Those of you following Savage Minds since the beginning will remember when this blog was the object of scorn and ridicule across the blogsphere as a result of our temerity in attacking Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. The debate was nicely summed up at the time by Inside Higher Ed’s Scott Jaschik:

And in the last week, a relatively new blog in anthropology — Savage Minds — has set off a huge debate over the book. Two of the eight people who lead Savage Minds posted their objections to the book, and things have taken off from there, with several prominent blogs in the social sciences picking up the debate, and adding to it. Hundreds of scholars are posting and cross-posting in an unusually intense and broad debate for a book that has been out for eight years.

A collection of links related to the discussion was posted here on Savage Minds as well. But the discussion did not end there. It is for that reason that I thought it might be a good time to highlight how the discussion continued after 2005. Although it got less attention, we subsequently had Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington as our very first guest bloggers (establishing a long running tradition on this blog). They drew from their book Yali’s Question to write a series of posts bringing significant expertise and nuance to the questions which had been raised about Diamond’s book. They were later interviewed for a NY Times piece about Diamond’s new book, Collapse. Continue reading →

Stinky Journalism has launched the latest in it’s still-ongoing criticisms of Jared Diamond’s Vengeance piece in The New Yorker. While we haven’t covered all of the SJ columns on this blog, I do think it’s important to direct people’s attention to this one. Rebutting Jared Diamond’s Savage Portrait: What Tribal Societies Can Tell Us About Justice And Liberty is the lengthiest, most competent, and most incisive account of the short-comings of Diamond’s article. Indeed, it looks to be the definitive last word on the subject. This is the one to teach along side the Diamond article.

The piece is co-written by Paul Sillitoe and Mako John Kuwimb. Paul is recognized pretty much worldwide as the expert on the area where the events in Diamond’s story take place. More than that, however, he has a reputation for scrupulous, scrupulous ethnographic work. I heard him once say that he was an “ethnographic determinist” — meaning that he believed in “putting facts on record”. He has not only produced decades of publications, but all of his work shows an exactitude and rigor which is astonishing and, frankly, a little intimidating. Famously, his book on Wola agriculture includes descriptions of Wola attitudes to worms, that is how complete the guy is (in fact, if you are looking for a good ethnographic description of pre-contact highlands PNG for an intro class, I’d recommend his Grass-clearing Man. But be warned — you are going to learn a lot about giving pigs away). I’ve never met Mako John Kuwimb, but his bio — which includes time working for the well-known Australian legal firm Warner-Shand — is impressive and, best of all, he is a Papua New Guinean from Southern Highlands talking about his own people and his own experiences.

In sum, the piece is by 1) the top expert the area and an anthropologist renowned for his empirical rigor and 2) a highly-educated Papua New Guinean from the area under discussion. It’s no surprise, then, that the piece is so thoroughly put together. It is, in essence, an account of what actually happened in the conflict that Diamond described, complete with timeline, pictures, and a detailed description of events. Interspersed throughout is a wider account of how people manage conflict and reciprocity in areas without much governmental presence. Thus the article is a double repudiation of Diamond’s piece — it not only sets the facts straight, it points out the flaws in his theoretical account of ‘vengeance’ in ‘primitive societies’ as well. As someone who lived not too far from this area not too long after the events recorded in the story, this account rings very very true to me.

There are, of course, things one could quibble about in the article. A major thrust of the piece is that Papua New Guineans live freer lives than people in highly-governed first world countries. This is something I hear frequently when I visit the highlands: that Papua New Guinea is a “free country” where you can “eat free and run free” without external government forces or the induced poverty that a cash economy creates. At the same time, however, I know many Papua New Guineans who long to be free of the web of obligations and reciprocity that goes along with life in the highlands, and to live without the sometimes-crushing anxiety and concern for status that drives people to participate in exchange in order to not be seen as rubbish men. Perhaps the piece invites us to think more carefully about what justice and liberty really are, rather than simply accept that the correct answer to this question is an inversion of the one Diamond gives.

Overall, however, the biggest impression one gets after reading is this piece is: this is ethnography (or perhaps, ‘this is journalism’?). We have often talked on this blog about how Diamond’s work uneasily spans several genres. With Kuwimb and Sillitoe’s piece, we finally get to see what the situation in Papua New Guinea really  is, what high-quality work looks like, and what the public really deserves from their experts.

