Reddit reviews Weaponizing Anthropology (Counterpunch)

I guess certain anthropologists want to 'give back' to the communities they study, and obviously that'll take place in a charity kind of way on a capitalist basis. That isn't very specific to anthropology though, and you can find tons of critiques of NGOs on the internet.

A more interesting critique of anthropology is how it arose from the colonial encounter in order to better rule colonial subjects, justify their inferiority, and so on. A decent Marxist book on this is J. Fabian's Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, but it has been acknowledged by liberal mainstream anthropologists for a long time.

The US military uses something called "Human Terrain Systems" in which they basically employ anthropologists to help them with imperialism. There's a fairly recent book on this titled Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in the Service of the Militarized State. From what I know it's written from a left-liberal perspective, but it obviously can be really easily linked to a scientific Marxist analysis of imperialism.

Anyway, there's much more to anthropology than it being a weapon of imperialism. Marx & Engels were extremely keen on anthropology and its discoveries' connection to their politics. They wrote loads about it, most famously in Engels's The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which is actually based on Marx's Ethnological Notebooks. Anthropology continued to play a pretty important role in Marxism, including Lenin encouraging ethnographic studies in order to better administer the USSR.

Nice guy. Notice how he mentions studying Marx! and urban ecology.

what he is doing is called military anthropology

> experts in the study of culture

Almost all of the people who are prominent in the field of anthropology have been funded for their entire careers by governmental and in most cases military agencies. Their credibility as an expert in anything besides how best to write a grant application and other similar bureaucratic functions is zilch, zip, nada, nothing, a great Big Void.

A recent poll suggests 90 percent of Native Americans are not offended by the nickname of Washington’s NFL franchise

I do not use the nickname. But I bet if I was a fan of the team I would use the nickname and people criticizing the nickname-users should go back to their third grade Sunday school lesson about the one who is without sin gets to throw the first stone.

Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State

Weaponizing Anthropology David H. Price

https://www.amazon.com/Weaponizing-Anthropology-Science-Militarized-Counterpunch/dp/1849350639

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/484365/pdf

Here is the desktop version of your link

I am only answering further because I looked at your artwork and it is nice, and it seems you did not pursue the anthropology thing further, which is a good thing. So there's the possibility you're not completely aligned with the US anthropology cult, with its known problems, prejudices and motivations.

I am glad you pointed out various Maya are still around, this is important to educate people on. After all, if they weren't around any more, who would the US have to finance the assassination of in central america through ongoing genocidal schemes?

Your follow up statement that "I'm led to believe that their view of the downfall would be as varied as the countries across which they are spread" does suggest that you have in fact talked to Maya people, and are aware that there was no "collapse" at all, and are aware there is no single Mayan people, and are aware that the ongoing changes in various Maya cultures in history, like the histories of most cultures, aren't particularly sudden or mysterious. These were the main issues with your previous post.

Maya peoples know their history, have maintained their oral and written records, and there is no huge mystery of their history.

There is only the american anthropologists and archaeologists who continue to claim that there is a mystery here or there, while they ignore actual history kept by non-white and non-american peoples. (I qualify this with 'white' because the non-white american anthropologists I know do not have this belief, nor do the non-american white anthropologists.) These are bizarre claims and are among the many reasons that american anthropologists are regarded with skepticism and ridicule by much of the rest of the world anthropological communities.

Worthwhile reading to decolonize the minds of those who have been through US or similarly minded anthro programs.

Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State

From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich

Darkness in El Dorado

Custer Died for Your Sins

Indians and Anthropologists

Read all these. Then proceed.