Sociology & Anthropology

Questions and debates about the end of anthropology are highlighted here for their potential value in revealing what the ‘crisis talk’ in the discipline really means, and what it may be masking. In this article the reader is invited to reflect on several questions: about anthropology as a discipline or as a praxis; about how anthropology can be not just revitalised, but revolutionised; about the place of ethnography in anthropology; and about the quest for distinction and the accumulation of disciplinary capital. More broadly, this article deals with the restructuring of anthropology within a context of continued imperialism.

This chapter is based on a study of the US Department of Defense’s Flickr photostream, from 2009 through February of 2014, examining a total of 9,963 photographs (with some key examples reproduced in the chapter), and two dozen US military directives, manuals, and guides on public diplomacy, strategic communication, social media use, and photography. Having said that, the analysis is not a quantitative one; instead, the project builds on Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas about regulated images, consecrated works, and the objectification and codification of (militarized) values, as well as the works of a number of visual anthropologists. Rather than an activity that expresses the randomness of individual imaginations, US military photographs register a pattern that reflects the prevailing political norms of a given social order. The patterns to be found among these thousands of images is in fact quite regular, and makes a series of clear points. This public engagement is carried out by the Pentagon with a belief that a major part of “the battle” is a “battle of the narrative,” one that takes place in the public’s “cognitive space,” in what is has been termed “Fourth Generation warfare”. These photographs are intended to represent the US military as a humanitarian, charitable organization, working among many communities around the world that are populated by children who are only too happy to be vaccinated and to skip rope with US soldiers. Female US soldiers have smiling close encounters with little girls, or cradle babies. When not displaying pure, motive-less good intentions, the photographs also produce a celebration of the awesome power and sophistication of US military technology: jets flying in formation, shiny drones illuminated at night like alien UFOs, lines of massive ships at sea, etc. Yet, there are virtually no images of actual combat. The photographs collectively portray a world rendered frictionless by the speed and ubiquity of American power and technology. In addition, by being studiously depoliticized, the photographs produce a political effect, for political purposes—they do not tell the horror stories of war, of blood shed and lives lost, of destruction and grief, but rather portray something like a birthday party, with a cycle of endless family reunions. However, as the Pentagon understands that every action is potentially a message, and there is an unresolved tension between “perception effects” and military planning, strategic communication in the form of disseminating photo-graphs through social media faces ultimate pitfalls.

Friends and allies, partners and protégés, extensions and proxies—the vocabulary of US power in the form of multiples of itself has become so entrenched that it rarely attracts attention, and even less so critical commentary. Force multiplication is about “leverage”: using partners and proxies in an expanding network, but where power still remains centralized. Forces are conceptualized in multi-dimensional terms. Anything in the world of cultural systems, social relationships, and material production can become force multipliers for imperialism: food security, oil, electricity, young leaders, aid, social media, NGOs, women’s rights, schoolgirls, democratization, elections, the G8, the European Union, NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, AFRICOM, development, policing, borders, and epidemics, among others. This takes us to related conceptualizations of “full-spectrum dominance,” “three-dimensional warfare,” and “interoperability,” in what has become an imperial syndrome. Chapters in this volume present diverse examples of force multiplication, ranging from Plan Colombia to Bulgarian membership in NATO and the US-Israeli relationship, from the New Alliance for Food Security to charitable aid and the control of migration, to the management of secrecy.

Contributors to this volume: John Talbot, Mandela Coupal Dalgleish, Robert Majewski, Lea Marinova, Chloë Blaszkewycz, Iléana Gutnick, and Maximilian C. Forte.

Friends and allies, partners and protégés, extensions and proxies—the vocabulary of US power in the form of multiples of itself has become so entrenched that it rarely attracts attention, and even less so critical commentary. Force multiplication is about “leverage”: using partners and proxies in an expanding network, but where power still remains centralized. Forces are conceptualized in multi-dimensional terms. Anything in the world of cultural systems, social relationships, and material production can become force multipliers for imperialism: food security, oil, electricity, young leaders, aid, social media, NGOs, women’s rights, schoolgirls, democratization, elections, the G8, the European Union, NATO, the IMF, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, AFRICOM, development, policing, borders, and epidemics, among others. This takes us to related conceptualizations of “full-spectrum dominance,” “three-dimensional warfare,” and “interoperability,” in what has become an imperial syndrome. Chapters in this volume present diverse examples of force multiplication, ranging from Plan Colombia to Bulgarian membership in NATO and the US-Israeli relationship, from the New Alliance for Food Security to charitable aid and the control of migration, to the management of secrecy.