First, an apology — in the past two weeks I’ve tried to finish an edited volume, a full-length monograph, finals for my classes, and two book reviews (among other things) so I have not had the time to delve into the comments on the posts related to Jared Diamond. Luckily it looks like the community has produced a lot of them, so hopefully it doesn’t need me. This is a good thing because I will soon be travelling to Papua New Guinea for research over the summer and will have even less time to post. I hope the story will continue to get the attention it deserves.

This leads me to, second, an announcement, because I (and others) are leaving for the summer for research and we find ourselves unable to keep up with posting essays of, what has turned out to be, more contributors than anticipated. StinkyJournalism.org will continue the series with the same editors. I’ll comment from Papua New Guinea as time allows.

Third, a quick roundup of various links to the Diamond/Wemp affair. Some links from around the blogosphere — Clay Spinuzzi (an extremely excellent activity-theorist type who Bonnie Nardi turned me on to) has a nice right-up of the Diamond/Wemp affair entitled Participants Can Respond. Uh-oh. It nicely boils down the underlying dynamic of the debate:

Although institutional research boards have historically been conceived as a way to protect participants from researchers’ representations, social media mean that the danger is now bidirectional – participants can represent the researcher in damaging ways as well, and those representations could easily circulate more broadly than the researcher’s.

Bidrectionality: There you have it, folks.

In a very ‘university of blogaria’ vein (this reference will probably make sense to noone but me), Millicent and Carla Fran have a nice entry on Jared Diamond’s Creative (Non)Fiction and Nostalgic Anthropology and a response which is classy and thoughtful.

Stinky Journalism also has another piece in their series up by Glenn Peterson on matrilineal clans and the containment of violence in Micronesia which further fortifies the claim that ‘stateless’ socities have structures which shape — and sometimes prevent — violence. They are not ‘states of nature’ in which vengeance runs amok. I have the impression that Glenn is not well-known out of Oceanist circles, but I hope I’m wrong in this because he is a very, very intelligent guy and I am very junior to him in the small world of anthropology in Oceania.

Finally, the main link of the day — Science Magazine is running a story ‘Vengeance’ Bites Back At Jared Diamond, which represents the most thoroughly research coverage of the case so far. I was interviewed for the piece and, more importantly, so was Jared Diamond and staff at the New Yorker, making it the first time they have commented on record on the case.

What Diamond has to say is not that actually that interesting — he is only quoted as saying “the case has no merit at all”. But what is interesting about the piece is that it describes, at least a little bit, the production of the New Yorker article. In comments on one of our postings on Diamond, I mentioned that I thought we had an excellent record of what happened in Nipa, and how various people say it was or wasn’t represented accurately, but that we had no way of telling what happened between the time Wemp told Diamond his story and the New Yorker published it. Now, with the Science article, we have a relatively detailed sense of the chain of transmission from Nipa to Wemp to Diamond to the New Yorker to us. Very interesting. Of course it is behind a pay wall, but I’d encourage everyone, if possible, to check it out.

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p align=”center”>The Pig in a Garden: Jared Diamond and The New Yorker series:

Art Science Research Laboratory’s StinkyJournalism.org and SavageMinds.org is simultaneously cross-publishing on both web sites, a series of essays on the controversy surrounding Jared Diamond’s New Yorker article, “Annals of Anthropology: Vengeance is Ours.” The essay series titled,The Pig in a Garden: Jared Diamond and The New Yorker, is written by ethics scholars in the fields of anthropology and communications, as well as journalists, environmental scientists, archaeologists, anthropologists and linguists et al., and edited by Rhonda Roland Shearer, Alan Bisbort and Sam Eifling. Each contributor’s mission was simple: To examine Jared Diamond’s article, and The New Yorker’s decision to publish it, through the lens of their own discipline. We think you will agree that these issues will not soon be put to rest. As Nancy Sullivan writes in her contribution, part of the reason for this series is to reclaim some of the ground among general readers lost to “experts” like Jared Diamond. With this series, StinkyJournalism.org and SavageMinds.org seek to capture that wider general audience for writings about anthropology.

This article is by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, PhD. Fluehr-Lobban is a Professor of Anthropology at Rhode Island College where she teaches courses in Anthropology, Islamic, and African and Afro-American Studies. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Temple University and her PhD in Anthropology and African Studies from Northwestern University in 1973.  At Rhode Island College she has received both the Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1990 and the Award for Distinguished Scholar in 1998. She is the author or editor of eleven books and the editor of Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for a New Era (1990; second edition 2003). Fluehr-Lobban’s essay is third in the series.

