The 'Relevance' of Anthropology to Colonialism and Imperialism

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The 'Relevance' of Anthropology to Colonialism and Imperialism

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The ’Relevance’ ofAnthropology to Colonialismand Imperialism

JACK STAUDER

JACK STAUDER teaches anthropology at Northeastern University in Boston. Thisarticle, which is a shortened version of two longer ones, is reproduced, with permission,from Radical Science Journal.

In the aftermath of a large student rebellion at Harvard in thespring of 1969, a graduate student in anthropology raised acriticism of our field which I have often heard:

Social anthropology - traditionally a field concerned with explaining andunderstanding small-scale cultures and societies, especially in the non-Westernworld - is a field that could make relevant contributions to our understand-

ing of major events and problems of the world: wars of liberation, the effectsand causes of racism, economic exploitation, colonialism, imperialism ....[However Departments] ensure that anthropology will remain isolated fromand irrelevant to social and political problem. 1

Many students in anthropology want an anthropology that willprovide them with an understanding of ’major events and problemsof the world’. Therefore they demand ’relevance’, meaning ananthropology relevant to their felt needs. I sympathise with thisdesire and share it. But the basic issues underlying the complaintsin the quoted passage cannot be reached by posing the problem interms of relevance. By and large, anthropology has always been’relevant’. The question to ask is, relevant to whom and for what?

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The early development o f British anthropologyThe institutional origins and early growth of British anthropologyin the nineteenth-century were closely linked to an interest in thepossible practical value of anthropology as an applied science.Members of the early anthropological societies in Britain wereespecially concerned with questions of race and slavery, greatissues which agitated British society throughout the first two-thirds of the century. Anthropological journals of the time werefilled with articles making recommendations on these questions.Although it was scarcely to be left to scholars to decide a ques-tion involving profits and power relations, many early anthropo-logists nevertheless hoped that their resources might be of someutility to the interests involved in the expansion of Europeanpower around the globe.

The slavery issue died down in the 1870s, as slaves in the Amer-icas became poorly paid ’free’ plantation labour, and as the slavetrade was replaced by other, more ’legitimate’ forms of exploitingAfrica. But the last two decades of the nineteenth century wit-nessed the acceleration and culmination of British imperialistexpansion, particularly in the ’scramble’ for Africa in whichBritain succeeded in asserting against other European powers herclaims to rule or ’protect’ diverse territories with large nativepopulations. During the same period, anthropology was attainingacademic respectability in Britain (in the form of universitychairs), and some of its promoters hoped to ally the new scienceof man not with controversial popular causes, as had been the case .

in the pro- and anti-slavery debates earlier in the century, but withthe science of good government, specifically the administrationof colonial peoples.A survey of the 27 Presidential Addresses to the Royal Anthro-

pological Institute from 1893 to 1919 shows that in over half thePresident raised claims regarding the practical uses to whichanthropology could be put in serving the Empire. Frequently thecomplaint was made that, despite anthropology’s potential prac-tical value, neither government or business seemed interested, andlittle in the way of funds or official recognition seemed forth-coming.

These complaints were largely unheeded in the following years:in 1910 British anthropologists were refused even a grant of £500from the government to set up an ’Imperial Bureau of Anthropolo-gy’ within the Royal Anthropological Institute.2

Thus, around the turn of the century in Britain, anthropology



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found itself in a peculiar position. The British Empire was at itszenith, rapidly extending its effective rule over millions of newsubjects. The period was marked by Victorian confidence in theapplication of science to achieve progress and profits. Britishanthropologists were publicly promoting their new science as apotentially valuable tool to be used in the Imperial mission, toaid government and commerce and the advance of ’civilisation’.Anthropologists were desperately courting government for privaterecognition, and especially financial support for anthropology inits potential uses as they saw them. But government and wealthybenefactors were spuming these advances and seemed little inter-ested.

This discrepancy between anthropologists’ desire to serve Bri-tish imperialism and the lack of support for anthropology by theBritish ruling class is a phenomenon probably explained less bythe shortsightedness of the ruling classes than by the short-comingsof anthropology at the time. For despite the assertions of anthro-pologists, the actual state of British anthropology at the turn ofthe century was such that in practice it was producing mostly workof little or no possible use to colonial administrators, missionariesand traders. In the years before World War I anthropology in Bri-tain was dominated by controversies between diffusionists andevolutionists3 who held in common, however, an historical andoften speculative approach that was primarily concerned withreconstructing the past of mankind. Few professionally trainedanthropologists had seen Africa or other colonised areas first-hand,and anthropologists at home were dependent for their data mainlyon the reports of untrained observers engaged directly in thecolonising process. It is little wonder then that the pictureanthropology gave of Africa up to the First World War wasvery unreal.

It has been argued that it was the very distortions and lack oftruth in nineteenth century anthropology which made it usefulduring the early periods of imperial enterprise. But if nineteenthcentury ethnology4 was eminently suitable as an intellectual just-ification for colonial expansion, it was not well suited at all to thesucceeding era of colonial consolidation and exploitation. Populationsof Africans, once pacified, needed to be administered. Ideas aboutAfrican culture and society which were grossly unreal or distortedwere no help in this second stage of colonialism; in fact, lack ofproper understanding of Africans might well stand in the way ofachievement of British colonial goals: to rule with a minimum of



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trouble and cost and a maximum of stability and profit.A few astute colonial administrators around the turn of the

century realised that they needed better and more systematicinformation about the people they were ruling. These administra-tors took the initiative in demanding that anthropology be taughtto colonial officers and others working in parts of the Empire, andspecial anthropology courses were subsequently set up at Oxfordand Cambridge for officers on leave and cadets training for thecolonial service.

