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Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists Paperback – March 24, 2004

by David H. Price (Author)

4.3 10 ratings

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A vital reminder of the importance of academic freedom, Threatening Anthropology offers a meticulously detailed account of how U.S. Cold War surveillance damaged the field of anthropology. David H. Price reveals how dozens of activist anthropologists were publicly and privately persecuted during the Red Scares of the 1940s and 1950s. He shows that it was not Communist Party membership or Marxist beliefs that attracted the most intense scrutiny from the fbi and congressional committees but rather social activism, particularly for racial justice. Demonstrating that the fbi’s focus on anthropologists lessened as activist work and Marxist analysis in the field tapered off, Price argues that the impact of McCarthyism on anthropology extended far beyond the lives of those who lost their jobs. Its messages of fear and censorship had a pervasive chilling effect on anthropological investigation. As critiques that might attract government attention were abandoned, scholarship was curtailed.

Price draws on extensive archival research including correspondence, oral histories, published sources, court hearings, and more than 30,000 pages of fbi and government memorandums released to him under the Freedom of Information Act. He describes government monitoring of activism and leftist thought on college campuses, the surveillance of specific anthropologists, and the disturbing failure of the academic community—including the American Anthropological Association—to challenge the witch hunts. Today the “war on terror” is invoked to license the government’s renewed monitoring of academic work, and it is increasingly difficult for researchers to access government documents, as Price reveals in the appendix describing his wrangling with Freedom of Information Act requests. A disquieting chronicle of censorship and its consequences in the past, Threatening Anthropology is an impassioned cautionary tale for the present.

Review

“An enthralling expedition into the heart of academic darkness. David H. Price brilliantly confirms that there are no depths to which policemen and professors will not sink.”—Alexander Cockburn, coeditor of CounterPunch and columnist for The Nation

“David H. Price’s painstaking account of political repression in anthropology after the Second World War is a unique contribution to the history of the field. More than that, it may foreshadow what some today may entertain. Let us hope not, but let us not be naive.”—Dell Hymes, editor of Reinventing Anthropology

“Threatening Anthropology is a bold piece of scholarship, one that breaks the silence on many issues in the American trajectory that have changed only a bit since the Cold War and—given recent indications—might still come to the foreground in such a way as to make the McCarthy era look like play.”—Laura Nader, University of California, Berkeley

"That Price had the drive, the stamina, and the imagination to pursue this arduous task for more than a decade is an effort for which all anthropologists, and all of those interested in the history of the McCarthy years, must be profoundly grateful. . . . Price's book . . . is an illuminating contribution to 'anthropology's understanding of itself'-one that should be on the shelf of every serious student of the history of U.S. anthropology."―George W. Stocking Jr., American Anthropologist

"This book is a spellbinder, a creative contribution to the history of anthropology, to understanding post-9/11 reactions, and to recalling threads of repression in American society that are continuous. It is a provocative, seminal contribution to scholarly history."―Laura Nader, The Historian

From the Back Cover

"David H. Price's painstaking account of political repression in anthropology after the Second World War is a unique contribution to the history of the field. More than that, it may foreshadow what some today may entertain. Let us hope not, but let us not be naive."--Dell Hymes, editor of "Reinventing Anthropology"

About the Author

David H. Price is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Saint Martin’s College in Lacey, Washington. He is the author of the Atlas of World Cultures: A Geographical Guide to Ethnographic Literature.

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448 pages
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English
Publication date

March 24, 2004
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6 x 1.12 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0822333384
ISBN-13

978-0822333388
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Duke University Press Books (March 24, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0822333384
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0822333388
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.39 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.12 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,571,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,897 in Political Intelligence
- #3,768 in Communism & Socialism (Books)
- #4,520 in General Anthropology