Introduction

The following is a commentary based upon my reading of the article by Jared Diamond in The New Yorker under the heading “Annals of Anthropology: Vengeance Is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?” and private emails between Rhonda Shearer’s team of researchers Jeffrey Elapa and Michael Kigl and Daniel Wemp that she shared with me.

My comments focus on the blurring of disciplinary boundaries and the apparent lack of informed consent in the relationship between the two non-equals, as well as the possible use of deception by Diamond in his publication of details of events shared with him in confidence by Daniel Wemp. Comparison with another case also originally published in 2000 in The New Yorker—that of Patrick Tierney and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon and geneticist James  Neel—is discussed for the insights it provides.

Blurring of Professional Boundaries between Anthropology and Journalism
There is a difference in kind between the research a wildlife biologist carries out with species occupying a given habitat and the humans in that environment. Researchers working with flora and fauna do not obtain the informed consent of their subjects, and the subjects do not read and critique the writing of the scholar.

Anthropologists studying humans develop long-term relationships of trust through the primary method of participant observation during lengthy stays in a culture where over time they learn its language, beliefs, and practices. Even seemingly abstract cultural artifacts, such as language or ancient material culture, have relevance to living humans whose heritage they actively seek to shape and protect.

In relationships between researcher and researched where the conditions of the study are openly discussed and negotiated, boundaries and lines naturally emerge. Part of the steep learning curve of gaining knowledge of and intimacy in a community is learning what knowledge and facts can be shared outside the confidence of the relationship and those which cannot or should not be revealed.

Anthropologists voluntarily maintain many confidences they either promise or intuit from extended fieldwork which they never reveal or publish.  They do this because they have gained an understanding of cultural sensitivities and the likely consequences of making them public. If they are intending to publish such details, they weigh the costs and benefits of revealing sensitive information, thinking perhaps of some ‘greater good,’ they may discuss with their ‘informants’ their wishes regarding disclosure of facts and their own preference regarding anonymity or identity.

In the shift from academic research with humans to journalism, the rules of engagement change. Ethical journalists reveal their identity and the nature of their interest in a person’s story to the person.

For them long-term academic research and the pursuit of knowledge is not the goal, but getting a good story for one’s publisher is the end.

From the extant description of facts in this case, it seems that Diamond was neither the fish of the anthropologist nor the fowl of a journalist in his dealings with Daniel Wemp. Daniel was a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) employee in PNG from1999 to 2002. The context in which information was shared with Diamond was not a clear research setting, but two casual conversations shared on the road sometime in 2001-2002, among trips to and from the airport as Daniel discharged his duties to drive Diamond when he occasionally visited PNG. Diamond is a WWF (US) trustee, since 1993.

With no formal training in either field, Diamond may have engaged in some professional code-switching from the context of wildlife research in Papua/New Guinea to investigative journalist cum anthropologist.
The World is Not the Same ‘out there’

The old order of unregulated and laissez-faire research has passed away, and some anthropologists were the last to notice.

In another crisis of conscience prompted by another essay in The New Yorker (“The Fierce Anthropologist” by Patrick Tierney appeared October 9, 2000) just prior to the release of  the book Darkness in El Dorado in which a serious accusation that the vaccine brought by geneticist James Neel and administered through Napoleon Chagnon’s broker role caused a devastating measles epidemic was changed as a result of pre-publication vetting of the article.

Questions were raised in the pre-publication vetting of the article and book that rendered other facts in the book suspect in the eyes of many whose subtitle was “How scientists and journalists devastated the Amazon.”

The publisher W.W. Norton’s change of published text from the original galleys that had been circulated to scholars and the last minute re-writing of The New Yorker article is a story that has yet to fully be told, and ethical questions for the publishing industry may yet be raised. Tierney spent several years locating a publisher and Norton admits having the book “lawyered”  before its release for dealing with the most serious allegations of scientific misconduct. (Fluehr-Lobban 2003a).

Besides the legalistic matters involving allegations of a failure by the scientists to intervene and treat a measles epidemic, questions were also raised about the representation by Chagnon of the Yanomami as a “fierce people” (1968), and how this fed into a dehumanization of a people whose primitive violent culture could be profitably objectified in anthropology’s most used ethnographic case.

The cultural violence of the indigenous peoples of the Papua New Guinea highlands have likewise been objectified in ethnographic films such as the classic “Dead Birds,” and now most recently in Diamond’s reinforcing of this stereotype.

