In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election scholars across the country and internationally have worked to understand the drivers for the election outcomes. We have tried to foresee the potential consequences of a Republican party domination of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government for vulnerable populations, for the environment, and for the economy. And, we continue to grapple with the serious threats the president elect and his cabinet nominees pose to the freedom of the press, to citizen’s rights to free speech, and to the various protections that scholars receive through university systems of academic freedom and tenure. At most universities there have been teach-ins, learn-ins, and panels, as well as emergency meetings of departments, faculty action groups, student groups, and other concerned parties. What more can scholars do?

Since the election, one statement we have heard repeatedly from some academics, pundits, journalists, and bloggers who write about academic life, is that scholars need to somehow change what they are doing, and how they are doing it, in order to face this seemingly new political reality in the Unites States. While the latter part of this argument has been addressed by numerous scholars and activists who write and think about race, class, sexuality, and inequality more generally – with clear and compelling arguments about how this is not a “new” political reality for many but rather a kind of contemporary culmination and re-entrenchment of the structures of power and oppression that underpin the entirety of the national political project – the former part of the argument has been allowed to stand with little critique. Do we need to change what we do and not just how we do it? Not necessarily.

While we think that all of us–scholars, activists, journalists, and concerned citizens in general–can always do better work, we worry that by focusing on needing to change what we are doing and how we are doing it we lose sight of what we already do really well. We work to understand the world through research, teaching, writing, and reading. Along with this, we produce knowledge that allows others to understand the world and to work to change it. In addition to this, many of us are also activists whose political praxis is informed by our scholarly pursuits. We are not saying that new forms of thinking and working should not be welcomed. Instead we worry about the idea that scholars are doing it all wrong, and that this is somehow connected to the results of the last election. This suggestion is dangerous and fails to acknowledge the ways in which scholarship and scholarly practice underpins some of our ability to act, react, resist, and transform.

One key part of what all scholars do is read. Reading opens new scholarly connections and understandings for us almost every day. We know and understand the world, and we create new avenues for others to know and understand the world with reference to other people’s writings and insights. For many of us, since scholars tend to also be teachers, we also use what we read every day to help our students become clear and critical thinkers. Scholars read to research and to write and to teach.

With all of this in mind, we, with the help of Savage Minds and the journals American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, and Environment and Society are proposing a Read-In on January 20, 2017. We invite all anthropologists and others to come together to read Michel Foucault’s lecture eleven in “Society Must Be Defended” which he delivered on March 17, 1976. This lecture strikes us as very good to think with at this present point: it demands we simultaneously consider the interplay of sovereign power, discipline, biopolitics, and concepts of security, and race. In light of the current socio-political situation where the reaction to activism against persistent racism has been to more overtly perpetuate racism as political discourse, we need to remember and re-think the role of racism as central to, rather than incidental to, the political and economic activities of the state.

Here is how it will work: read lecture 11 between 10 AM and 10 PM Eastern Standard Time on 20 January (or, of course, read it before, and join in on the 20^th). If you do not own the book, or cannot get it at your local library, PDFs are available online. Read it alone, in groups, in classes, or anywhere. After reading it, discuss it in person or share your thoughts online: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever you gather with friends and colleagues to learn and share ideas. We will use #ReadIn so that folks can find each other to converse and collaborate, and we have also created a Read In Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/170068806806067/

Please join us to read together, read out loud, read in public, and then use it to help us all begin to think about how to understand, help our students understand, and perhaps even to resist, the next four years.

Paige West is Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College and Columbia University

JC Salyer is Term Professor of Practice, Barnard College

-From the popular children’s song, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.”

The tension. Stress. Anxiety! It was the night before Christmas and I couldn’t sleep. I knew he was watching. I was about six years old. My bedroom was right next to the living room, where the tree and the presents awaited morning light. I could hear the slightest noise that emitted from the room where our frenetically decorated electric masterpiece awaited its midnight visitor. I was sweating. I knew the rules. He was due to arrive at any moment. I knew that I was supposed to be asleep, and that I was running the risk of forfeiting all of my materialistic goodies if I failed to fall in line. It was hell. I just wanted to find a way to pass out so that I could sleep my way into the glory of Christmas morning.

Of course, the entire scenario was all in my mind; a cruel joke that my parents had played on me in order to control my behavior. It’s a little ridiculous, and a little insidious, this widespread cultural phenomenon known as “Santa Claus.” It’s ridiculous because year in and year out parents around the country tell stories about a white-bearded individual who flies through the air on a magical sleigh, pulled by flying reindeer, no less, delivering free stuff to kids around the world. The most unbelievable part? The magic sleigh? No. The flying reindeer? Nope. It’s the fact that this dude does all of this work without any expectation of getting paid. That, especially these days when money seems to rule above all else, is about as incredible as it gets.

