Why it matters
Action anthropology requires the "intellectual and the political independence that one associates with the pure researcher; it depends on university and foundation connections for support rather than those of a client or government." (Tax 1964: 257)
"Here then we come to the second answer to the question. It is as teachers of the lessons of the whole of anthropology that we put our science to use; and we teach not only in the classroom, important as that is to most of us, but wherever we work and live. Anthropology has become for us a way of life, a set of values to pass on to whomever we touch: our parents and our children; our colleagues at work or play; our fellow citizens wherever they are. " (Tax 1964:251)
"Let us accept the independence of the anthropologist. Supposing him to be a research scientist serving only the one master and responsible only to his conscience and to his colleagues, let us give him this problem: What are the circumstances in which a community of people achieves its own goals, or is on the contrary frustrated? Assuming that there is basic agreement on what is wanted, communities of people still fall short of their goals. This happens whether the community one has in mind is a modern city unable to keep itself clean and orderly; or a nation unable to control the growth of a strangling bureaucracy; or even the faculty of a University unable to protect its academic freedom. The problem is one for the tools as weB of political science, economics, and sociology; but it is the sort of general problem which anthropologists characteristically tackle, borrowing what tools we need. We would think of beginning the anthropological research in a small community of a culture different from our own, since this is our special method of objectifying the problem; but we would hope to end up with some general understanding of the processes involved. Should we succeed in learning how any community of people can better achieve its own goals, we would have put anthropology to important use." (Tax 1964:255-256).
"The method of research that is suited to this problem, however, appears to violate the canon that the anthropologist should not become involved in public affairs. In the three or four cases where the problem has been successfully pursued, the anthropologists found that they had to interfere quite deliberately in social processes. To study such a problem requires helping the people of the community to discover their goals; but since there are cOlppeting goals and wants and forces in the society, this cannot be a simple educational process. (If it were so simple, there would be no problem to begin with.) So the anthropologist takes a special position in the community and becomes an actor as well as an observer." (Tax 1964:256)
"The community responded remarkably; and Holmberg's experiment proved an important point not only for anthropology but also for the people of Vic os and Peru, for all others in similar circumstances, and for the policy-making powers in the world. Similarly the University of Chicago's experiment in helping a sman community of North American Indians to resolve its problems has led to understandings not only about American Indian problems in general, but about those of other population enclaves like the Maori of New Zealand or tribal peoples in India or Africa. The general lesson that they will adjust to the modern world when their identity and their own cultural values are not threatened is important because such threats may not really be necessary. The understandings gained by this method of research by the anthropologists of Cornell and Chicago could probably not have come In any other way. The results are proving themselves in an understanding of the problems of new nations, of North American cities, even of the organization of universities. Indeed, the unique community of anthropologists of the world that I mentioned as being now in existence was helped into being directly by what was learned from American Indians. The same understanding may some day help the peoples of the world to achieve the common goal of peace."(Tax 1964:256-257)
"This new method of research, which Paul Broca could not have predicted, is often called "action anthropology." It does not fit the distinction frequently made between pure and applied research. It requires the intellectual and the political independence that one associates with a pure researcher; it depends upon university and foundation connections and support rather than those of a client or government. But it also requires that the anthropologist leave his ivory tower and that without losing his objectivity he enter into some world of affairs which becomes for the time being his laboratory."(Tax 1964:257)
"The Documentary History of the Fox Project (Gearing, Netting, and Peattie 1960). For a discussion of the tenets of "Action Anthropology" which emerged from the Fox project, see especially articles in the latter volume by Tax (pp. 167-171), Diesing (pp. 182-197), and Peattie (pp. 300-304)."(Tax 1964:258)
"The doctor took him into a room that contained many shelves upon which were rows of jars containing brains. Each jar had a price tag on it. A doctor's brain sold for ten dollars an ounce, a professor's brain sold for fifteen dollars an ounce. Similar brains from professional people ranged higher and higher until, at the very end of the back row of jars, there was a jar marked one thousand dollars an ounce. / The Indian asked why that type of brain was so expensive and wanted to know what kind of brain it was. The doctor said that the jar contained brains of the BIA, and added, "You know, it takes so many of them to make an ounce.""- Custer died for your sins : an Indian manifesto / by Vine Deloria, Jr., University of Oklahoma Press , 1988.
"I met some Native American
so-called university people who told me they hated they're Native
Americans. Why? Because it has this uncanny settle nature culture, we
are native and what are you then? Cultural Americans or what. They told
me we much prefer to be called Indians; at least our name is a monument
to white man's stupidity who thought they are in India when they are
here." -- Slavoj Žižek' joke, "Why Tolerance Is Patronizing."
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