Sometimes administrators who showed an interest in anthro- <

pology were assigned to investigations involving the collection ofethnographic materials. Also in a very few cases colonial govern-ments had obtained the services of professional anthropologiststo provide the colonial governmeht with knowledge of the socialorganisation and customs of particular peoples as a backgroundfor administration 5 This handful of persons had begun to write afew relatively systematic and reliable accounts of African culturesby the 1920s.On at least a descriptive level, some of these early ethnographies

achieved their design of providing the kind of information abouta subject people’s culture and society that could be of some useto administration and missionary work.

But while often exhuastively descriptive, their books lackedexplanatory power: when necessary they resorted to diffusionistor evolutionary hypotheses to explain particular customs; foralthough these ethnographers were primarily interested in thepresent life of the peoples they observed, they lacked a theoreticalframework appropriate for their purpose.

There was, by the 1910s and 1920s a growing felt need inBritish colonial Africa for a ’newer anthropology’ that would be .adaptable to the practical requirements of British imperialism.And, as I have indicated, British anthropologists had constantlyaspired to serve the Empire and by so doing to serve what they ,saw as the interests of anthropologists by obtaining funds and .

recognition. I have suggested that the major obstacle to this mutu-ally beneficial alliance between colonialism and anthropology layin the current state of anthropological theory and practice, or lackof it. The ’older’ anthropology, ethnology, diffusionism andevolutionionism stood in the way of progress. The time was ripefor revolution.

The conscious element in the revolution has rightly been iden-tified with the names of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown. But it



33

was certainly Radcliffe-Brown who was the more conscious ofwhat he was doing. In the same year (1922) that their pioneeringfunctionalist6 studies, Argonauts of the Western Pacific and TheAndaman Islanders, were published, Radcliffe-Brown was teachingin South Africa in the new post of Professor of Social Anthropolo-gy at the University of Capetown. In Vol. 1, No. 3 of the SouthAfrican journal Bantu Studies of that year appeared an article byRadcliffe-Brown entitled ’Some Problems of Bantu Sociology’. Inhis opening paragraph the author indicated that to his mind thekey problem for ’Bantu sociology’ was in fact the problem ofcolonialism:

, 3

In Africa, more perhaps than in any other part of the world, social anthro-pology is a subject not of merely scientific or academic interest, but ofimmense practical importance. The one great problem on which the futurewelfare of South Africa depends is that of finding some social and politicalsystem in which the natives and the whites may live together without con-flict ; and the successful solution of that problem would certainly seem to .

require thorough knowledge of the native civilisation between which andour own we need to establish some sort of harmonious relation.7

Radcliffe-Brown adds that ’in the establishment of the departmentof social anthropology in the University of Capetown this practi-cal importance of the subject has been kept constantly in view,and the teaching and research are being organised on this basis’.8

In his article Radcliffe-Brown goes on to make several other

points: the importance of the study of kinship for understandingAfrican society; the importance of fieldwork; and the superiorityof the functionalist approach over an historical or ethnologicalapproach. He explains that

In dealing with the facts of culture or civilisation amongst primitive peopleswho have no historical records there are two methods of explanation thatwe may adopt. The first may be called the ethnological method; it attempts,by the co-ordinated study of physical characters, language and the variouselements of culture, and with the help of such archaeological knowledge asis available, to reconstruct hypothetically the past history of a people in itsmain outlines. Such problems are very interesting ... But interesting as it is,and important as its results may sometimes be, this ethnological methoddoes not often provide, and does not seem likely to provide, results that willbe of any assistance to the administrator or the educator in the solution of

the practical problems with which he is faced.9

An alternative method of dealing with culture Radcliffe-Browncalls the ’sociological’ i.e. the structural-functionalist:



34

The aim of this method is not to reconstruct the history of a people but tointerpret their institutions in the light of general laws of sociology andpsychology. If, for example, we investigate by this method the custom of[lobola (bridewealth)] , we seek to determine the function of that custom,what essential or important relations it has with other institutions, what partit really plays in the economic, moral and religious life of the tribe, and towhat important needs of the social organism it is related. Such an investiga-tion thoroughly carried out would enable the anthropologist to foretell withsome degree of certainty what would be the general effects on the life of atribe of an attempt to abolish the custom in question. 1 0

In ’Some Problems of Bantu Sociology’ Radcliffe-Brown cameto the conclusion that ’the study of such problems, the sociologi-cal and psychological problems of native life, is certainly far morelikely to lead to results of practical value to South Africa thanthe study of ethnological problems’.I 1 A year later, in 1923,

. Radcliffe-Brown returned to this argument in an address entitled’The Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology’, presented

. to the South African Association for the Advancement of Science(1923). In this address he opens a full-scale attack on all the dif-ferent approaches to culture current at the time: the psychological

, approach, the evolutionist approach, the ethnological or diffu-sionist approach. To demolish the older kind of anthropology tomake way for the newer, sociological and functionalist anthropolo-gy can best serve the interests of colonialism:

Now while ethnology with its strictly historical method can only tell us thatcertain things have happened, or have probably or possibly happened, social _

anthropology with its inductive generalisations can tell us how and whythings happen, i.e. according to what laws.1 2

Radcliffe-Brown advances his faith that ultimately knowledge ofsuch laws of social behaviour will give men control over socialforces and ’enable us to attain to practical results of the verygreatest importance.’1 3 -

Stability and unity in society were of course the conditionswhich corresponded to the fundamental theoretical concepts onwhich Radcliffe-Brownian sociology was to be based: namely theconcepts of integration, equilibrium and solidarity. These weremore than abstract concepts in the context of South Africansociety, where a subject but increasingly rebellious African popu-lation outnumbered the white settlers trying to dominate andexploit them.