Whether it is smart (as in “smart bombs” or “smart power”), involves stealth (“stealth technology” like the B-2 bomber, or “leading from behind” as in the US-led NATO war on Libya), uses “leverage”, employs “force multipliers,” or engages in “full-spectrum operations,” the political and military establishment of the US has produced a battery of terms having an aura of rationality and science. Added to the physics of dominance produced in rhetoric about “force-multipliers,” there is a geometry of war (“asymmetric warfare” and “three-dimensional warfare”) and even a quasi-biology of war (“hybrid wars”). Power is described by military leaders using concepts of time, energy, mass, and velocity. Just as the US Department of State (DoS) announces “smart, effective American leadership” (DoS, 2010, p. 14), so does the US Army proclaim “the science of control” (US Army, 2008a, p. 6-1). It is fitting then that the new US Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter, is someone who received a PhD in physics. What lies behind the scientific-sounding certitude is both a deep anxiety about the increasingly precarious global grasp of the US, and a signal that many other nations will face greater peril as the US leans more than ever on social and cultural forces internal to those nations in order to advance its political and corporate interests...

This chapter focuses on the demand for secrecy that is occasioned by an imperial state relying heavily on covert operations and whose own forms of governance are increasingly beholden to the operations of a “shadow state”. This chapter is thus related to discussions of “connected capitalism” and the corporate oligarchic state discussed in the introduction to the volume (see "Force Multipliers: Imperial Instrumentalism in Theory and Practice"). I proceed by examining how WikiLeaks understands strategies of secrecy, the dissemination of information, and state power, and how anthropology has treated issues of secret knowledge and the social conventions that govern the dissemination of that knowledge. In part, I highlight a new method of doing research on the imperial state and its force multipliers, which rests heavily on the work of anti-secrecy organizations, of which WikiLeaks is paramount.

This paper deals with US academic imperialism, as a form of cultural imperialism, with specific reference to anthropology. Also presented is an analysis of the problems and challenges facing the creation of an independent, Canadian anthropology.

This paper deals with US academic imperialism, as a form of cultural imperialism, with specific reference to anthropology. Also presented is an analysis of the problems and challenges facing the creation of an independent, Canadian anthropology.

How is one to interpret the attempt by the UN to install a new government in Libya which was neither elected nor selected by Libyans, and is rejected in advance by many? Given the widely described "failures" of the first round of foreign military intervention in Libya, what might be other aims and goals that are served by a new round of such intervention? What does the current process of subjecting Libya to international discipline portend for the rest of the formerly decolonized world? In adopting a "recolonization" thesis, this paper is an attempt to address such questions.

Is there a Canadian anthropology or is it just anthropology in Canada? If it is “anthropology in Canada,” then from where has it been imported? If what we are doing is primarily US anthropology, then what are we importing when we do US anthropology in Canada? How do we do US anthropology in Canada? Does challenging US hegemony imply nationalism and, if so, does nationalism imply reactionary politics? Is US imperialism active in academia? Is there a Canadian epistemology? What does it mean to be Canadian? What is the relationship between Indigenous decolonization and Canadian anti-imperialism? These are the sorts of questions that were discussed at a roundtable on academic imperialism at a Canadian anthropology conference in May, 2016.

Is there a New Victorianism, and if so, what does it encompass? If there is a New Victorianism, what are there basic structural and cultural similarities between the old and New Victorianism, and what do the commonalities tell us? What does this mean for how we understand history? This paper explores the New Victorianism as the cultural and ideological expression of social imperialism. The relationships between neoliberalism, imperialism, and identity politics are explored as a pattern which can be classed as New Victorian.

What is "silencing" and is it out of place in the contemporary North American university? How do "silencing" and "public anthropology" intersect? What are the roles of academic power and academic capital? Readers are invited to explore the proposition that "silencing" is really about the political economy of value-the destruction or creation of value, as measured in terms of academic capital and academic power. In that frame, "silencing" is better explained as having to do more with political economy than with morality, ethics, or legality. Both silencing and public anthropology involve actors situated in established professions within institutional matrices of power and profit. If silencing is understood as a problem, then what might be some immediate solutions?

Arima Born: Revealing the History of Arima and its Mission through the Catholic Church’s Baptismal Registers, 1820–1916

[Parts included here: Acknowledgements, Preface, Conclusion]

The Catholic Mission of Santa Rosa is something that helped to make Arima a distinctive town in Trinidad, accounting for nearly half of the Amerindian population of the colony in the 1800s. The baptismal registers of the Catholic Church in Arima, including those pertaining to its years as a Mission, offer us unique insights into the social history of Arima, its demographic and cultural transformations, while opening another window onto the profound political-economic and legal changes that occurred in the colony throughout the 19th-century. However, when the data from those baptismal registers are read in conjunction with government documents and texts from the time, we are faced with what might seem like a series of deep mysteries.

