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Re: Jobs/Marketing Anthro/Applied . . . Karen Szala-Meneok
Willard Brooks (willard@MERCURY.SFSU.EDU)
Thu, 9 Jun 1994 23:29:28 -0700
On Thu, 9 Jun 1994, John O'Brien wrote:
> Suggestion 4 . . . why not ask the AAA to hire a good public relations firm
> and lobby group to design a program for the 90's and beyond to show the
> value of the discipline and to promote it across the board?
A very good question. But AAA seems to lack any kind of
political consensus. I think we should first de-emphasize the four field
approach - among other things - in order to create zones of organization
and political agreement. It is bad enough that we are disorganized
within each subdiscipline let alone mixing apples with oranges with
bannanas (ie cultural with physical with archaeological). As far as I am
concerned cultural anthropology is the only discipline which has any
political relevance. Of course my sub-disciplinary chauvinism is more
than evident here (four field anthro is like pre-post-cold-war Yugoslavia).
(What we have now is like a combined GOP and Democratic Party...
ie organized in something like nationalistic terms with little agreement
within... the unity characteristic of the end of civil war [AAA
Conferences] comes only with attack [say by sociologists or
bean-counters] from the outside).
I am sick of 'outsiders' associating me as a cultural anthropologist
with Archaeology and Physical Anthro (both of which have almost nothing
to do or say about my research interests).
Before we can have a lobby we must first know who we are. It is my
opinion that we do not yet know this.
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