Radcliffe-Brown continues in relation to the racial confronta-tion in South Africa:



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Now I think this is where social anthropology can be of immense and almostimmediate service. The study of the beliefs and customs of the nativepeoples, with the aim not of merely reconstructing their history but ofdiscovering their meaning, their function, that is, the place they occupy inthe mental, moral and social life, can afford great help to the missionary orthe public servant who is engaged in dealing with the practical problems ofthe adjustment of the native civilisation to the new conditions that haveresulted from our occupation of the country....1 4

In fact much if not most British social anthropology in Africaduring the 1930s and 1940s was to be focussed on political andlegal institutions. Such an emphasis must be seen in the light of ’;

the strategy adopted by British colonialism to implement and :

maintain social control over the millions of people under itsgovernment in Africa. This strategy, which came to be known as’Indirect Rule’, avoided where possible the use of direct admini-stration and direct coercion - though, of course, military forcewas always held in reserve. Given a necessity to economise man-power and finances in Africa, British colonial governments pre- .

ferred to retain and utilise traditional political institutions. These -were integrated into the colonial administration, and traditional >

political authorities were maintained as paid agents of colonial -

rule. But if African political institutions were to be adapted andused by colonial government, it was imperative to understand whatthey were and how they worked; to this end, anthropology was :

often seen as critically necessary. As E.W. Smith noted, ’theextension of Indirect Rule has been preceded by, and based uponanthropological research’.1 5 S

In the context of Indirect Rule, functionalist social anthropo-logy seemed obviously superior to the older, ethnological approachfor the ’newer’ social anthropology not only concentrated on .

identifying and describing the key social and political institutionsof a subject people, but it also attempted to analyse how these .

institutions worked. Those concerned with problems of administra-tion and knowledgeable about anthropology came to accept thevalidity of Radcliffe-Brown’s claims on behalf of the practicalsuperiority of the functionalist method. 1 6

Traditional African societies were usually seen by the func- .

tionalists, as well as by the colonial governments, as being ’heal- ;

thy’ societies, well-balanced, well-integrated and maintaining an -<

enviable degree of social control over their members. The British .strategy of Indirect Rule had aimed to incorporate and preserve ;

these integrated and stable units within an integrated and stable -



36

Empire. This intention, however, was progressively being under-mined by two other contradictory features of British imperialism:by the racist assumption that European civilisation was culturallysuperior to African civilisation, and destined to replace it; and,more importantly in the long run, by the European drive to ex-ploit Africa economically and the radical socio-economic trans-formation this entailed in the lives of African people.

Astute colonialists, including foresighted anthropologists likeRadcliffe-Brown, regarded the symptoms of social change withalarm. They saw the old tribal systems disintegrating and askedhow they could arrest and control the forces which had beenunleashed. Radcliffe-Brown definitely considered it the missionof anthropology to provide colonial agencies with the necessaryknowledge about the processes of social integration and change.The same concern, both theoretical and practical, can be seen inthe work of other British functionalist anthropologists in Africain the 1920s through the 1950s. Such concern might reflect thehopes, on the part of some anthropologists, that by protectingthe social fabric from disruption they could spare the peoples theystudied from some of the worst consequences of colonialism. Butsuch conservatism can also be seen as ultimately protective ofcolonial rule itself, for the social health of native society waslinked in the colonial mind with the political health of the BritishEmpire.

For example, Radcliffe-Brown offers a clue as to the ultimatesource of anxiety underlying his recommendations:One can feel quite certain that more knowledge of the nature of Indianculture and proper grasp of the laws of social integration would have preven-ted our long experiment with India from reaching its present unsatisfactory ,

positidn. 1 7

In India at that time an organised movement for national indepen-dence had emerged as a definite threat to British rule. In Africaless organised rebellions against colonialism had also occurred, andwould soon develop into movements for national liberation. Theseanti-colonial struggles were an underlying source of worry tocolonialists and anthropologists like Radcliffe-Brown who saw inthem the final outcome of the tendencies they regarded as ’socialdisintegration’. The ultimate concern of these far-sighted men, itcould be suggested, was to arrest the process of disintegration oftraditional societies, not for the sake of the people living in thembut in order to arrest the incipient process of disintegration of



37

the British Empire itself.In retrospect we see of course that Radcliffe-Brown’s ambitions

for anthropology were unrealistic. Neither social science nor en-lightened administration could contain the forces, set in motionby colonialism, which would eventually undermine and overthrowthe British Empire. But these developments, and the rapidity withwhich they would take place, were not clearly foreseen in the1920s and 1930s, and Radcliffe-Brown’s optimism about thepotential applicability of a revolutionised sociology and function-alist anthropology carried the opinions of those who counted. Formany decades anthropologists had been claiming that they couldbe of practical service to government and business. But as I have

pointed out, before the 1920s these claims were mainly ignoredby the interests on whom they were pressed. During the late 1920sand into the 1930s, however, this situation changed fairly rapidly,and the alliance long anticipated by anthropologists was established.British anthropology was suddenly and increasingly successful ingaining recognition and substantial funding from private andgovernmental sources.

For 1925 the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institutereported a momentous breakthrough. For the first time in thehistory of the association it had received large donations fromoutside sources: £1,000 from the Carnegie Trust and S 17,550from the Rockefeller Trust. In 1931 the Rockefeller Foundationmade a further grant of S 10,500 to the Institute. These grantswere small in terms of Rockefeller disbursements but they wereunprecedentedly large sums in terms of the Institute’s normalbudget, which had always been less than 83,000 a year before1925, the bulk of this income coming from memberships andsubscriptions to the Journal.l 8

But a more important development for the future of anthro-pology in Africa occurred in 1926 with the foundation in Londonof the International African Institute. The Institute’s aims wereto bring about ’a closer association of scientific knowledge andresearch with practical affairs’.1 9 The Institute was establishedwith contributions and support from all the colonial governmentsin Africa as well as from the British and French home govern-ments, and from various missionary bodies.2 On the governingboard of the Institute sat a mixture of former colonial administra-tors, heads of missionary associations, and eminent academicsspecialising in African studies. The first head of the Institute wasLord Lugard, famous not only as a soldier for his role in the



38

’pacification’ of many parts of Africa but notable also as an ,

administrator and as the architect of the theory of ’indirect Rule’practised in British Africa.

The International African Institute was to play a leading rolein social science research in British Africa. From the 1930s to the

present it has financed the publishing of many of the best ethno-graphies about African peoples, and its journal Africa has carriedmany of the most important anthropological articles about Africa.Many of these books and articles were closely related to colonialproblems and ’practical affairs’.

That the Institute was able to succeed in playing such a vitalrole stimulating and shaping anthropological research in Africawas due in no small part to the grant of $250,000 it received in1931 from the Rockefeller Foundation. Thus the bulk of profes-sional anthropological research in British Africa in the late 1920sand the 1930s was dependent on Rockefeller money in one wayor another-money which of course partially derived from theprofits of the growing Rockefeller financial and mineral holdingsin Africa.

Whether or not the trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation hadever heard of Radcliffe-Brown, the ’newer’ anthropology he waschampioning, with its emphasis on scientific applicability, stoodto thrive on the disbursement of Rockefeller grants.

’Indirect Rule’and.the Functions of FunctionalismIn any case, it was in the late 1920s and early 1930s that anthro-

_

pology in the British Empire began receiving in substantial sumsthe money which allowed the profession to be greatly expanded,and allowed anthropologists to pursue foreign field work as amatter of course. Apparently anthropology had finally convincedcolonial governments and capitalist benefactors of its potentialpractical uses to them. The struggle for acceptance which Britishanthropology had waged for more than half a century was succes-sful.

However the kind of anthropology which had succeeded wasfunctionalist social anthropology. Ethnology, the historicalapproach, inquiries into the origins of culture: this kind of anthro-pology did not succeed, in fact it hardly survived in Britain. Re-search and writing was increasingly, and finally overwhelmingly,social anthropological and functionalist in character. Other anth-ropological approaches were less and less funded, published orpractised. A new orthodoxy had been established and was to



39

dominate British anthropology until at least the end of the BritishEmpire in the 1950s and 1960s.

Whatever the theoretical advantages of the new functionalistapproach, and whatever the methodological abuses of the histori-cal approaches at the time, one must still ask why functionalismtriumphed so rapidly and completely in Britain and her colonieswhereas it made slower and only partial inroads into the anthro-pological currents of other nations such as the United States,France, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc; and no inroads into theanthropology of Germany and Eastern Europe. No doubt manyfactors can be adduced, but I would argue that this situation maybe at least partly explained in terms of the differing colonialcommitments and colonial systems of the various powers - or theabsence of colonies in the case of Germany (after World War I)and Eastern European countries. To verify this hypothesis wouldof course require an analysis of the anthropology in other coun-tries, a task which cannot be attempted here. But a crude correla-lion apparently exists between the successful spread of functionalistsocial anthropology in several countries and the degree of colonialcommitment of each of these countries. In this respect, the British

Empire was exceptional. It was far larger than other colonialempires both in terms of the absolute population of non-whitesbeing ruled as well as in terms of the ratio of non-white subjectsto the population of the mother country.

In sub-Saharan Africa, British colonies included a larger popu-lation than the French, Belgian and Portuguese colonies combined.It was in these African colonies that manpower shortages and thecosts involved in administration were especially serious. LordLugard and other British colonial officials of the time were expli-cit about this problem, as well as about its importance in arguingfor a system of ’Indirect Rule’. The British attempted a system ofadapting and utilising indigenous institutions which made itespecially important for administrators and others in the Africancolonies to understand native institutions - hence the supremeusefulness to them of a social science which attempted to describeand explain the systematic functioning of these institutions.What I am suggesting, tentatively, is that the critical factor in

the British adoption of a thorough-going system of Indirect Rulein Africa is to be found in the magnitude of the British imperialistmission there and elsewhere. And I am also suggesting, again verytentatively, that the critical factor in the thorough adoption inBritain of the functionalist approach in anthropology was related



40

to the same colonial situation: the need to preserve, understandand utilise native institutions in controlling subject populationsin Africa. At the very least I think it is possible to demonstratethat the demands for a ’practical’ anthropology - an anthropologyuseful to British imperialism - did play an important role in thedetermination of the theoretical direction British anthropology .

was to follow.While recognising that more research is needed in these areas, I

believe my interpretation is oriented in the right direction: towardsan interpretation of the development of anthropology in terms ofthe material situation in which it was practised. Accounts byEvans-Pritchard and others of the development of anthropologicalthought in Britain have tended to be exclusively idealist in theirapproach: that is they try to explain ideas in terms only of ideas.In these accounLS, the synchronic functionalist 1 approach triumphedsimply because it was theoretically superior to other approaches.Such interpretations avoid the question, superior for what purpose?Or, superior in what situation? In terms of the colonial situationan alternative explanation is possible to account for the success ofthe synchronic functionalist approach in the anthropology of theBritish Empire. In this explanation functionalist social anthropolo-gy can be seen as itself functionally adaptive to the requirementsof British imperialism. Therefore this approach was recognisedand supported by the dominant institutions participating in theimperialist enterprise and was thereby greatly aided in becomingthe dominant theoretical ideology of British anthropology.

What I have also indicated is the necessity for reassessing the -

view of British functionalism current among many anthropologistsand anthropology students. This view, simply put, seems to bethat because a narrowly synchronic functionalist approach wasinadequate to explain social change, therefore functionalism isand was irrelevant to social problems or problems of the ’real’world such as imperialism. In fact, I am suggesting, functionalismwas very relevant to colonialism and the social problems of itsday. Such relevance is seen in the attention almost all the notedBritish functionalists paid to questions of applied anthropology;

-

almost all wrote more than one article on the subject? 2 And of .

course the sources of support for British anthropologists, theirchoice of problems and their activities in the field and elsewherein co-operation with colonial governments, were all politicallyrelevant at the time, whether the anthropologists wished torecognise this or not.