But then we get to the insidious part. The whole idea of Santa Claus is twisted, if not a little cruel, because it is used as a form of social control. Kids are taught about the wondrous generosity of the old man who breaks into houses to leave free stuff…but then the carpet is pulled out from under them when they learn the catch.  If you’re bad, you don’t get anything.  The worst part of this is the fact that this form of social control is directed at our youngest members of society—those innocent, starry-eyed little angels that make up the lower ranks of our social order.  All year, they are subjected to the watchful eye old a jolly old man who sees their every move.  Santa Claus is the epitome of Foucault’s panopticon, embodied in a cheap red suit and a long white beard.

For those of you who somehow managed to miss out, Foucault’s discussions of “panopticism” refer to the prison designed by 19th century Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The prime focus of the panopticon’s structure was surveillance: a guard in a centralized tower could theoretically see every inmate of the prison — but the prisoners could not see the guards. The prisoners, who know that they might be under surveillance at any time, but cannot tell when, modify their behaviors and effectively discipline themselves. As Foucault wrote, “the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers.”

The true power of panopticsim, as Foucault notes, is that the authority figure or guard almost becomes irrelevant; inmates simply believe in the situation, and therefore police themselves. Power, he writes, has to be both visible and unverifiable.

It is debatable how much little kids believe in the stories they are told about Santa Claus, and how much they adjust their behaviors due to those beliefs. But parents do teach young children, who might be somewhere between the ages of roughly two and twelve, that Santa Claus is every bit as real as any other figure. He is visible, especially during the buildup of the holiday season. And there is extra incentive for kids to pay close attention to stories about Santa Claus, since they receive large payoffs once a year that supposedly come from his coffers. But he is also unverifiable, because it’s never exactly clear where he is, and when he might be watching. He is everywhere, and nowhere.

Successful discipline is achieved, according to Foucault, by three main tactics: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and the examination. Good old Saint Nick most definitely fits the bill as a hierarchical observer: he is omniscient, god-like, and undoubtedly superhuman in many senses. He can fly. He can see you year round, no matter where you are or what you are doing. He is able to traverse the entire planet in a single night and deliver goodies to each “deserving” child in every household.

Santa’s judgments normalize the actions and behaviors of children. Foucault explains: “The perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes” (Foucault 1977). Santa’s judgments are based upon socially and culturally accepted boundaries of behavior; Santa Claus serves as the all-seeing arbiter. Children who misbehave are subject to the worst punishment of all: alienation and abandonment from their favorite toy-delivering superhero. Bad little boys and girls: no dice. Children’s behaviors are compared by Santa in order to determine where each one ranks, which leads to a hierarchical tier of materialistic payoffs.

It’s clear that Mr. Claus satisfies two out of three of Foucault’s necessities for successful discipline, but what about the examination? Does Santa actually test children? Examinations, in Foucault’s words, “combine the techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalizing judgment” (Foucault 1977). They are also highly ritualized. Arguably, at least some children are subjected to a yearly examination at the hands of any number of “Santas” that preside in malls just for the occasion (for a fee, of course). It doesn’t really matter who wears the suit, it only matters that children fall for the guise and believe that they are witnessing the real deal. The physical incarnation of this superhuman disciplinarian is accessible once a year: kids get to sit on his lap and tell him what they want; those with enough money can even get a souvenir photo with him — in the local mall, of all places.

The examination is short and sweet, and performed ritually: after waiting in the long, tedious line, each child sits upon Santa’s lap whereupon he finally asks them whether or not they have been good all year. Of course, every child answers yes — if they aren’t crying or terrified. It’s kind of an annual review for kids, in which their yearly performance is evaluated, and their year-end bonus, or lack thereof, is adjusted accordingly.

Foucault argues that examinations are imperative aspects of discipline, since they result in “the subjection of those who are perceived as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected” (Foucault 1977). The hierarchical relationship that exists between the bearded saint and children is reinforced by the ritual visit/examination that occurs amidst the indoor madness of holiday shopping malls. Children are reminded, in physical form, that they have been objects of scrutiny all year long.

Of course, not every child goes to the mall and sits upon the lap of a temporarily-employed Santa Claus impersonator for this annual interrogation. There are other ways in which children undergo examinations throughout the year. They are subject to scrutiny by both peers and parents; tests that are constant, repetitive, and unpredictable. Such tests are not written, or even physically verifiable, but they may be very influential. The constant social “tests” may come in the form of punishment, admonishment, praise, or reward. Santa Claus may be invoked at any time of the year as the reason to adjust or correct any misbehavior, but his powers of discipline increase as Christmas approaches. And if anyone questions how the jovial old man keeps every child straight in his aging mind, don’t forget that he’s making a list, and has probably checked it at least twice.

