Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back (California Series in Public Anthropology, 13)

292 Pages·2005·0.95 MB·English

by  Catherine Besteman (Editor)

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Why America’s Top
Pundits Are Wrong
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California Series in Public Anthropology
The California Series in Public Anthropology emphasizes the anthropologist’s
role as an engaged intellectual. It continues anthropology’s commitment to being
an ethnographic witness, to describing, in human terms, how life is lived beyond
the borders of many readers’ experiences. But it also adds a commitment, through
ethnography, to reframing the terms of public debate—transforming received,
accepted understandings of social issues with new insights, new framings.
Series Editor: Robert Borofsky (Hawaii Pacific University)
Contributing Editors: Philippe Bourgois (UC San Francisco), Paul Farmer
(Partners in Health), Rayna Rapp (New York University), and Nancy
Scheper-Hughes (UC Berkeley)
University of California Press Editor: Naomi Schneider
1. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death,
by Margaret Lock
2. Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel,by Rhoda Ann
Kanaaneh (with a foreword by Hanan Ashrawi)
3. Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide,edited by Alexander
Laban Hinton (with a foreword by Kenneth Roth)
4. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor,
by Paul Farmer (with a foreword by Amartya Sen)
5. Buddha Is Hiding: Refugees, Citizenship, the New America,by Aihwa Ong
6. Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society,by Valery Tishkov (with a foreword
by Mikhail S. Gorbachev)
7. Total Confinement: Madness and Reason in the Maximum Security Prison,
by Lorna A. Rhodes
8. Paradise in Ashes: AGuatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope,
by Beatriz Manz (with a foreword by Aryeh Neier)
9. Laughter Out of Place: Race, Class, Violence, and Sexuality in a Rio Shantytown,
by Donna M. Goldstein
10. Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-
First Century,by Carolyn Nordstrom
11. Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide,by Alexander
Laban Hinton
12. Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Might Learn from It,
by Robert Borofsky
13. Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong: Anthropologists Talk Back,
edited by Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson
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Why America’s Top
Pundits Are Wrong
anthropologists talk back
edited by
catherine besteman and
hugh gusterson
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
Berkeley Los Angeles London
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University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 2005 by the Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Why America’s top pundits are wrong : anthropologists talk back /
edited by Catherine Besteman and Hugh Gusterson.
p. cm.—(California series in public anthropology ; 13)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0–520-24355-2 (alk. paper).—ISBN0–520-24356-0 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
1. Mass media and anthropology. 2. Communication and society.
3.Communication in anthropology. 4. Communication—Political
aspects. 5. Specialists. 4. Errors, Popular. I. Besteman, Catherine
Lowe. II. Gusterson, Hugh. III. Series.
p96.a56w49 2005
302.23—dc22 2004014201
Manufactured in the United States of America
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05
11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-
free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISOZ39.48–
1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).
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To Franz Boas and Margaret Mead,
pioneers of public anthropology
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Contents
1. Introduction 1
Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman
2. The Seven Deadly Sins of Samuel Huntington 24
Hugh Gusterson
3. Samuel Huntington, Meet the Nuer:
Kinship, Local Knowledge, and the Clash
of Civilizations 43
Keith Brown
4. Haunted by the Imaginations of the Past:
Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts 60
Tone Bringa
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5. Why I Disagree with Robert Kaplan 83
Catherine Besteman
6. Globalization and Thomas Friedman 102
Angelique Haugerud
7. OnThe Lexus and the Olive Tree,by Thomas L.
Friedman 121
Ellen Hertz and Laura Nader
8. Extrastate Globalization of the Illicit 138
Carolyn Nordstrom
9. Class Politics and Scavenger Anthropology in
Dinesh D’Souza’s Virtue of Prosperity 154
Kath Weston
10. Sex on the Brain: ANatural History of Rape
and the Dubious Doctrines of Evolutionary
Psychology 180
Stefan Helmreich and Heather Paxson
11. Anthropology and The Bell Curve 206
Jonathan Marks
Notes 229
Suggested Further Reading 261
List of Contributors 267
Acknowledgments 271
Index 273
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Introduction
ONE
Hugh Gusterson and Catherine Besteman
This book confronts some of the most controversial and divisive issues of
the day. Why does poverty persist in the United States? Do the poor,
through laziness or lack of initiative, somehow deserve their plight?
Why do African Americans continue to get left behind in the American
race for success? Are feminists right about violence against women in our
society? How much of our behavior is genetically programmed? Why do
some countries do better than others in the global economy? Why has the
U.S. military found itself fighting Muslims so much of late? Will global-
ization and U.S. intervention abroad create a more peaceful or a more
polarized world? Should the United States have intervened in the former
Yugoslavia in the 1990s, or is that part of the world doomed to bloody
and irremediable ancient hatreds?
In Congress, in coffee shops, in classrooms, in dorm rooms, on talk
1