Let us take an example, the origins of a modern anthropological



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classic: E.E. Evans-Pritchard’s research among the Nuer. This re-search, conducted almost 40 years ago, resulted in The Nuer, apioneering study employing structural-functional analysis and anequilibrium model to analyse the Nuer lineage system, theirecology and political behaviour. Students who read The Nuerusually find it an interesting or even a fascinating study butgenerally do not find that it contributes to their ’understandingof major events and problems of the world’. In this sense The Nuerappears to be irrelevant anthropology. In fact, in its historicalcontext, Evans-Pritchard’s research did have a relevance andremains revealing today if we look at its genesis. In the first lineof his preface to The Nuer, Evans-Pritchard states: ’My study ofthe Nuer was undertaken at the request of, and mainly financedby, the Government of the Anglo-Eyptian Sudan, which alsocontributed generously towards the publication of its result’. TheNuer were clearly not selected for study out of pure scientificcuriousity. What was the urgency, the necessity of a study of theNuer?

Later in the book Evans-Pritchard supplies us with the infor-mation needed:

The truculence and aloofness displayed by the Nuer is conformable to theirculture, their social organisation and their character. The self-sufficiency andsimplicity of their culture and the fixation of their interests on their herdsexplain why they neither wanted nor were willing to accept Europeaninnovations and why they rejected peace from which they had everything tolose ... Had more been known about them a different policy might havebeen instituted earlier and with less prejudice.

In 1920 large-scale military operations, including bombing and machme-gunning of camps, were conducted against the Eastern Jikany and causedmuch loss of life and destruction of property. There were further patrolsfrom time to time, but the Nuer remainded unsubdued. in 1927 the Nuongtribe killed their District Commissioner while at the same time the Lou

openly defied the Government and the Gaawar attacked Duk Faiyuil PolicePost. From 1928 to 1930 prolonged operations were conducted against thewhole of the disturbed area and marked the end of serious fighting betweenthe Nuer and the Government.2 3

Evans-Pritchard recounts these personal hardships in his introduc-tion to apologise for his work being only ’contribution to theethnology of a particular area rather than as a detailed sociologicalstudy’.2 4 Other than to explain his misfortune in his book, he isnot interested in how Nuer were reacting to colonial aggression,and to himself as a perceived agent of colonialism. And except

o



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for the incidental passage quoted above, he does not describe theBritish war against the Nuer, much less the nature of British colo-nial policy and administration in the Sudan. Studying the colonialgovernment was not a government anthropologist’s job.

The Nuer is therefore mostly irrelevant to our understanding ofcolonialism, or of how a people might resist it or how they failand are conquered. But was Evans-Pritchard’s work irrelevant tocolonialism? That the colonial government should support hiswork and direct his enquiries indicates that they thought it wasnot irrelevant for their purposes. Exactly how the intelligenceEvans-Pritchard gathered was applied by administrators we donot know since this was not a fit subject for study; but the under-standing which had been acquired of the Nuer political system,their values, their ecology, etc., would have a definite usefulness.Bombs, machine-guns and mercenaries were wasted trouble and

.

expense if the Nuer could be dominated and administered ’peace-fully’ (with force in reserve). ’Peaceful’ domination must rely onmanipulation; and manipulation rests on knowledge.

Evans-Pritchard’s work was therefore not ’isolated from andirrelevant to social and political problems’ - in fact it originatedin the need of British imperialism for information to deal with itsproblems.

Of course most anthropologists in the colonial era were notdirectly employed by governments, nor did most arrive to doresearch in the immediate wake of war or rebellion. Neverthelessthe position of most anthropologists in colonial territories wasessentially the same. They were expected to gather informationand provide insights which would aid colonial governments inadministering colonial peoples; most ethnographers of the periodprefaced their books with the wish that their work might provehelpful to the administrator.

The funding of anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s has al-ready been described. After World War II funding was increasinglychanneled through the various colonial governments and thevarious regional social science institutes in Africa. That Africa’sfirst social science institute should be established in NorthernRhodesia, in the general vicinity of the largest Western investmentsin Africa (South Africa, the Rhodesias, Katanga) is probably notcoincidental. A full account of the development of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute, and of the extent to which the intentionsof its founders and patrons influenced its research, is a study thatremains to be done. But recently some of the more notable theo-



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retical and practical work that has come out of the Institute hascome under the sharp attack of an African anthropologist for itspro-colonialist, pro-employer bias.2 5Many colonial anthropologists probably thought of themselves

doing work that was primarily ’scholarly’ rather than ’practical’,but the distinction was not cut and dried in terms of ’relevance’to colonial administrators. As Lucy Mair says,... We should not put an account of the social structure of an African

people in a separate category as a ’theoretical’ study because it was notfocussed on some problem of special concern to the government of the day;although of course we should agree that many of the generalisations whichsuch accounts make possible are of more interest to the theorist of societythan to the practitioner of government. We recognise, too, that some studiesbear more closely on problems of policy than others, and priority lists weredrawn up with these in mind. Studies concerned with the changes currentlytaking place in African society have a prominent place among these.2 6

Anthropology in British colonial Africa - and, I would submit,in other areas under colonial domination as well - was basicallyvery ’relevant’ to the colonial governments and to the imperialistsystems of which they were part. Anthropologists helped gatherthe intelligence about native people which allowed these peopleto be efficiently ruled and exploited in the colonial interest - thatis, in the interests of the white settlers, the colonial administra-tors, the government in the metropolitan country, and the Westerncapitalist enterprises in Africa. Most anthropologists accepted asgiven the imperialist framework and its concommitant myths -then, as always, the reality of violent domination and exploitationwas cloaked by rhetoric and myth assuming a harmony of interestbetween ruler and ruled, exploiter and exploited.

