agriculture, 1969. Vol. II, General Report, Wash- accessed 12 June 2005. ington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Thiesenhusen, W. 1995. Broken Promises: Agrarian Unrau, H. 1996. ‘The Evacuation and Relocation of Reform and the Latin American Campesino, Boul- Persons of Japanese Ancestry During World War der, CO: Westview Press. II: A Historical Study of the Manzanar War Re- Thomson, J. 1969. While China Faced West: American location Center’, U.S. Department of the Interior, Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928–1937, Cam- National Park Service, | 33