Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 03:53:54 -0600 (MDT)
From: Robert Johnson <johnsorl-AT-colorado.edu>
Subject: ANSWER TO BEA MEDICINE



	Recently in the Society for Applied Anthropology Newsletter
	Vol. 6, No.2 May 1995 Bea Medicine wrote:

	TO THE EDITOR

	   I dropped my membership and have not been to a SfAA meeting
	since 1990. So What, you say? I attended the meeting in Albuquerque.
	I was somewhat astounded at what I perceived to be a 
	mean-spirited, or perhaps, mere discourtesy at the Keynote address
	and the business meeting. I did not detect the former 
	spirited-but-interesting interaction and debates and discussion of
	motions. Perhaps it is a function of aging or life as a reservation
	recluse. But what happened to the camaraderie and good cheer of 
	earlier years?

							Bea Medicine


	I would suggest that the answer lies in a book by psychologist
	Dr. Marimba Ani titled YURUGU which states:

	European culture is constructed in such a way that successful
	survival within it discourages honesty and directness and
	encourages dishonesty and deceit--the ability to appear to be
	something other than what one is; to hide one"s 'self,' one's
	motives and intent."

	People who are duped by others and related to a projected image
	are considered fools or 'country bumkins.' Hypocrisy, in this 
	way, becomes not a negative personality trait, not immoral or
	abnormal behavior, but it is both expected and cultivated.
			--------------------------------

	Bea, I would suggest that what Marimba Ani says concerning
	individuals and "culture" is also true of organizations. I know
	this is the truth concerning the Society for Applied Anthropology.
	Knowing you to be the last person that they could dupe, those
	who are "handling" matters for Applied Anthropology today just chose
	to ignore you or the possible concerns that you could raise.
	I found your observations to be standard operating procedure in
	many forums especially those concerning "ethics" and all those
	who presented projects backed by the World Bank, "development"
	schemes, or "do-gooder" projects "for" indigenous peoples.

	The height of hypocrisy was the main awards ceremony in which
	the individual who wrote the "ethics" statement for the World
	Bank was "honored."

	Applied Anthropology today is going "big business." It is going
	to lend its "theory" and methodology to the further transformation
	of this planet to a New World Order of resource and human 
	exploitation. It will lend itself to the apologetics and
	"transformations" of "process" and "change" brought about by
	"new Technologies" and "infrastructures" and "understandings."
	AS a methodology it will provide the analytic tools to effect
	a "smother" transition to the perceived "inevitabilities" of the
	future while providing the facades of "political-correctness"
	that will dupe the "white liberals," their "of color"
	collaborators, and their "bright young" prodigies. And God help
	you if you dare question how reality works out, the fawning over
	the genocidal murderers for "access," the "case study" industries,
	the "intellectual property rights" facades, or those hypocrites
	who are further "institutionalizing" the discipline to receive their
	hundredth award, "peer" recognition, and hand wringing hopes that
	if they shut their eyes real hard, push their "inspirational" agendas,
	and further ignore the physical and cultural genocides they've learned
	to "work" among that somehow everythings going to be "alright."
	Besides, those of us in anthropology will be "employed" in the
	"shrinking" human "resources" markets of the "future."
	
	I think what you experienced is the developing "bums rush" that
	The Society for Applied Anthropology is giving those of past
	association as well as those of us who believe in a Liberation
	Anthropology that they are unable to silence and bullshit.

	As I echoed the words of the Zapatista freedom fighters for the peoples
	of humankind in answer to the blind "facilitators" and deliberate
	"business-persons" of the anthropology of the New World Order, NAFTA,
	GATT et al:

	WE [the people of humankind] are not anthropological objects,
	nor do we live in [the eco-tourist zoos] of Jurassic Park.

							Robert Johnson
							Liberation
							Anthropology





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