Naturally many anthropologists developed sympathies for thepeople they lived with and studied. Some of them, as KathleenGough Aberle has noted, took the role of ’white liberal reformers’and tried to intercede to protect the people they studied ’againstthe worst forms of imperialist exploitation’.2 7 Such attempts,however, did not basically challenge the imperialist system. Asthis system was predicated on domination and exploitation, itwas basically impossible for anthropology and anthropologiststo serve the interests of the people they studied by suggestingreforms. What anthropologists may have come to think and sayabout colonial policies and practices was of little moment com-pared to the services they rendered colonial interests by providingthem with intelligence relevant to these interests’ continuing



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domination and exploitation of the peoples studied. In short,anthropologists were part of the colonial system; few if any ofthem really opposed this system with the perspective of over-throwing it. In fact, probably most anthropologists, consciouslyor unconsciously, accepted unquestioned their roles and concom-

-

mitant privileges in the colonial system, and their work was gener-ally confined and directed by it.2 8 8

The relevance of contemporary anthropology: the AmericanexperienceBut what of anthropology today? What of its relevance to ’majorevents and problems of the world’? Direct colonial administrationof most tropical countries has been abandoned after several warsand numerous rebellions and threats of mass unrest: the colonial

powers were forced to accept a policy of strategic retreat. Didthis mean the end of imperialism and of anthropologists’ serviceto it? I would argue the contrary, that imperialism as a force inthe world is stronger than ever, that neo-colonialism has replacedthe older forms of colonialism, and that the ’relevance’ of anthro-pology remains essentially the same as I have described it underthe old colonialism. The main change has been that the UnitedStates has now become the leading imperialist power in the world.What relevance does anthropology have to US imperialism -

specifically to US government and business operations abroadand at home? It is no secret that private and government agenciesemploy, either regularly or on a contract basis, a not inconsidera-

-

ble number of anthropologists to do work directly related tofurthering the interests of US government and business. TheAgency for International Development (AID), The Central Intel-ligence Agency (CIA), the Defence Department’s Advance Re-search Projects Agency (ARPA), the Centre for Research in

’

Social Systems (CRESS) - formerly the Special OperationsResearch Organisation (SORO), the Human Relations ResearchOffice (HumRRO) and their various projects all maintain stablesof social scientists including anthropologists. So do other govern-ment agencies and numerous private research corporations like .

the Atlantic Research Corporation, A.D. Little, Human ScienceResearch, Simulmatics Inc., etc., which specialise in classifiedcontract work for the government. Large industrial corporationsalso occasionally employ anthropologists.What work do these anthropologists do? We may assume that

they are employed to do work ’relevant’ to the needs of their



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employers. Much of this work is kept classified: only portionswhich do not compromise the interests of the sponsor may beallowed to be published for scholarly audiences. What we learnabout this work is usually accidental or indirect. For example,titles of classified projects sometimes appear in the CongressionalRecord, e.g. for ARPA; ’Rural Value Systems, Republic of Viet-nam’, by Human Sciences Research; ’Thai-Malay Village Study(Project Agile)’, by M.L. Thomas, Northern Illinois University;etc. Or, more vaguely, we note a great increase of research inter-est in poverty-stricken and minority group areas of Thailand sincethe beginning of guerilla activity there.

However, here I am not interested in the issue of classifiedresearch per se. Rather, I am trying to make the point that anthro-pology clearly does have a relevance to ’major events and pro-blems of the world’ we live in. For I assume that the US govern-ment and US corporations are paying for, and sequestering,knowledge that is relevant to their interests.

This situation was probably brought home for the first time tomost anthropologists by the revelations concerning ProjectCamelot.2 9 For this project many social scientists includinganthropologists were approached to undertake studies to makeit possible to predict and influence politically significant aspects of socialchange in the developing nations of the world ... The US Army has animportant mission in the positive and constructive aspects of nation-buildingin less developed countries as well as a responsibility to assist friendlygovernments dealing with active insurgency problems.3 0

.

In the words of two commentators:

The Camelot project is but one of the more blatant large scale counterinsur-gency research efforts that the behavioural sciences have shown little

hesitancy to undertake, especially if the money is plentiful and if ’basicresearch’ can somehow be integrated into the design.

Camelot was still-born, but counterinsurgency is alive and healthy inthe social sciences.31 1

The American Anthropological Association reported to its mem-bers that ’The Fellows should recognise that although Camelot isdead under that name, in a sense it has only gone underground.Similar types of projects have been conducted and are beingplanned under different names and through other kinds ofagencies’.3 2

Most anthropologists, however, have no direct connectionswith the Department of Defence or the other agencies I have



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mentioned. Most anthropologists receive their funds for researchfrom non-Defence agencies like the National Institute for MentalHealth (NIHM), the National Science Foundation (NSF), theSmithsonian Institute, and the Ford Foundation. They apparentlychoose their own subjects of research, and their research is notclassified. What is the relevance of this kind of research to

imperialist interests?Most anthropologists have regarded the NIMH and the NSF as

operating in an autonomous manner, as a sort of left hand of thegovernment, oblivious to the requirements of the right hand, thedepartments of Defence and State and the CIA. Credence is giventhis appearance by the fact that anthropologists rather than govern-ment officials have been sitting on the panels deciding grants andfellowships. The government, particularly under the Kennedyadministration, has not failed to recognise that ’basic research’ inthe social sciences is not at all irrelevant to government require-ments, especially in the long run. Thus work not immediatelyrelevant to ’Defence’ purposes has been funded, and anthropolo-gists have been allowed to decide whom among them and theirstudents should receive support. Of course such independence isonly allowed by a government confident that the profession willpolice itself: that it will not approve projects likely to conflictwith the ’national’ interest and that it will approve projects thaton the whole are supportive of the government’s long-rangerequirements. In general this means useful knowledge about thepeoples and problems the US government and US corporationsmay have to deal with.