Documentation, says Foucault, is an integral part of the disciplinary process. It is a means by which individuals can be compared, categorized, classified, and normalized. Documentation allows for statistical calculation, the prerequisite for determining what is “normal,” based upon averages. According to the popular folklore and the commercial constructions of Santa Claus, he spends his entire year not only managing his extremely productive toy workshop, but he is also engaged in a massive documentary project. Everything children do throughout the year is recorded, categorized, and ultimately, judged. Just like the prisoners of Bentham’s Panopticon who couldn’t see their observers, children have no possible way to tell when and if they are being watched. Such a power is at once terrifying and stunningly effective all at the same time.

It’s easy to dismiss the belief in Santa Claus as something that is trivial, childish, and meaningless. But tell that to some five year old kid. Kids are told that he is a real being, someone who exerts control over their lives. Once a year they even get to see him in person, which is more proof than they get for most supernatural beings (as far as I know). The fact that Santa Claus’s persona is inextricably linked to toys and other material payoffs only increases his overall impact.

But there is a kink in Santa’s omnipresent armor, and it is revealed layer by layer, ever so slowly. Once it starts, it spreads rapidly through children’s networks and associations via rumors, stories, and whispered playground secrets. At some point children learn that there isn’t necessarily a direct correlation between their behaviors and the material payoff that they receive at the end of the year. Some kids might do all they can to be good, and still not get what they asked for. Others might get into fights all year, ditch school, or kick puppies and still get a large holiday payload. That’s when the radar goes up, and kids start wising up.

For all of his focus upon tools of control, punishment, and discipline, Foucault was also interested in revealing the discontinuities in power relationships. The incompleteness of power. The story of Santa Claus’s omniscient abilities to see and therefore judge children is told over and over, but there is never a mention of the possibility that children might be well aware the limitations of this scheme. In fact, I would argue that many children recognize aspects of what is going on far earlier than many parents want to believe, and those kids soon begin to manipulate the process to suit their wishes. They also tell all of their buddies. This is an example, to speak in Foucaultian terms, of an inversion of power.

I admit that I once believed in Santa Claus. It’s true. My parents went to some extreme ends in order to dupe me into that belief, and I fell for it. I have heard the story, over and over, about the time when I was three years old and my mother and father tricked me by making noises on the roof, putting deer-like footprints in the lawn, and leaving half-eaten carrots strewn about the front yard. Apparently, I was completely awe-struck. I was an empiricist even then, and that was plenty of proof to convince me this dude was real. I mean, come on — deer prints and half-eaten carrots? I bought it.

Undoubtedly, the watchful eye of Santa Claus had an impact upon my daily behaviors for the following few years to come. I’m sure that all my mother had to do was bring up Santa Claus to get me to clean my room or eat one or another green, disgusting vegetable. I won’t make the claim that I was an amazingly cunning childhood sleuth who uncovered the secret plot all on my own; far from it. I was clued in when I was about seven years old thanks to my grade school friends whose parents had let the secrets of the universe out of the bag. The way I remember it, the unveiling of Santa Claus’s non-existence lead to my questioning of other omniscient and supernatural beings that I had been told so many stories about. The Easter Bunny was eliminated from my belief system almost immediately. Soon, however, there was another curiously white-bearded individual that I started to question at a fairly young age, but that’s a story for another time.

*Note: This is a revised version of an essay I wrote back when I was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, which was more than nine years ago.  I have finally had the chance to start reading Unwrapping Christmas (edited by Daniel Miller) after several years of telling myself “Hey I should read that book soon.”  Well, I did read it, and it inspired me to go digging around for this old essay, which I finally found on an old hard drive.  ‘Tis the season, after all, to dissect our own cultural behaviors even when we’re supposed to be on vacation.

References

Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish. New York: Random House.

The question is not that Boas was wrong about culture. It is rather that he told anthropologists that they are the only ones who are right.

This quote is from the conclusion to the penultimate chapter of Bauman and Briggs’ award-winning book Voices of Modernity. The book employs a Foucauldian genealogical approach to trace the development of folklore studies from its roots in the Scottish Enlightenment, through its development under German Romanticism, ending up with Boas and the birth of anthropology. In doing so the book focuses on a number of interrelated ideas about culture, language, and modernity as well as methodological issues in the creation of texts from oral traditions. When they awarded the book with the Edward Sapir Book Prize the Society for Linguistic Anthropology wrote:

Bauman and Briggs argue that contemporary efforts to make schemes of social inequality based on race, gender, class and nationality seem compelling and legitimate, rely on deeply rooted ideas about language and tradition. Showing how critics of modernity unwittingly reproduce these foundational fictions, they suggest new strategies for challenging the undemocratic influence of these voices of modernity.

