11. Applying Anthropology in the Interest of the State: John Collier, the Indian Office, and the Bureau of Sociological Research

This paper will trace the development of the Bureau of Sociological Research through its roots in the use of social science by the Indian Office. The Bureau of Sociological Research instituted at the Colorado River Japanese American Relocation Center, as the Poston camp was formally called, was developed out of the experiences of social scientific advising in the Indian Office and in industry. At this moment, at the height of World War II, the social welfare state was emerging as a central component of the growing and changing industrial economy. In the interests of securing a large and stable workforce to fulfill the needs of the expanding industrial sector, social-service programs including health and educational institutions combined with popular cultural discourses to inculcate and promote lifestyles, values, and desires that supported a social structure conducive to the industrial labor system. Wherever "problems" were encountered, resistances met, or transitions were not seamless and unencumbered, social scientists were increasingly called upon to assess, analyze, and advise. The wartime incarceration of the Japanese Americans was one such "problem," and the Bureau was formed in response. Because there has been little critical work written about the Bureau thus far, I will begin by describing what it was, who was involved, and how it was situated within the context of the development of American applied anthropology.¹ I will then establish the connection between the Bureau and the Indian Office, particularly through a consideration of John Collier's influence in both of these institutions. Finally I will discuss how Collier's social philosophy and program of applying social science was situated within the expansion of the social welfare state and within what Joel Pfister terms a "protomulticultural" ethic that served to support the Nation State and economy.

American applied anthropology has from the outset seen as its purview the application of anthropological knowledge to the solving of "practical" problems of human organization. The nature and specifics of these problems have ranged over a wide spectrum of issues and concerns. Perhaps the greatest volume of this work, in the early years, was on Native American education and administration, and on industrial labor relations. Although these areas of emphasis appear to suggest entirely different types of projects, in fact, the coincidence of these two foci is not at all coincidental. The example of the industrial application of applied social science merely articulates the logic underwriting the multiple projects of social organization/control with certain clarity. For just as with the Western Electric project, in which the objective was to produce more productive and efficient workers, the Indian Office was too employed in a project of turning communities of Native peoples into individuals who would fit smoothly into (a specific) place in the American economic and political order; an objective that changed in strategy and form over the years, but not in intent. The applied work functioned to expand the reach of state power, encouraging people to "adjust" to dominant economic and political forms in a more "humane" fashion, as an alternative to physical violence.

Looking at this context for the development of American applied anthropology shows how social science, like the helping professions more generally and in spite of many good intentions, has functioned as a form of social engineering in the interest of state and capital. The objective of this investigation is not simply to chastise a discipline or branch thereof, or to condemn individuals for their participation in a project that, according to today's standards, is judged to be reprehensible. Such a practice might satisfy a particular inclination towards judgment, but would do little to advance a productive dialogue on the relationship between social science and state power. Within the critical literature on "internment anthropology" the focus of debate has been on evaluating the intentions of the programs of research and of the individuals involved. In spite of Orin Starn's attempt to evaluate the consequences of the research, the response to his 1986 article in American Ethnologist by former internment researchers pulled the conversation back to oppositional...