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David H. Price

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David H. Price is a Professor of anthropology at St. Martin's University in Lacey, Washington. He has conducted cultural anthropological and archaeological fieldwork and research in the United States and Palestine, Egypt and Yemen. He is a Pacific Northwest native, a founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, and a frequent contributor to CounterPunch. He has written an historical trilogy examining American anthropologists' interactions with intelligence agencies. The first book, Anthropological Intelligence: The Use and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War, (2008, Duke) documents anthropological contributions to the Second World War. The second volume, Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Persecution of Activist Anthropologists (2004, Duke), examines McCarthyism's effects on anthropologists. The final volume, Cold War Anthropology: The CIA, the Pentagon and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology (Duke 2016), explores anthropologists interactions with the CIA and Pentagon during the Cold War. His book Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Militarized State (2011, CounterPunch Books) critically examines current trends in the militarization of anthropology and American universities.

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Patrick D. Applegate

Witchhunt Against Equality

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2015

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This immaculate tome expands our previously taught notions that McCarthyism was simply a witch hunt for Communists when in fact it also persecuted intellectual professionals who promoted concepts of race, gender, and class equality in the United States which ran counter to the status quo established by government officials in the interests of big business. This is a very brave piece of work by the author who had he published this piece during that era would surely have been subjected to the tribunals his earlier peers endured resulting in destroyed careers and reputations. Price's book is absolutely essential for anyone including laypersons like myself who desire a better understanding of how America got to where we are today...the most powerful nation on earth rife with ever increasing inequality while hell bent on maintaining the disparity of power and global dominance established during and after World War II.

2 people found this helpful

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DeadlyHausfrau

Interesting subject, capable author, just read critically

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is a good book to read as an extreme perspective. It makes a very many good points, though some of it is a little melodramatic. I recommend it to anyone, really, just read critically as always.

2 people found this helpful

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G. Thomas

Paid to Bite the Hand that Feeds....

Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2006

Few books can affect a reader so profoundly as this one has me. Price's book has received accolades -- "destined to become a classic," and "belongs on anyone's shelf." I wandered into the pages and, to my surprise and relief, found myself revisiting the underside of what I thought I had observed all along. Names were named, some of them among real live faculties I had known. I experienced a personal Eureka! when I learned that Jacobs and Stern, authors of that Barnes and Noble introduction to anthropology that I read in my formative years, had both been blacklisted. Now I must read that old paperback again and retrace where my interests might have started off in naive directions. I look forward to this self-study in self-censorship for the postmodern age.

I was overjoyed that Price did not stop with the accepted, formalized "end" of McCarthyism, but rather explained the brief re-emergence of relative "academic freedom" through much of the '60s-'70s and '80s, and the more sophisticated, perhaps more dangerous downward spiral today. The book helps those of us who entered college at a time when Ashley Montagu, Kathleen Gough and so many others were in the news over issues other than their research. Price has prepared a thoroughgoing catalogue of official harassment targeting scholars who operated on now-popularly-accepted assumptions of global human worth and equality.

The paradox is that, while anthropology has to rely on those assumptions if it is to operate as a field of intellectual endeavor, our audience -- any public -- does not, but they pay us anyway. Popular reactions to most anthropological contributions range from wonder to outrage. Anyone with basic grounding in anthropology would probably tell you that the field has always pushed the limits of acceptance within host countries, most of which have been main players of Western industrial civilization.

As with the job interview, it is always important to understand who holds the purse strings. Western anthropologists have long pushed the limits of societal acceptance, and that has always had consequnces. Today's "globalization" of anthropology finds many individuals from societies that were traditionally the subjects of anthropological study, pushing those limits from new and refreshing directions, and, of course, the resulting consequences are also "globalizing."

We are such good people; why are we then so villified? Tired old explanations of "cultural lag", ethnocentrism, and differing viewpoints still work. But Price's contribution is a detailed catalog-summary with specific cases showing particularly what makes the United States Government antsy about anthropology. Until "Threatening Anthropology," no one source discussed in context the prevailing governmental assumptions, and the various selected facts, political spins and, yes, myths on which government agencies often rely for those assumptions. Our tired, old explanations have finally got some help, as someone focused on the intersections between anthropology and host society as they are expressed in the United States.

