cold war memory

"Since historical memory is one of the weapons against abuse and power, there is no question why those who have power create a 'desert of organized forgetting.' But why should those who have been the victims sometimes act as if they, too, had forgotten?" --Sigmund Diamond 

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contact  info

David Price  Anthropology               Saint Martin's University 5300 Pacific Ave.       Lacey, Washington  98503

dprice@stmartin.edu   Phone: 360/ 438-4295

 

Cold war anthropology

These articles and chapters in collected volumes mostly examine a variety of relationships between American anthropology and military and intelligence agencies during the Cold War; some articles examine other elements of Cold War Culture.  These relationships include instances where American anthropologists were: monitored and harassed by the FBI, unwittingly funded by the CIA, knowingly worked with and for the CIA, and shifted research questions to align with needs of the Cold War's National Security State. 

My approach to the fundamental two divergent roles played by American anthropologists during the Cold War is found in my 1998 "Cold War Anthropology: Collaborators and Victims of the National Security State" article.  Both of these relationships are examined in other articles, and anthropologists' clashes with McCarthyism and the FBI are documented in Threatening Anthropology.   I am currently working on a large book manuscript documenting the many witting and unwitting roles played by anthropologists during the Cold War at the CIA, Pentagon, FBI and other governmental agencies.

2010  “Review of Robert Justin Goldstein’s American Blacklist: The Attorney General’s List of  Subversive Organizations” The American Historical Review 115(1):250-251.

2009  “Seymour Melman and the FBI’s Monitoring of the Demilitarization Movement.” CounterPunch June 1-15, 2009, pp 1-4.

2008 “Blind Whistling Phreaks and the FBI’s Historical Reliance on Phone Company Criminality.” CounterPunch 15(6): 1-3. March 16-31.

2008 “On the Ambivalence of Orthodoxy in American Anthropology.” Reviews in Anthropology 37(2): 101-121. 

2008  “Materialism’s Free Pass: Karl Wittfogel, McCarthyism and the ‘Bureaucratization of Guilt.’” In ed., Dustin Wax, Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War.  Pp 37-61. London: Pluto.

2008  “McCarthyism.” In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,  2nd edition, William A. Darity, Jr. ed., Volume 5, pages 43-44. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.

2008  “Blind Whistling Phreaks and the FBI’s Historical Reliance on Phone Company Criminality.” CounterPunch 15(6): 1-3. March 16-31.

2007 “André Gunder Frank, the FBI, and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.” CounterPunch 14 (12):1-4. June 16-30, 2007.

2007 "Buying a Piece of Anthropology, Part One: Human Ecology and Unwitting Anthropological Research for the CIA." Anthropology Today 23(3):8-13.

2007 "Buying a Piece of Anthropology, Part Two: Our Tortured Past." Anthropology Today 23(5):17-22.

2007  "Earle Reynolds: Scientist, Citizen and Cold War Dissident." In ed., Barbara Rose Johnston, Half-Lives and Half-Truths: Confronting the Radioactive Legacies of the Cold War. pp 55-76. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.

2007 "McCarthyism." In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Second Edition. Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference (in press).

2006  “Reply to Neil Sebag-Montefiori” Anthropology Today 22(1):21.

2005     [co-authored with William J. Peace] “Bernhard Stern and Leslie A. White on the Church and Religion,” In Regna Darnell & Frederic W. Gleach eds., Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 1.  pp 114-131, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

 2005  [co-authored with William J. Peace] “Bernhard Stern and Leslie A. White on the Church and Religion,” In Regna Darnell & Frederic W. Gleach eds., Histories of Anthropology Annual, Volume 1.  pp 114-131. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.  

2005 "How the FBI Spied on Edward Said," CounterPunch December 1-5, 2005. vol. 12, No. 21, pp1, 4-5. (later reposted on CounterPunch website on January 13, 2006)

2005  “El FBI y las ciencias sociales” Historia anthropología y Fuentes Orales 34(3):29-46.

2004   Threatening Anthropology: The FBI’s Surveillance and Repression of Activist Anthropologists.  Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

2004  “Tribal Communism Under Fire: Archie Phinney and the FBI” Journal of Northwest Anthropology (Special Issue: Remembering Archie Phinney, A Nes Perce Scholar) 38(1):21-32. 

2004  “Standing Up For Academic Freedom: The Case of Irving Goldman” Anthropology Today 20(4):16-21.

2004  “Theoretical Dangers: Notes on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Investigations of Science & Society” Science and Society 68(4):475-482.

2004  “’Like Slaves’: Anthropological Notes on Occupation” CounterPunch January 6, 2004. 

2003 [co-authored with William J. Peace] "Un-American Anthropological Thought: The Opler / Meggers Exchange" Journal of Anthropological Research 59(2):183-203.

2003 "Subtle Means and Enticing Carrots: The Impact of Funding on American Cold War Anthropology." Critique of Anthropology  23(4):373-401.  

2003  “Anthropology Sub Rosa: The AAA, the CIA and the Ethical Problems Inherent in Secret Research" In Ethics and the Profession of Anthropology: Dialogue for Ethically Conscious Practice, Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban ed. 29-49.  Second Edition. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. 

2003 “Reply to Lloyd Pierson” Archaeology November/December 2003. pp 9.

2003 “Cloak and Trowel: Should Archaeologists Double As Spies?“ Archaeology  September/October 2003, pp. 30-35. [citations for this article]

2003  “The Spies Who Came in from the Dig,” republished excerpt from “Cloak and Trowel” The Guardian September 4, 2003.

2002 “Interlopers and Invited Guests: On Anthropology’s Witting and Unwitting Links to Intelligence Agencies" Anthropology Today 18(6):16-21.  

2001 “Spying on Radical Scholars” Radical History Review 79 (winter 2001):169-172.

2001 [co-authored with William J. Peace] “The Cold War Context of the FBI’s Investigation of Leslie A. White” American Anthropologist 103(1):164-167.

2001 “Fear and Loathing in the Soviet Union: Roy Barton and the NKVD” HAN  XXVIII(2):3-8.

2000 “The AAA and the CIA” Anthropology News  41(8): 13-14. November, 2000. 

1998 “Cold War Anthropology: Collaborators and Victims of the National Security State” Identities  4(3-4): 389-430.  Paper Abstract

1998  “Obituary for Mark Zborowski” Anthropology Newsletter 39(6):31.

1997 “Review of Colby & Dennett’s Thy Will Be Done-The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil”  Identities 3(3):441-447.

1997 “Anthropological Research and the Freedom of Information Act” CAM: Cultural Anthropology Methods 9(1):12-15.