Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Neglect of American Anthropology in the Second World War (review)

Anthropologists have given a great deal of thought to the role of warfare in prehistoric and nonhuman primate communities and in non-Western, "primitive" groups. An explicit exploration of the military as an institution began after World War I. Forensic anthropologists have worked with the U.S. military in a variety of ways since at least 1948. But anthropological research today explores in multiple directions, including a discussion on the impact of war and militaries on civilian victims; an exploration into the relationships between foreign militaries and modern war; and an understanding of the U.S. military as an institution with particular sets of cultural beliefs and practices. Contemporary anthropologists also take a variety of critical approaches to the twentieth century militarization process and the hegemonic role that is played by the U.S. military in world affairs. And it is in this latter genre of discussion that the book under review here can be situated.

Price's book is an important warning to social scientists in general and to the anthropological community in particular, about the uses and potential abuse of anthropology in projects sponsored by the U.S. government and the U.S. military. Price provides a historical context for the development of anthropology and archaeology in the United States, beginning in World War I. Throughout the book, he calls for a critical reexamination of the potential pitfalls in applied anthropology, given the anthropologist's obligation to balance patriotic duty with an ethical stance that incorporates the needs of humanity, especially in connection with armed conflicts.

Price identifies as a key moment in time the American Anthropological Association's censure of member Franz Boas in 1919 for his public denunciation of the "patriotic" actions by some anthropologists and archaeologists in their work with the U.S. government. For Boas, their actions diminished the validity and respectability of all future anthropological research. Price writes, "The AAA's censure of Boas created a skirmish within the American anthropological community for a brief period, but the reverberations from this critical junction continue to sound within American anthropology today [in] public debates about the propriety of mixing anthropology with military and intelligence operations. These debates have resurfaced in various forms during the American wars that have followed" (p. 14).

Price reveals that during World War II, all Axis and Allied forces used anthropologists to create propaganda and to educate troops with handbooks that provided cultural or linguistic information on the peoples who were a part of the war arena. American anthropologists worked in many applied areas including: the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Special Intelligence Service (SIS), the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Office of Indian Affairs, the FSI, the OWI, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), and in the internment of Japanese Americans. The Society of Applied Anthropology was founded in 1941 to help implement social change required by the war efforts.

Relying on a "presentist" reinterpretation of this history that acknowledges the role of different forms of hierarchy like race and class in historical events, Price notes that the unofficial national meetings of the AAA during the war years of 1942, 1943, 1944 convened in private men's clubs in the North East. For these years "Those not in government service were essentially geographically excluded from attending the AAA meeting in Washington, D.C., and thus only the views of anthropologists working with Washington based military and intelligence agencies were presented to the exclusion of other views" (p. 26). These biases provide a new perspective on Price's claim that over half of all anthropologists and archaeologists during the Second World War were working in some applied field associated with the war efforts.

Price's plea is for contemporary archaeologists and archaeologists to learn from the past, or face the possibility of repeating it. The special areas of concern...