I have recollections from my own past when, during euphoric rushes of "academic freedom," I presumed to speak from an anthropological perspective in ways that might draw the attention of, say, the FBI. Many of these run perilously close to Price's examples. One still wonders, but at the same time one has a grander perspective on why offers have not poured in from academia.

Price's volume is indeed chilling. The prevailing situation within anthropology since well before Boas has been chilling. I keep in mind the smaller-scale analogy of covert ostracism on a band or tribal level. At least within our society there are other avenues of endeavor, and we can retain a view of that old anthropolgy "avenue" and see what's happening and what has happened to our former colleagues.

Price does rather well with his conclusions. I am in some agreement with him over postmodernism insofar as many of its adherents appear to encourage the view that anthropology is only a part of Western science, and that as such it cannot do justice to any cross cultural perspective. Postmodernism in its "deconstruction" of positivism does appear to feed the late 20th century and continuing vogue for discounting what Mooney (The Republican War on Science) calls the "fact-based" perspective as irrelevant for today's policy-making. Such a notion would have frustrated Philleo Nash. I know it gets a double-take from me.

I also agree whole-heartedly that organizations like the American Anthropological Association would do well to treat future governmental meddling with individual scholars' employment -- present and future versions of McCarthyism -- with less timidity. All organizations need a clear understanding of just what constituties grounds for employee discipline, and they need to know that other power centers back them up.

Last time around the witch hunts came and went, leaving lasting scars. The issues are lively, and generate shouting-matches to this day. It was a political choice for organizations to remain in the background as "apolitical." It would be no more a political choice to stand behind individual anthropologists and help them make reasonable stands should they find themselves going against those big guns.

22 people found this helpful

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Rex Chickeneater

Disappointing book

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2007

The author's intent -- to examine the impact of McCarthyism on anthropology -- is a good one. Anthropology attracts a lot of liberal minded people (someone told me that they tend to register Democrat over Republican by a 30-1 ratio). However, what is disappointing about this book is that Price didn't seek out to interview more of the people who knew these anthropologists, as well as people in government who actually wrote such reports. For the most part, reports/texts are largely taken at face value, whereas in reality reports may have been received in greater or lesser degrees of seriousness and credibility. Thus, the tendency is probaby to exaggerate the degree of victimization.

4 people found this helpful

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S. L. Johnson

An Important New Interpretation of McCarthyism

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2004

Threatening Anthropology tells how the FBI and senate committees spied on and harassed hundreds of anthropologists working for racial equality. Price gathered a lot of new documents and information and his analysis left me thinking in new ways about McCarthyism and how the FBI was used to enforce racist policies in the 1940s and 1950s. Price uses thousands of documents to show that the FBI was used to persecute pioneering scientists threatening widespread bigotry.
Threatening Anthropology is a consuming, thought provoking book. Because there is a lot of dense information I thought I would slowly work my way through this over three or four weeks, but the writing and subject matter pulled me right in and I read it in a few days like I would a well written novel. Price really brings the reader into the story by richly describing the historical setting and then delving into dozens of individual stories telling how several dozen anthropologists like Melville Jacobs, Richard Morgan, Gene Weltfish, Ashley Montague and Margaret Mead were followed and harassed by the FBI because their fights for equality was seen as some sort of foreign communist plot. Price uses extensive FBI documents and correspondence to establish this story and brings an anthropological perspective that made me rethink what McCarthyism was.
I used to wonder if the McCarthy like witch trials could happen again, and Price's detailed analysis and current political developments leave no doubts in my mind that we could do this again very quickly. This book has a lot to say to us all today and deserves to be read by anyone concerned about the abuses of the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security in the war on terrorism, and the past examined here looks a lot like the present. As Price says in the final pages of his book, "Today, much as in the past, free thought, civil liberties and academic freedom are curtailed under conditions of fear as America appears to be preparing for another lengthy ill-defined war." But Price doesn't leave us there, he gives us hope by analyzing past defenses against McCarthyism for us to use in the present.

55 people found this helpful

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