For its part a Task Force of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) investigating the conduct of anthropologists– most notably Chagnon but others who had worked among the Yanomami as well including an alleged pedafile–the Final Report made no significant finding of violations of ethical standards by Chagnon or any other American anthropologist, but faulted Tierney for violating journalistic ethics.

Indeed, a resolution fronted by Chagnon supporters condemning such maligning of the reputation of anthropologists was passed by the general membership of the AAA that effectively withdrew any criticism of ethical misconduct.

From this immediate past lesson it may be that Diamond is safe for the time being, for powerful Western scientists are still protected, or this time the outcome might favor the less powerful “subject” of research.  At any rate, more “blowback” can be expected from the global peripheries that scientists and journalists explore and sometimes exploit.

Jared Diamond’s telling of Daniel Wemp’s sensitive story may gave been justified for its insights into individual and collective vengeance in human conflict. However, his research and subsequent publication in a popular magazine would have been more ethically sound, as well as more scientifically interesting, had he practiced the basics of informed consent in ethnographic research

Obtaining informed consent that has been a prominent and well known recommendation in all research since the Nuremberg  Code of 1947 and the Helsinki Declaration following it in 1964 which states:

“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; ….should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.”

Informed consent as adapted by anthropologists and ratified in the code of ethics of the AAA only in 1998 outlines a dynamic process between researcher and researched whereby the above is discussed and negotiated and agreement is obtained generally without the use of informed consent forms that have been deemed inappropriate to the nature of anthropological research and the relationships it engenders.

There is also the issue of work with non-literate indigenous populations; however, their numbers have declined so precipitously that this is more myth than reality. Daniel Wemp is a literate, informed, and connected injured party, NOT an ethnographic object or factoid.

Avoiding the Use of Deception in Research and dealing with ‘Informants’

Together with informed consent as a guiding principle in research is the assumption that the ethical researcher discusses the nature and intent of the research with the person(s) studied in advance of the research, noting to the best of her/ his ability any risks or possible harm that might result.  A cost-benefit ratio or analysis may be used to recruit participants, or to explain the study from its methodological beginnings to analysis and dissemination.

In the past, disguising a researcher’s identity was not discouraged and was even advocated as a useful technique to get the desired data (for example, in a study of the sub-culture of white supremacists). Lying about the intent of research was justified for the ‘greater good,’  and lying could be rationalized in terms of the end justifying the means.

Today, as the world presents itself less in literal or figurative simple black and white terms than in the past, deception is not advised as tangled webs of human relations and ethical ambiguity can so easily result.

This appears to be the case for the Diamond-Wemp relationship where assumptions of trust and confidence between non-equals were apparently made on both sides.

Diamond’s ‘greater good’ message to the broader Western world about violence and revenge nonetheless lost track of the harm he was doing to his ‘subject’ and his circle of relations in the periphery.
Collaboration results in better ethics and better outcomes

Wemp was Diamond’s driver and administrative assistant for the Papua New Guinea affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund. He was not a stranger, research participant, or ‘informant’ engaged by Diamond.

They were not collaborators, although they might have been in a more ethically conscious approach to their relationship. Informed consent or reciprocal consent between them was apparently not discussed. “Collaborative Anthropology,” as well as collaborative journalism or wildlife biology, provides a better model for twenty-first century anthropology, journalism, and other scientific-publishing relationships between more powerful Western researchers and less powerful research participants (cf. Fluehr-Lobban, 2008).
Had there been collaboration, publication of the details of Daniel Wemp’s story might have proceeded through the use of pseudonyms or change in locale of the events described. Were disguising the names or places impossible—due to unique and known or knowable details—the story could have remained as it was delivered, in private and confidence. Moreover, it appears that individual and ‘tribal’ names were reported accurately, while details of the events were less accurate.

Having not collaborated, the result was that sensitive and potentially harmful was disclosed without the knowledge or consent of those most directly affected by their publication violating not only standards of informed consent but also the ‘do no harm’ gold standard in all professional ethics.

References:

Chagnon, Napoleon A. 1983. Yanomamö The Firece People. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, first edition, 1968.

Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. 2008. “Collaborative Anthropology as Twenty-First Century Anthropology,” Collaborative Anthropology, vol. 1 (1).

Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn, ed. 2003. Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for Ethically Conscious Research. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Books.

Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn.  2003a. “Darkness in El Dorado: Research Ethics Then and Now” in Ethics and the Profession  of Anthropology: Dialogue for Ethically Conscious Research. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Books.

Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. 1994. “Informed Consent in Anthropology: We are not Exempt”. Human Organization, vol. 53 (1):  1-10.

