Anthropological Notebooks, XXIV/2, 2018
Price, David H. 2016. Cold War Anthropology. The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use Anthropology. Durham, London: Duke University Press. xxxi + 452 pp. Pb.: $26.95. IsBN: 9780822359630.
David Price is the author of several books on the cooperation of anthropology with the American security state: Threatening Anthropology (2004) recollects how progressive-minded parts of the academic landscape with a 'commitment to equality and relativism' (Price 2004, p. xi) were constantly surveilled, silenced, and restrained by McCarthy's FBI and an overall repressive societal atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s, limiting the discipline's potential as a force for political critique. Anthropological Intelligence (2008) describes how American anthropologists contributed to the war effort during WW2. We-aponizing Anthropology (2011), a collection of previously published articles, focusses on contemporary uses of social science for the militarised state.
Drawing upon over twenty years of research, Price's latest publication, Cold War Anthropology, meticulously analyses a wide range of ties between anthropology, the United States Department of Defense (DoD), and United States intelligence agencies, foremost the CIA. To uncover these relationships, Price went through tens of thousands of intelligence documents he gained access to under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Price pieced his findings together with an impressive assemblage of other sources, ranging from interviews to governmental and private archival collections, together with an extensive volume of secondary literature. