{"id":11310,"date":"2018-06-11T16:00:35","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=11310"},"modified":"2025-05-06T08:35:35","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T08:35:35","slug":"the-presidents-mother-the-anthropologist-and-the-anthropologists-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/the-presidents-mother-the-anthropologist-and-the-anthropologists-son","title":{"rendered":"Anthropological Issues and US President Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The following is an excerpt from the article “The President’s Mother, the Anthropologist and the Anthropologist’s Son: Anthropological Issues and US President Obama<\/a>” by\u00a0David Lampert<\/a>\u00a0published in the latest issue of our journal,\u00a0Anthropology in Action: Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice<\/a><\/em>.<\/h6>\n
As of 2018, this journal is Open Access<\/a> per the Knowledge Unlatched Select<\/a> initiative. Read more in our related blog post<\/a>.<\/h6>\n

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Recent books from both outside and inside our discipline link anthropology directly to policies of the former US President Barack Obama1<\/sup>, whose mother was an anthropologist, as well as his half-sister. This essay examines the allegations made in a recent book by journalist Wayne Madsen (which partly rely on those made in another recent book by Janny Scott in 2011 about Stanley Ann Dunham, the first Presidential mother who was a Ph.D. anthropologist) that directly implicate Dunham and American anthropologists in the policies of President Obama and of the United States. Madsen charges that the American anthropology community not only collaborated for decades with policies of the national security state apparatus of the United States that he views as genocidal and internationally criminal, but that the world is now bearing witness to a new acultural identity in\u00a0the socialisation of children resulting from this collusion, which is exemplified by the career and policies of Barack Obama, whom he identifies by his various names as Barack Hussein Obama\/Soebarka\/Soetoro. Rather than identify as \u2018African\u2019 or \u2018Indonesian\u2019 or \u2018hyphenated-American\u2019, Madsen claims that Obama has a new kind of identity that was \u2018manufactured\u2019 by Dunham and the national security state with no national attachments (i.e. national history, culture and land attachments, other than those to a specific governmental agency and its goals) or ethnic attachments. He sees this unsustainable \u2018culture\u2019 as one motivated by primitive drives of power, obedience and human control in service to a hidden elite bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

Although many (perhaps most) of Madsen\u2019s claims\u00a0are unfounded innuendo, lacking in credibility and\u00a0irresponsible to the point of libel, the implications of\u00a0the issues raised in this book, I would argue, strike\u00a0so closely to the heart of anthropology and the role\u00a0of anthropologists \u2013 as professionals, as citizens, and even as parents and simply as human beings \u2013 that this is not a book that can simply be dismissed and\u00a0ignored by the profession. In my view, there are three\u00a0related and important anthropological issues raised\u00a0in Madsen\u2019s book that are important for discussion\u00a0in our profession:<\/p>\n

(a) The first is on the relationship between the\u00a0national security state and anthropology as\u00a0a result of anthropologists failing to establish\u00a0clear professional adherence to obligations of\u00a0international law.<\/p>\n

(b) The second is on the implications of modern\u00a0\u2018identities\u2019 and \u2018multicultural ethnicities\u2019 and\u00a0what the implications may be for current and future generations who are being encouraged\u00a0to \u2018invent\u2019 their identities and who may choose\u00a0to fill the ethnic identity vacuum they face\u00a0with hollow, institutional identities or drives of power, violence and control.<\/p>\n

(c) The third is on what books like this one tell\u00a0us about contemporary political culture and\u00a0views of political power in the administrative\u00a0security state and in the era of globalisation.\u00a0They highlight contemporary mythologies and\u00a0ideologies of the weakness of the individual\u00a0against the apparent omnipotence of agencies\u00a0of control and suggest the existence of a \u2018dark\u2019\u00a0or \u2018shadow\u2019 politics.<\/p>\n

This essay will briefly present and deconstruct Madsen\u2019s\u00a0main argument. It will then scrutinise the arguments\u00a0Madsen presents that are relevant to his critique of American anthropology, to Dunham as an applied\u00a0anthropologist, and to the ethnic identity of Barack\u00a0Obama, the anthropologist\u2019s son, weighing them for\u00a0their veracity as if they were presented in a court of\u00a0law. The essay will then discuss the three key issues\u00a0for anthropology that Madsen raises indirectly.<\/p>\n

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Implications for Anthropology<\/h3>\n

The implications of Madsen\u2019s book for anthropology\u00a0are nonetheless disturbing, and it is worth looking at\u00a0each of three issues in turn.<\/p>\n

The Relationship between the National Security State\u00a0and Anthropology<\/em><\/p>\n

The question that Madsen, a non-anthropologist, asks\u00a0about how the son and brother of an anthropologist\u00a0can apparently grow up without any consciousness\u00a0of the most fundamental ethical principles of anthropology,\u00a0particularly when these principles are firmly\u00a0embedded in international law, should rightly make\u00a0every anthropologist squirm.<\/p>\n

