How do you see the Citizen/Worker dichotomy playing out in your department? Is the contingent labor at your school so happy to put food on the table that they keep a polite subaltern silence about being shut out of workplace self-governance? (That is, presuming there still is some pre-managerialized space of collegial self-governance in your department.) Do the weaker citizens of our beloved discipline “especially suited to self-governance” ever complain about not being able to afford the costs of membership/airfare/hotel required to participate in the popular assemblies through which their profession governs itself? All of which is to say, in other words: is the Tenured Class really worthy of the noblesse oblige built into a distinction between “workers” and “human beings”?

Of course not. It would be impossibly bourgeois to insist the values of academic “citizenship” are reserved for people “free” from the economic pressures of working for a living. You are not trying to argue that anthropology is just a bourgeois affectation of the leisured classes. You know full well that education does not “make human beings” in the abstract, but under actual economic and political conditions, conditions which make working a necessity for … say about 99% of the world’s population (to pull a number out of a hat). If anthropology really can “invent a new industry” to employ these people, I am sure Rick Scott will be more than happy to eat a double helping of crow and appoint a Sociocultural Commissar. But it seems more likely that anthropology is condemned to follow the rest of the world into a period of divisive economic stress. And when the ideological bubble that endows the Uni degree with its fetishized aura as a ticket into the leisured classes pops, anthropology’s kept estate of contingent labor and its reserve army of unemployable graduate students might find more common cause with the rest of the 99% than with Thomas Jefferson’s venerable aristocratic liberal-artistic virtues. The vital anthropology of the 21st century will have less, not more, connection to the values of the 18th. Hell, maybe Graeber really is the Second Coming, and the values of the 21st century in general will be more anthropological than aristocratic. We can certainly hope. But if so, then our vaunted expertise in “self governance” better start generating proof-of-concept for how to detach our particular discipline from the sinking ship of Subprime Student Debt, Inc.

To be honest, I am surprised that this entry hasn’t gotten more pushback from leftist/activist anthropologists about how terrible American democracy is, Jefferson was a neurotic spendthrift slave owner, structural violence and colonialism is what made America, not liberty and justice for all etc. How can anthropology tolerate the moral self-confidence and pariochalism-cum-patriotism this post displays? Cmon folks: come at me!

As for some of the other comments, I used to be very sensitive to the fact that I am one of the worst spellers on the planet, but now I find “since you’ve spelled your arugment wrong, it must be incorrect” to be an almost empowering critique — how can you take someone seriously when their engagement with your claim stops at the level of typography?

Finally, “Col. Nelson” is actually some sort of Zizek-Crazed OWS type masquerading as a right-wing sock puppet, since any red-blooded American soldier will know that we’ve won the war in Iraq (in fact, we’ve announced our victory twice now!) and Afghanistcan is COMPLETELY ready to stand on its own two feet, so HTS is no longer needed and can be abandoned. Gratz to all who served. For reallyies.

More seriously, though, putting on the Booker T. Washington mask for a second, surely one of the biggest problems with America today is that the only form of civil virtue that anyone seems to recognize is military service. Somehow we expect ‘real’ patriots to lay down their life for their country, but asking someone to sacrifice for the general good by paying taxes is somehow completely unacceptable. So much for civic virtue.

Actually, I found Rex’s argument in favor of producing free-thinking, informed citizens to be quite coherent–and convincing. So I guess we can agree to disagree about that one.