HTS and Barack Obama's Mother: Whose "Anthropology"

I have been kind of amused to see some discussion on other anthro blogs about the Human Terrain System and the idea that Barack Obama should know better than to support that endeavour because his mother was an Anthropologist.

But let's unpack that baggage shall we. What kind of anthropologist was she? Barack Obama's mother worked, at various times, for the Ford Foundations, USAID, and the World Bank. I have some sympathy for the work she was trying to do. I, myself, tried my stint with USAID in Tanzania. In the end, I realized how badly I was fooling myself: it is neocolonial. It is what we used to call; interference. Plain and simple. It isn't really anthropology. Not my kind.

I understand the seduction of it. Before I attempted it, I had already had a full fieldwork experience in Tanzania which left me in a kind of personal belief limbo. Flying into Newark (my Grandparents live in Jersey) we came right by the Statue of Liberty. With my fieldnotes piled high in my lap (yes the flight attendants were not happy with me but it was another time), I burst into tears at the sight of her. I was coming home. I felt the beginnings of relief. Good bye to the worries of clean water. I spent a full year plotting access to boiled water. It was always on my mind. Many things were always on my mind in Tanzania. They weren't in America.

Later would come the guilt. When you are offered the opportunity to "do something" about the guilt, is is very seductive. In the end, if you are very honest, you realize that development work like that, is all about you and your relationship with the guilt, or some other psychological reason. Because, in reality, there is, always, someone there, "in-country", one of "them", who can do better than you. There is always someone there that can do better than "us". And "us" is busy trying to create them anew in our image. It is our own arrogance that makes "us" want to save "them". And perhaps, perhaps "they" should be saved from "us". No?

But sometimes nationalistic sentiment prevails and perhaps a bit of personal arrogance, and perhaps a bit of professional arrogance, as well. And, maybe just maybe that is what Barack Obama learned from his mother. For to work for USAID or to become President of the United States, or to be an Anthropologist under the Human Terrain System means that you place America first and Anthropology second. For Anthropology recognizes the danger of thinking any one person or any one nation is better than any other and has the right to drive another's bus. At least, my anthropology does.