Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War
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ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE DAWN OF THE COLD WAR Wax 00 pre i 21/11/07 16:26:23 Anthropology, Culture and Society Series Editor: Dr Jon P. Mitchell, University of Sussex RECENT TITLES Claiming Individuality: Cultivating Development: The Cultural Politics of Distinction An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice Edited by VERED AMIT AND NOEL DYCK DAVID MOSSE Anthropology and the Will To Meaning: The Aid Effect: A Postcolonial Critique Giving and Governing in VASSOS ARGYROU International Development On the Game: Edited by DAVID MOSSE AND DAVID LEWIS Women and Sex Work Ethnography and Prostitution in Peru SOPHIE DAY LORRAINE NENCEL Slave of Allah: Witchcraft, Power and Politics: Zacarias Moussaoui vs The USA Exploring the Occult in the KATHERINE C. 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Wax 2008 The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 2587 3 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7453 2586 6 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne Wax 00 pre iv 21/11/07 16:26:24 CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War 1 Dustin M. Wax 1 Ashley’s Ghost: McCarthyism, Science, and Human Nature 17 Susan Sperling 2 Materialism’s Free Pass: Karl Wittfogel, McCarthyism, and the “Bureaucratization of Guilt” 37 David H. Price 3 American Colonialism at the Dawn of the Cold War 62 Marc Pinkoski 4 In the Name of Science: The Cold War and the Direction of Scientifi c Pursuits 89 Frank A. Salamone 5 Peasants on Our Minds: Anthropology, the Cold War, and the Myth of Peasant Conservatism 108 Eric B. Ross 6 Organizing Anthropology: Sol Tax and the Professionalization of Anthropology 133 Dustin M. Wax 7 Columbia University and the Mundial Upheaval Society: A Study in Academic Networking 143 William Peace 8 Afterword: Reconceptualizing Anthropology’s Historiography 166 Robert L.A. Hancock Contributors 179 Index 182 Wax 00 pre v 21/11/07 16:26:24 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book originated in a panel at the 2003 American Anthropological Association’s annual meetings entitled “Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War.” The panel featured Herbert Lewis, David Price, Eric Ross, Frank Salamone, George Stocking, Susan Trencher, and me, with Rob Hancock and Marc Pinkoski as discussants. Though not all of them chose to or were able to continue on this journey with me, their input, advice, and inspiration were invaluable in the production of this book. I would also like to thank my professors at the New School for Social Research, whose insight and example showed me that critically engaging with anthropology’s history was not only possible but necessary: Steven Caton, Deborah Poole, Rayna Rapp, Dina Siddiqi, the late William Roseberry, and especially Antonio Lauria-Pericelli, who put my feet on the path that led to this book. Over the years, two online communities have proven invaluable as both a source of new ideas and a place to rehearse my own fevered anthropological imaginings. To the members of ANTHRO-L (especially Ron Kephart, John McCreery, Richard Senghas, Jacob Lee, Richard Wilsnack, Anj Petto, Ray Scupin, Robert Lawless, Wade Tarzia, Lynn Manners, Martin Cohen, Bruce Josephson, Richley Crapo, Tom Kavanagh, Scott MacEachern, Mike Pavlik, Thomas Riley, and Phil Young) and my fellow Savage Minds (Alex Golub, Kerim Friedman, Chris Kelty, Nancy LeClerc, Kathleen Lowery, Tak Watanabe, and newbies Thomas Erikson, Maia Green, and Thomas Strong) I offer both my gratitude and respect. The staff at Pluto Press – Anne Beech, Judy Nash, and Debjani Roy – have been exceedingly patient as I’ve learned the mechanics of working with other academics and putting together a project like this. My parents Sharyn and Marvin, my brother Aaron, my sister-in-law Allison, and my nephew Noah and niece Alyssa have offered their love, support, and, when needed, a place to live without reserve – I can never repay all that I owe them. And, fi nally, I couldn’t have fi nished this book without the love and acceptance of Betsy and her children Chrys, Lea, and Styrling. This book is dedicated to all of them. vi Wax 00 pre vi 21/11/07 16:26:24 INTRODUCTION: ANTHROPOLOGY AT THE DAWN OF THE COLD WAR Dustin M. Wax It’s said that if there’s a book you really want to read and you can’t fi nd it, you must write it yourself. Such is the case with this book: while researching an ethnographic project conducted in the 1950s, I searched desperately for material to help me situate my subject in the history of the discipline at the time. I was surprised and a little disheartened to fi nd that very little had been written on the history of anthropology after World War II, let alone explicitly dealing with the Cold War. Furthermore, what little was available, like Sherry Ortner’s classic “Theory of Anthropology Since the Sixties” (1984), dealt mainly with the evolution and interplay of ideas and not with the actual events, practices, and institutional structures in and through which anthropological ideas are formed. Given the paucity of the kind of material I felt I needed, I decided my only option was to create it myself – or, more properly, get other researchers to create it for me. The book you hold in your hands is the outcome of that decision, several years down the line. “Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War” was the title of a session I organized at the 2003 meetings of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), where the ideas and histories put forth here fi rst started to take form. Since then, interest in anthropology’s Cold War history has grown – and so has its relevance, as the United States has become further and further engulfed by another war against an implacable, global foe, with Islamist terrorism standing in for Soviet communism this time around. As before, anthropologists are being singled out for their political and theoretical entanglements, even as some in the modern security apparatus seek to co-opt the cultural insights of American anthropologists to the service of the government’s military endeavors. But it is not only in relation to such presentist concerns that the Cold War history of anthropology bears telling. Anthropologists have insisted since the early days of the profession that ideas do not exist in a vacuum; they must be understood in the context of 1 Wax 01 intro 1 21/11/07 16:26:08 2 Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War the cultures from which they arise. The period covered in this book – roughly from 1946 to 1964, or from the end of World War II to the opening years of the Vietnam War – were especially fruitful ones for anthropology.