Chagnon, Napoleon A.  1983.    Yanomamö The Firece People. 3rd ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.; first edition, 1968.

Preface for El Dorado Task Force Papers, 2002. [ http://www.nku.edu/~humed1/darkness_in_el_dorado/documents/0535.htm ]

Tierney, Patrick.  2000. Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon. New York: W.W. Norton.

Tierney, Patrick. “The Fierce Anthropologist,” The New Yorker, October 9, 2000.

At this point, the main lines of debate regarding the Daniel Wemp affair are becoming clear, and while the ratio of heat to light is not exactly what I would hoped it would be, some interesting arguments have come up. First, and not so interesting, are questions about whether or not Rhonda Shearer, Jared Diamond, and Nancy Sullivan are good people or bad people, and whether they have the credentials that they (and others claim for them). This issue does not seem to actually touch on any of the substantive points in the case, but people love to keep on talking about it. Whatever. The second issue, and one worth discussing more, is whether Diamond’s decision not to anonymize Wemp was actually a violation of journalistic ethics, even if it was a violation of anthropological ethics (an interesting third issue is whether it was a violation of anthropological ethics, but let’s set that to the side for now). What I want to bring up now, on the other hand, is the wider issue which Nancy’s post was actually about.

As a political anthropologist, my reading of the Diamond piece was focused mainly on criticizing the way that Diamond described the southern highlands as being ‘stateless’, when in fact the fight he described took place in and was conditioned by the modern nation state of Papua New Guinea. Nancy’s piece, on the other hand, makes a point that might come from psychological anthropology — that our emotions are always culturally mediated. Diamond’s piece seems to be arguing that vengeance is a ‘natural’ emotion that all people at all times and in all places feel everywhere, but that the way it is satisfied or repressed varies depending on the cultural and social structures people find themselves in (which are in turn, I imagine he’d say, a result of their geography and a few other factors).

This is yet another example of the way in which Jared Diamond is ‘unanthropological’ — anthropologists would argue that human emotions are always shaped by culture, and that in different times and places you will get different patternings of emotions. Nancy (and other anthropologists) would insist that there is something culturally distinct about the way that needs for vengeance, reparation, satisafaction, or what have you, are met and formulated. Wemp and Diamond’s father-in-law had different experiences, understood them differently, and wanted different sorts of satisfaction. This does not mean that that cases are incommensurable, but rather that the concept of culture must be used in order to understand and compare them.

An insistence on the cultural mediation of emotion is a different thing from saying that Papua New Guineans are peaceful, do not fight, or so forth. It is perfectly possible to argue that warfare in Papua New Guinea was in the past (and might still be today) extremely gruesome, angry, violent, nasty, and also culturally mediated. In the United States we imagine human nature to be a cake, and ‘culture’ to be the thin layer of icing on top — the surface decoration which obscures a more fundamental similarity all human being share. I think this reflects as certain complex historical genealogy of protestant issues of human nature, as well as a consumerist culture in which no one bakes and there is very little connoisseurship of pastries and sweets. It is a theory of human nature from the people who invented the twinky. In their own image. Anyway. To quote Jonathan Marks, for anthropologists culture is not the icing, it is the eggs. People do not stop having culture when their experiences become visceral, or when their actions become violent.

One particularly astute commentor on Nancy’s post then asked how we might understand Daniel Wemp’s lawsuit as following a certain Melanesian logic. I haven’t talked to Wemp, but I must say that I was struck by the way that Kuwimb’s letter to the New Yorker read much like the letters and memos from landowners that fill my own research — written very specifically to Western standards of high bureaucratic formality but informed by a distinctive non-Western cultural logic. In Papua New Guinea, sometimes you take people to court as part of the process of dispute resolution, and I suspect that Kuwimb’s statment that “Mr Mandingo and Mr Wemp were hoping for an apology and a cash settlement” indicates not opprtunism on their part, but a different sense of what counts as closure (or at least the next step in the ongoing relationship) than we in the states might have. Of course in the states, as on Ipili man once told me, “law is how whitemen fight” and the court case now means that neither Diamond nor Wemp are likely to speak publically about a matter under litigation, at least if they take their lawyers’ advice. Its unfortunate, and it has a chilling effect on debate about the debate.