Was Arima’s mission an Indian Mission after all? Was the mission established “for the good” of the Amerindians? How many Indigenous people lived in the Arima Mission, and in Trinidad as a whole? Who counted them? How were they counted, and why? Were the Amerindians segregated from other races? Why did Arima come to be seen as a centre of Indigenous culture in Trinidad? Exactly how did the Amerindians “vanish” from the Mission? Did the mission help to perpetuate Amerindian social and cultural forms in Trinidad, or did it promote their dissolution? Did the Amerindians gladly convert to Catholicism and adhere to an austere lifestyle of obedience and service in the misson? What explains the alleged “decline” in Trinidad’s Indigenous population? Did the Arima Mission have a secret side?

These questions are answered in this book by using two sets of documentary sources: complete data from the Baptismal Registers of the Santa Rosa RC Church about Indigenous and Mestizo persons in the Arima Mission and after (1820 to 1916), reproduced in full in this book; and, newly available historical reports from the 1800s, including the earliest report in print of a visit to the Arima Mission. This book provides new estimates of both the Amerindian population of the Arima Mission and all of Trinidad; revised, updated, and expanded census data for Trinidad’s Amerindian population from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s is also provided, making it the most comprehensive accounting thus far. Ethnohistorians will gain valuable insights and detailed notes about using baptismal registers as sources of data. However, the larger questions about the politics of counting a target population are addressed through a critique of the four dominant myths concerning the Arima Mission.

This book, based entirely on primary sources and reproducing—in full—all of the entries in the baptismal registers from 1820 to 1916 concerning Arima’s Amerindian, Mestizo, and much of its Spanish-language population, addresses the questions above by presenting some striking findings that advance a provocative narrative. Colonial oligarchic domination, the political economy of racism, and the creation of inequality and poverty now stand out.

Arima Born: Revealing the History of Arima and its Mission through the Catholic Church’s Baptismal Registers, 1820–1916

[Parts included here: Acknowledgements, Preface, Conclusion]

The Catholic Mission of Santa Rosa is something that helped to make Arima a distinctive town in Trinidad, accounting for nearly half of the Amerindian population of the colony in the 1800s. The baptismal registers of the Catholic Church in Arima, including those pertaining to its years as a Mission, offer us unique insights into the social history of Arima, its demographic and cultural transformations, while opening another window onto the profound political-economic and legal changes that occurred in the colony throughout the 19th-century. However, when the data from those baptismal registers are read in conjunction with government documents and texts from the time, we are faced with what might seem like a series of deep mysteries.

Was Arima’s mission an Indian Mission after all? Was the mission established “for the good” of the Amerindians? How many Indigenous people lived in the Arima Mission, and in Trinidad as a whole? Who counted them? How were they counted, and why? Were the Amerindians segregated from other races? Why did Arima come to be seen as a centre of Indigenous culture in Trinidad? Exactly how did the Amerindians “vanish” from the Mission? Did the mission help to perpetuate Amerindian social and cultural forms in Trinidad, or did it promote their dissolution? Did the Amerindians gladly convert to Catholicism and adhere to an austere lifestyle of obedience and service in the misson? What explains the alleged “decline” in Trinidad’s Indigenous population? Did the Arima Mission have a secret side?

These questions are answered in this book by using two sets of documentary sources: complete data from the Baptismal Registers of the Santa Rosa RC Church about Indigenous and Mestizo persons in the Arima Mission and after (1820 to 1916), reproduced in full in this book; and, newly available historical reports from the 1800s, including the earliest report in print of a visit to the Arima Mission. This book provides new estimates of both the Amerindian population of the Arima Mission and all of Trinidad; revised, updated, and expanded census data for Trinidad’s Amerindian population from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s is also provided, making it the most comprehensive accounting thus far. Ethnohistorians will gain valuable insights and detailed notes about using baptismal registers as sources of data. However, the larger questions about the politics of counting a target population are addressed through a critique of the four dominant myths concerning the Arima Mission.

This book, based entirely on primary sources and reproducing—in full—all of the entries in the baptismal registers from 1820 to 1916 concerning Arima’s Amerindian, Mestizo, and much of its Spanish-language population, addresses the questions above by presenting some striking findings that advance a provocative narrative. Colonial oligarchic domination, the political economy of racism, and the creation of inequality and poverty now stand out.