However, Doc, eloquently calls into question the impact of anthropology and, although s/he grossly underestimiates it, I think this a vital criticism. I am interested in finding creative ways of engaging the wider public more directly. Outside of my university, little is know about anthropology and what potetential it has. With the other posts regarding free access to journals taken together with the issues discussed in this post, it seems there is a need for students and professionals to develop strategies for reaching out to communitites.

Are there some people here have tried? Ideas? I am both troubled by this problem and, simultaneously, excited about the potential anthropology has in making an impact.

Am I reading you right, in that since the employers have the power, and the employees do not, the employees are the only ones who are entitled to informed consent?

I’m not sure how you got that from what I wrote, but in any cas, no that’s not what I’m saying. Employers are people; Wal-Mart isn’t. People, not abstract entities, deserve informed consent consideration.

That consideration doesn’t mean that their informed consent is an absolute requirement, though — it’s ethics, not God’s Law. I can’t imagine a Wal-Mart executive consenting to research — ethnographic or journalstic, whichever — by someone not explicitly sympathetic to Wal-Mart’s aims. And the conditions of working life in a big corporation like Wal-Mart are definitely worth studying, so there’s a quagmire. I think here we anthros can, in fact, learn something from the journalists, or rather their editors and publishers, who double-check their sources before publication. Perhaps some sort of “after-the-fact” consent is called for? Ehrenreich did, in fact, tell her co-workers what she was doing, after she left her jobs; I assume (or would like to believe) that she would have taken seriously any major objections to her publishing her work. Corporations raise an interesting issue, though, in that there are many people who might be affected by one’s research whom one never has any personal interaction with — what sort of consideration do we owe them?

Moving up the corporate ladder — say, studying at a Wl-Mart corporate office — intensifies these concerns, and since we anthros don’t have much experience with that, there aren’t a lot of guideposts along the way to help deal with them. Working with direct consent means tying ourselves into exactly the kind of bind that Griffin has put himself into — never knowing what information has been withheld or filtered in an attempt to shape our observations, and offering control of our results to parties for whom anthropological insight is not a guiding priority. I’d venture to say it would be illegal for a publicly-held corporation to knowingly admit a researcher into their ranks who was not explicitly for the goals of the corporation — how would the work of an upper-management Ehrenreich increase shareholder value? Can we simply accept that the law forbids us from doing some kinds of research?

Of course, all this leads to the issue of protecting our subjects. If my research would harm Wal-Mart’s bottom line, am I justified in publishing it? If Griffin’s work would harm the political careers of member of the current administration or of the military’s leading figures, is he ethically required to sit on his results? If he sees himself as studying both the military and the Iraqis the military interfaces with, are his hands not doubly tied? What can he ethically say about anything? Is there a line he can walk that harms no one — and is it anthropologically valid to walk that line?

As Oneman has so passionately argued here and elsewhere, there is no lack of relevant social science on Iraq, Iran, the middle east, etc. The problem is that US political powers that be systematically ignore it, or else they mock it (McFate pictures anthros with signs that say, ‘You suck’). See for example this blog item:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/08/appeasement_finds_a_home_in_th.html
Which mocks anthropologist W O Beeman’s suggestion that the US conduct diplomacy, well, diplomatically!

Stay tuned. SavageMinds hopes to continue creating a forum for discussing this issue.

But perhaps most interesting is that when I was used search engines to search these Human Terain program, I founded this article from a month ago: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/when-anthropolo.html
Read the comments by readers at pages bottom about Griffins misunderstandings of ‘going natives’ and you will see that his post here about no time to answer these questions is at best half true. These is not new questions to him. Why must he not answer? Is he under orders from his officer to not answering, or does he know the answer and will not say? No answers to these questions are not acceptable.

bq. but i don’t think we have one, will have one, or will even try to have one. instead, we want to make sure our bedsheets are clean.

I was referring to those statements.

I am wonder what strategies are out there for crossing barriers and gaining access into institutions and corporations (IMF? World Bank? CIA? Wal-Mart? military?; how can we study those who quite possibly manufacture so much hardship, rather than constantly studying those who sustain the hardship?

I think this is an unfair characterization of what I actually said. I do think anthropologists should be concerned with the professional standards of their discipline. But the professional standards anthropologists have set up aren’t Moses’ law. The actual harm that Griffin or another American anthropologist can do in Iraq does not seem to be under discussion. Given the circumstances of his being in Iraq, what is the potential for harm, what is the potential for good?

Most importantly, and again you mis-characterize what I said, I think it is less productive to spend so much time bitching about Griffin and other anthropologists who have decided to *do* something, and instead spend that time *doing* something themselves. But I don’t see that. I don’t see it on the Left, and I don’t see it in Anthropology, and I’m upset about it.

uiolliioo: i take no totalitarian position (read professor wheeler’s post to see her own claims of nonexpertise on which i based my statement. if she wishes to correct my statement and claim expertise in anthropological ethics i will accept her claim). i also claim no expertise on military ethics, but note that whatever military ethics may be, they do not supplant anthropological ethics when anthropologists work for the military. i do agree with you that american anthropology does not have a plan, but without a plan all we will do is aid the military and cia as they carry out their plans of conquest. why should we do that?