Uh, I have something to say about ‘restorative justice’ as well but I’ll leave it out for now because my head is now spinning with the idea of writing a piece about culinary structures underlying layer cake metaphors…

I was recently interviewed by a journalist working on a piece on The Daniel Wemp affair for an article in Science that will appear in the next couple of weeks, apparently, and that interview got me thinking about the ‘Is Jared Diamond An Anthropologist’ issue. This topic has come up on the blog from time to time, and after some reflection it seems to me that there are more and less interesting ways to answer this question.

One uninteresting question to me is the issue of institutional license. There is clearly a sliding scale of institutional license from paradigmatic anthropologists (Ph.D.s in anthropology in tenured positions of anthropology training more Ph.D.s in anthropology, conducting anthropological work and publishing in scholarly anthropological journals) to people who ‘think anthropologically’ but might not have a degree in anthropology. I suppose some people would take issue with Diamond’s representation of himself (or more accurately, the press’s representation of him) as an anthropologist because he lack the appropriate institutional licensing.

But what truly bothers me about the fact that Diamond’s ‘vengeance’ piece ran under the banner ‘annals of anthropology’ is not that Diamond doesn’t have Official Certification in our field. Rather, what bothers me is that this piece and the affair it provoked sends an off-brand message to our audience.

I think of anthropology as a discipline in the broadest sense of the word — a way of thinking about the world, a disposition about how to study it, a certain set of texts which provide a genealogy and another which provide a taken-for-granted reservoir of examples about how different societies have organized themselves. This discipline is clearly connected to academic anthropology, but at the same time it also attaches to a variety of other institutional sites that include, yes, even the History Channel.

I don’t mind when people without degrees do anthropology — the more the merrier, in fact. But I do mind when our consumers get the wrong message about our brand.

For instance, I think consumers learn from Diamond’s work that anthropologists study ancient/primitive people. As a result, I have had people ask me if I, as an anthropologist, get upset when non-anthropologists study Papua New Guinea (presumably because it is ‘primitive’). What’s more, I have had other anthropologists chastise me, a Melanesianist, for perpetuating this message. It puts me in a double bind.

In contrast, I want to send non-anthropologists the message that anthropologists study culture and the power if has in shaping human social life. Saying that anthropologists are only allowed to study ‘primitives’ is like saying linguists are only allowed to study French, biologists are only allowed to study mammals, and chemists are only allowed to study tungsten. It is to mistake the topic for an approach. The fact that Diamond prefers biological and geographical explanations almost to the exclusion of cultural explanations doesn’t help.

Consumers learn from the Wemp affair that anthropologists are unethical and lousy at getting the facts right. In contrast, I want to send them the message that anthropologists are responsible stewards of the information that people share with us, and that we get the facts right.

Consumers learn from the Wemp affair that anthropologists like Diamond can be unethical and inaccurate because they are powerful white people who study powerless brown people. This imagination of the anthropological field situation leads to the assumption that anthropologists either help powerless brown people or harm them, and each of these options can be negatively or positively morally charged: help them (positive: collaboration and empowerment, negative: colonial paternalism), hurt them (positive: exterminate/educate the brutes in the name of civilization, negative: colonial predation).

In contrast, I want people to recognize that there is no necessary connection between race and power in anthropological fieldwork: powerful brown people could be studying helpless white people, powerless brown people could be studying powerful white people, etc. (you can make a chart to get all the permutations if you want and I bet I can find examples of every combination in the ethnographic record, even if some are much rarer than others). Just as anthropologist study all sorts of people, the dynamics of that study in the field are also varied.

Of course, not everyone may agree with me in my sense of what the discipline of anthropology is and some may have thicker or thinner senses of how exhaustive our disciplinary commitments will be. There may be different standards for different sorts of scholarly and nonscholarly genres, and of course I’m sure there are some anthropologists who behave so badly that they have done a much more effective job of trashing our brand than Diamond. But this is just to say that good work is good work, bad work is bad work, and people will always quibble about the details.

Beyond issue of institutional licensing or theological disputes about what what, theoretically, counts as ‘anthropology’ what worries me about coverage of the Daniel Wemp affair is what our audience will think of us. When I got off the plane in Papua New Guinea later this month, will people be unwilling to talk to me because they’ve heard about the Jared Diamond affair? Will they spend their time explaining to me that they are not ‘primitive’? While scholarly and legal issues will be raised in the course of the Wemp affair, I think it also behooves anthropologists to think about the fallout this event will have for how we are perceived, and the sort of messages we want to send about ourselves to our audience. Using the idiom of brand, as I have somewhat jokingly used it here, helps us realize that an important part of this debate is associations and experiences that people have of us.