While these themes run throughout their book, they sometimes seem to have only historical importance. After all, scholars like Herder or the Grimm brothers are associated with the rise of nationalism and so there doesn’t seem much that is “unwitting” in their reproduction of these ideologies. It is only in the penultimate chapter on Boas, a scholar known for his critiques of racism and nationalism, that the relevance of these earlier scholars (and the importance of the genealogical method) really becomes clear to the reader. In this genealogy Boas is “ego,” but before this chapter he has been absent from the story.

To understand their critique of Boas it is necessary to first understand Boas’s theory of culture and this is best approached (they argue) by understanding his theory of language. Boas in many ways presaged contemporary Chomskyan linguistics. He made charts showing the articulation of vowel sounds, and was one of the first to anticipate the distinction between phonemic and phonetic analysis (from which the terms “emic” and “etic” come from). Just as it is hard to learn to distinguish the phonemes in a foreign language once one is already an adult, Boas came to think of culture as a set of practices into which people are socialized early in life, able to deploy at will but largely unaware of the underlying rules.

This view of language, grounded in his “universal, objective phonetic grid” and internalized as a set of subconscious practices was an important step in moving Boas away from Herderian evolutionary approaches which saw contemporary language as a degenerative form of a once-pure folkloric forms.

Folklore enabled Boas to attack evolutionism by rejecting degenerative bias of traditional philological approaches and countering E. B. Tylor’s view that each folk element is a survival from a previous social form, one that was rational in its origins but became increasingly irrational. For Boas, folklore was deeply embedded in culture, and it was irrational all the way down.

In his view of language and culture as irrational (non-rational might be a better way of putting it) Boas nonetheless held on to another evolutionary theory, one “inherited from Aubrey and Locke” in which “tradition limits progress towards enlightenment and rationality”

He accordingly constructed culture as a force that limits individual freedom through the pervasive influence of “the fetters of tradition.”¹

Racism, nationalism, colonialism, etc. were, for Boas, not so much political-economic phenomenon as they were the result of culture and tradition. This created a contradiction for Boas, for while culture defined the object of anthropological study, it was also an obstacle to the cosmopolitan form of knowledge anthropologists hoped to produce.

Anthropologists must indict a phenomenon that only they can represent authoritatively, and they stake their claim to authority on the broader public and political stage by promising to help rationalize the very cultural (traditional, unconscious) patterns of which they are supposed to be the visionaries and spokespersons. Fully realizing Boas’s utopian vision of cultural enlightenment would eventually put anthropologists out of a job…

For Boas, only anthropologists could cultivate “a ‘purely analytic’ approach to the study of particular languages and cultures” which enabled them “to circumvent the natural tendency to project one’s own categories onto others.” Bauman and Briggs find this view particularly troublesome. Not only do they see it as promoting forms of inequality in which anthropologists and other experts know best what is in other people’s best interests, but they also see it as legitimating certain forms of neo-racism.

Boas’s theoretical move thus dehistoricizes and depoliticizes imperialism by reducing it to general effects of a universal process of reifying unconscious categories when applied to cross-linguistic and cultural encounters. Balibar (1991) argues that this sort of reasoning provides neo-racists with a cultural logic that naturalizes racism. Although he seems to suggest that this trope constitutes a neo-racist distortion of anthropological constructions, we would argue that it follows from Boas’s own culture theory.

This is not to say that Boas was a racist. Too often (especially on the internet) there is a tendency to oversimplify any argument which discusses the links between racism and certain representational or theoretical practices, boiling it down to “X was a racist.” This would be especially unfortunate in the case of Boas whom the authors acknowledge as a champion of anti-racism. As they conclude:

Boas’s attempt to fashion anthropology as a cosmopolitan discipline deserves broader appreciation. The difficulty is that the fundamental modernist move of claiming consciousness and rationality for oneself and one’s followers and denying it to others was embedded deeply within the concept of culture that lay at the heart of this project.

I would like to think that contemporary anthropological theories of culture, especially those grounded in practice theory avoid many of these problems, but I think that this view of culture is still widespread outside of anthropology. The proponents of the New Atheism movment and their ilk strike me as especially prominent examples of this modernist move, especially when they talk about Islam. It seems strange to me to associate Boas with Islamophobia, and I think he would be more careful not to pick out any particular culture for derision, but in the way he dehistoricized and depoliticized these issues, he would perhaps have had a difficult time articulating a coherent critique.