It would be partly comforting if Madsen\u2019s premise\u00a0were true, and that some anthropologists had become\u00a0corrupted and co-opted such that they no longer upheld\u00a0the basic principles of law or human morality\u00a0or the basic belief even of human or planetary survival,\u00a0and that they passed this psychopathology on\u00a0to their children in the way they taught and raised\u00a0them. If a few anthropologists somehow went over\u00a0to the \u2018dark side\u2019 for whatever reason, there would\u00a0still be a way to identify them, hold them accountable\u00a0and move on. But the picture that Madsen presents\u00a0is not just of a few wayward anthropologists and\u00a0their children. It is of a profession that has become\u00a0detached from its own humanistic principles, from\u00a0its standards and reason for being, and from international\u00a0law (Lempert, 2012a).<\/p>\n

What the argument in Madsen\u2019s book is really\u00a0suggesting, quoting anthropologists like Ralph Beals\u00a0(and his 1966 report, which was long suppressed)\u00a0along with Margaret Mead\u2019s response in 1971, is that\u00a0anthropology has so long been corrupted that it has\u00a0now for decades done nothing to ensure that those\u00a0whom it educates at any level, or who are members\u00a0of anthropological organisations and who work as\u00a0professionals, take any enforceable oath of any kind\u00a0to international law and to the ethics of the profession\u00a0when they work in practice.<\/p>\n

Dunham only had a BA in anthropology (from the\u00a0University of Hawaii) when she first went to Indonesia. It was only much later that she earned an MA and then a PhD there. But she received those higher\u00a0degrees after working for those agencies that Madsen\u00a0identifies as violating international laws, including\u00a0the most basic laws that should be the basis for certification as an anthropologist \u2013 certification to ensure\u00a0adherence to the discipline\u2019s ethical code for protecting\u00a0the survival and sustainability of cultures and\u00a0against seeking to transform them for any outside\u00a0(colonial) purpose.<\/p>\n

If the presentation in Madsen\u2019s book on this is accurate\u00a0(it is possible that it is not), apparently at no\u00a0time did Dunham stand firmly behind these principles\u00a0or attempt to teach them to her son. While there\u00a0is no evidence to suggest that Dunham directly participated\u00a0in violations, Madsen suggests that the organisations\u00a0that she associated herself with routinely\u00a0did. He also asserts that others in the field, such as\u00a0Clifford Geertz, anthropologists at her university, the\u00a0University of Hawaii, and those in the American Anthropological\u00a0Association, did nothing tangible that\u00a0is on record to enforce these standards in any effective\u00a0way. Instead, he suggests that they all worked to\u00a0undermine international law and to open the door to\u00a0financial and political manipulation of the discipline\u00a0and its members in ways that favoured use of foreign\u00a0cultures for foreign financial and political gain.<\/p>\n

The area in which Dunham did work as an anthropologist on her dissertation research, that of small credit\u00a0community banking projects for women and\u00a0traditional craft s that are scaled up for export of their\u00a0products, I have argued, is one that distorts local cultural\u00a0sustainability in violation of international law in\u00a0promotion of a globalisation agenda (Lempert 2012b)\u00a0while also exploiting women\u2019s and children\u2019s labour\u00a0(Lempert 2011). Madsen\u2019s book, however, does not\u00a0closely describe her work. Nearly 20 years ago, after\u00a0finding myself routinely pressured to engage in acts\u00a0that violated international law by some of the very\u00a0same organisations in which Dunham worked, I\u00a0authored an ethics code for practising anthropologists and published it in one of our leading journals,\u00a0Practicing Anthropology (Lempert 1997). Recently, I\u00a0have also been designing accountability indicators to hold international interventions directly accountable\u00a0to international law (Lempert 2011, 2012a). I have\u00a0called for the unionisation of professionals and for\u00a0licensing and enforcement schemes. This isn\u2019t just the\u00a0\u2018right\u2019 thing to do or a question of self-interest for our\u00a0profession, though it is also that. Upholding these\u00a0principles and international laws are now prerequisites\u00a0for human and planetary survival as well as\u00a0stability. From my perspective as a lawyer who has\u00a0taken oaths to the law, I find Madsen\u2019s wider critique\u00a0of anthropologists to have merit.<\/p>\n

It should be an embarrassment to all of us that\u00a0issues like these are now being raised in ridicule on\u00a0us by journalists like Madsen because we, as anthropologists,\u00a0have not shown the competence and do\u00a0not appear to care enough to practise what we preach (and perhaps no longer even preach it). The suggestion\u00a0that the son and half-brother of two anthropologists,\u00a0who is also a lawyer but has no concept of or\u00a0concern for these most fundamental precepts that are\u00a0not only embedded in international law, basic moral\u00a0doctrine in Western culture, and oaths of professional\u00a0associations (in anthropology as well as oaths of lawyers)\u00a0but are also part of obligations to raising and\u00a0teaching children (and one\u2019s students) is perhaps the\u00a0most damning statement of our profession that one can make.<\/p>\n

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To read the entire article, visit the latest issue of Anthropology in Action: Volume 25, Issue 1<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an excerpt from the article “The President’s Mother, the Anthropologist and the Anthropologist’s Son: Anthropological Issues and US President Obama” by\u00a0David Lampert\u00a0published in the latest issue of our journal,\u00a0Anthropology in Action: Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice. As of 2018, this journal is Open Access per the Knowledge Unlatched Select… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,222],"tags":[107,98,338,2186,788,255,1138,721],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11310"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11336,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11310\/revisions\/11336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}