The lead in shaping social science research to the needs of theUS government and large corporations has been taken less bygovernment agencies than by the major private foundations: Ford,Carnegie and Rockefeller. The top officers and trustees of thesefoundations come of course from the ruling circles of businessand government. And the wealth of these foundations is of courseinvested in capitalist enterprises, many of them with foreignholdings of the sort that US foreign policy is designed above allto protect and advance. Since their inception, these privatefoundations have been instrumental in serving the interests theyrepresent by shaping US education in general, and the socialsciences in particular.3 3An example of the foundations’ influence on anthropology is

the leading role played by the Ford Foundation in establishingand shaping ’area studies’ programmes. Ford has sponsored



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massive research programmes in every strategically importantarea of the world, and Ford had funded most US centres of foreignaffairs research. In African studies alone, Ford had exercised adominant influence. It has provided hundreds of fellowships forresearch in Africa and it has helped set up and fund most of themajor African studies institutes. What has been Ford’s purpose?In 1958 Ford set up a special study committee to report on theneeds which African studies had to meet. ’Without any reluctance’,they wrote:the Committee has been able to agree on the unwisdom of academic aloof-ness from the needs of national policy, or of Africa itself. It seems to us

most appropriate and desirable to encourage Africanists individually and intheir associations, to provide assistance in professional consultation, intraining for specific needs, in designing research so as to be useful togovernment and business.3

4

Anthropology and US imperialismIt is my contention, then, that the two major sources of fundsfor American anthropological research - the US government andthe large foundations - use their money and influence in waysboth direct and indirect to ensure that research is done ’relevant’to (i.e. serving) their interests in managing ’major events andproblems of the world’ today. Of course some research is moreimmediately relevant than other research - the more relevantresearch is a more likely candidate for support, but ’basic’ re-search has not been ignored. The most prosaic study of the socialstructure or religion or psychology of an obscure ethnic groupmay prove useful for controlling this group. If not critical infor-mation at the moment it may be tomorrow in an unstable world.What I have been arguing is simply that anthropology, as an

institutional activity, is not autonomous and not unrelated toother institutions of our social system. As an activity dependentfor its support on the dominant institutions of our society - thefederal government, the large corporations and the large privatefoundations - anthropology is expected to serve the intereststhat control these institutions and the universities. As theseinterests extend to foreign countries, anthropological researchon foreign peoples can provide ’relevant’ knowledge to aid theUS government and US corporations in achieving their goals.Urban and rural anthropological research within America canaid the same interests to achieve similar goals.

The system of political and economic domination of hundredsof millions of people - US imperialism - is a system which, far



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from offering hope to the world’s people, blocks their aspirationsand oppresses them. Neither does US imperialism benefit mostpeople in the United States: in fact it helps the same small classof corporate capitalists and their politicians maintain a systemof domination and exploitation at home.3 5 Yet the people anthro-pologists study are not members of this ruling class or alliedelites abroad. Anthropologists study the people who are oppressedby imperialism. We live among them, make friends with them,and most of us come to sympathise with their aspirations. Wewould like to think that we are responsible to them, that wewould serve their interests if we could, that we would side withthem against oppression. Do we? .

This is the real contradiction in anthropology today - notthe question of ’relevance’. For as I have tried to show, anthro-pology is in fact relevant, but its relevance is one which presentlyand potentially serves interests which are contrary to the interestsof the people we study. Our science is useable, and is often usedin the service of imperialism, in the interest of domination andexploitation.

The problem I have posed is not primarily one of individualmorality, of doing ’dirty’ work or ’clean’ work. Rather, theproblem posed is an institutional one: it is that, together withother social scientific research, anthropological research in generalis systematically shaped and utilised by the dominant interestsin our society for ends which many, hopefully most, anthropolo-gists would oppose. In a manner not unprecedented in humansociety, we as individuals are usually not fully aware of all ofthe institutional pressures that constrain and shape our work, orof the potential uses that our work may have in the hands ofothers. We do not see selective funding in operation, nor do weusually investigate why particular programmes are set up ratherthan others, why particular individuals have access to, or powerover, funds which others do not. We accept jobs and grants as theyare available, angling for them in ways we think might be success-ful. We are genuinely interested in phenomena such as social change,social structure, values and motivations, etc., which are alsophenomena in which others elsewhere are interested - includingagencies that have the power to use such information for purposeswe would oppose. Working in a narrow academic context, wetend to see our work in terms of particular theoretical problemsand of academic advancement. We are often ignorant of thepossible ’relevance’ our work may have in others’ hands - and

-

in any case, after we publish our finds we have no control



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over their use. But we delude ourselves if we imagine that mosranthropological research has no use and will never be used. Basicrun-of-the-mill anthropological research is regarded as ’relevant’by those who have the desire and resources and need to render itso. We can only hope that our particular work might not berelevant, or comfort ourselves with notions about the unreliabilityand uselessness of social science in its present state. Meanwhilemillions of dollars in computer technology and in hired mindswill be working continuously to make our data relevant, reliableand useful to imperialism.

But how could our data not be relevant to imperialism? Anthro-pological research is research on the people of the world subjectto imperialism, but these are people who have always fought backin their ways, off and on, now passively and now fiercely, in onearea at one time, in another area at another time, rebelling againstforces which oppress them. Such rebellions, mostly futile in thenineteenth-century, are becoming more and more successful inthis century as people learn how to fight their oppressors. Imper-ialism, to survive, must counterattack with ever more sophisti-cated weapons, hard and ’soft’. It must understand the people itdominates, so as to understand how to prevent them from over-throwing that domination. Social science is necessary to that end;and anthropologists, as social scientists who work most directlyin contact with the people oppressed by imperialism, are meantto be the scouts of the imperialist forces in what will be a bitterand protracted war during this century against the forces ofresistance and liberation and socialist revolution rising among theworld’s peoples.

