Ethics of ethnography: quibbling and "content"

in yesterday's post, "Warrior Anthropologist: Ethnography as Weapon," i wrote a very short blurb about David Price's CounterPunch article. on the WPA-L today, there is a thread that is discussing the article; the focus is on the technicalities of plagiarism in military genres. i figured it would be only a matter of time before Mike, a former Soldier and a West Point professor, responded to the thread - if not the article itself. in fact, i was anxiously awaiting his insight.

the thing i find disappointing about the discussion that's taking place is the focus of the discussion. to me it seems like a collection of quibblings over a technicality. in other words, there is a larger ethical, nay MORAL, concern that is being overlooked. true, plagiarism may be viewed as something of a tip-of-the-iceberg clue about the ethics of writers. but, regarding the writing of military field manuals, as several on the listserv have pointed out, it could - in fact, probably IS - be simply a difference in writing conventions.

when i read Price's piece what trouble me as an ethnographer was the fact that researchers' peaceable works that were intended for humanitarian purposes had been appropriated for war-machine applications. citing a particularly egregious case from our not-so distant past, Price demonstrates how ethnography and anthropology have been used to facilitate the killing of individuals - people that, in this Vietnam Era case, the researcher knew personally (quoting Price):

The most egregious known instance of the military's recycling of an anthropological text occurred in 1962, when the U.S. Department of Commerce secretly, and without authorization or permission from the author, translated into English from French the anthropologist Georges Condominas' ethnographic account of Montagnard village life in the central highlands of Vietnam, Nous Avons Mangé la Forêt. The Green Berets weaponized the document in the field. The military's uses for this ethnographic knowledge were obvious, as assassination campaigns tried to hone their skills and learn to target village leaders.

true, as scholars and guardians of language and, especially, written language, we are, perhaps, obliged to engage the conversation in relationship to plagiarism. to me, though, in this case, plagiarism is small potatoes - ethically speaking.

now, the point i'm about to make should probably have appeared earlier in the arrangement of this quasi-argument, but i think it may function more appropriately here as the impetus for further thinking and conversating:
the research we do as scholars is neither good nor bad; the applications to which we or others put our work makes it so. research without applicability is probably, simply, an exercise in being an academic: of the ivory tower, for the ivory tower. i haven't had time to fully digest the meaning of "ethnography as weapon", but, hate them as we me (or as i do) it reminds me of the importance of IRB oversight; it sheds light on the importance of protecting our trusting subjects. obviously, while in the field, we will occasionally be witness to troubling human behaviors or to corrupt systems, institutions, individuals, etc. but in our fervor to be the humanists that i imagine most/all ethnographers believe they are, it must be remembered that exposing such dark corners of humanity can have far worse results...

the "trembling rage" Georges Condominas expresses in Price's article as a result of the pilfering of his book for the assassination of some of his subjects and friends resonates with me - not in the sense that i've experienced it, but in the sense that i can imagine it as my own response (hypothetically). and yet, as i write this, i'm beginning to wonder: what should we expect from an institution whose existence is in part for our protection and in part for the destruction of others as a means of ensuring "our" "protection"??? i mean, can we really be angry? should we really "tremble" with "rage" at this...? just as the military was trying to be a more efficient killing machine for the sake of the safety of US soldiers (and, more likely, for budgeting/cost-analysis reasons), could we really be so outraged if, say, an administrator were to read our work and decide to nix a program or project that we view as essential yet it's elimination would result in thousands of dollars saved and thus used in other areas of need???

probably this is a small detour from the vein of this article, but this issue reminds me of something i wrote about a while back. it also reminds me of a word that someone attempted to use to describe me: content. the ability to impact things that matter to me is my biggest frustration as an academic; thus it is that i believe that a "capitalist" is primed to do the most good in our society...and it reminds me still that "content" is still a long way off...