But many anthropologists and anthropology students wouldnot choose this role of serving imperialism. They would want toserve the people they study. To the degree that they come to seethis contradiction, the question arises of how they can bestresolve it.

’

It is my opinion that, in the absence of revolutionary changesin the wider society, anthropology as a whole and as an institu-tional activity cannot be radically changed or reformed so asnot to serve imperialism. As long as we live within an imperialistsystem the same forces which now shape and utilise anthropologywill continue to operate and will continue their institutionaldomination over the practice of anthropology. Are we to try toserve ourselves by serving imperialism? Like Evans-Pritchard, wecan go as an agent of the enemy into the camp of the people we



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study. But we can also choose another road, which I believe holdsthe future: we can ally with the people we are meant to study- tribesmen, peasants, working class people abroad and at home- in their struggles to create a new world where science can trulyserve the people and not be a tool for their oppression.References

1 Africa Research Group, How Harvard Rules (1969), p. 71.

2 William Ridgeway, ’Presidential Address: The Influence of the Environment ofMan, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 40 (1910), pp. 10-22.

3 Evolutionists and Diffusionism: Rival theories, developed in the late nineteenth-century, to describe and explain the development of cultures. Influenced by evolu-tionist theories of nature, evolutionist anthropologists, led by the ’father of anthro-pology’ E.B. Tylor, claimed a linear and separate development of societies from ’savagery’ through ’barbarism’ to ’civilisation’. Evolutionism implies that Westernsocieties are much farther ’advanced’ than ’primitive’ cultures, and hence may havea ’civilising’ duty to perform. In the early 1920s the evoltuionists were brieflycontested by the diffusionists who attempted to trace widely dissimilar societies back to shared cultural origins and connections. ,

4 Ethnology: The ’natural’ history of the cultural development of non-literatesocieties, largely from hypothetical reconstruction. For an account of the difference between ethnology and functionalism, see Radcliffe-Brown’s discussion, quotedabove.

5 Daryll Forde, ’Applied Anthropology in Government: British Africa’, in A.L.Kroeber (ed.) Anthropology Today (Chicago, 1953), pp. 841-65.

6 Functionalism: In this sense the method of analysing a culture or society as anorganisation of means designed to achieve certain ends. Closely related to structural-functionalism, an approach which treats a society as an isolable structure or organismcomposed of elements, none of which can change without effecting change in theother elements. These approaches are characteristically synchronic, i.e. ahistorical.

7 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, ’Some Problems of Bantu Sociology’, Bantu Studies,1, 3 (1922), pp. 38-46.

8 Ibid., p. 38.

9 Ibid., p. 39. 10 Ibid., pp. 39-40. 11 Ibid., p. 40.12 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, ’The Methods of Ethnology and Social Anthropology’,

South African Journal of Science, 20 (1910), pp. 124-147.13 Ibid., p. 130.14 Ibid., pp. 142-3.15 Rev. E.W. Smith, ’Presidential Address ...’, p. xxii.16 Lord Hailey, An African Survey (Oxford, 1938), pp. 42-5, Smith, op. cit.,

pp. xviii-xxv.

17 A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, ’Applied Anthropology’, Report of the 20th Meeting ofthe Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (1930),pp. 267-80.

18 Royal Anthropological Institute, Reports of the Council (1926, 1927, 1930).19 F.D. Lugard (later Lord Lugard), ’The International Institute of African Languages

and Cultures’, Africa, 1, pp. 1-12.

20 Hailey, op. cit., pp. 51-2.



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21 See note 6.22 For references, see Forde, op. cit., pp. 862-5; and Lucy Mair, ’The Social Sciences

in Africa South of the Sahara: The British Contribution’, Human Organisation, 19, 3(1960), pp. 98-107.

23 E.E. Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, (Oxford, 1940), p. 134 f.24 Ibid., p. 23.

25 B. Magubane, ’Pluralism and Conflict Situations in Africa: A new look’, AfricanSocial Research, 7 (June, 1969), pp. 529-53.

26 Lucy Mair, op. cit., p. 98.27 Kathleen Gough Aberle, ’Anthropology and Imperialism’, Monthly Review (April,

1969), pp. 12-27.28 See, J.J. Maquet, ’Objectivity in Anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 5, pp. 47-

55; also, Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York, 1968),pp. 514 and 567.

29 I.L. Horowitz, The Rise & Fall of Project Camelot (Cambridge, Mass., 1967).30 Quoted trom the recruiting letter for Project Camelot in Horowitz, op. cit.,

pp. 47-9.31 Judy Kaufman and Bob Park, The Cambridge Project: Social Science for Social

Control (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 12-13.32 American Anthropological Association, ’Background Information on Problems

of Anthropological Research and Ethics’, prepared by R.L. Beals and the ExecutiveBoard of the A.A.A. Fellows’Newsletter, 8, 1 (January, 1967), p. 9.

33 For an extensive discussion of these activities, see, David Horowitz, ’The Founda-tions (Charity Begins at Home)’, Ramparts (April, 1969), ’Billion Dollar Brains’,Ramparts (May, 1969), and ’Sinews of Empire’, Ramparts (October, 1969).

34 L.G. Cowan, C.Rosberg, L. Fallers and C. de Kiewiet, Report of the Committeeon African Studies prepared for the Ford Foundation (1958), p. 12.

35 Kaufman and Park, op. cit., pp. 9-11 and 19-23.



Documents

The 'Relevance' of Anthropology to Colonialism and Imperialism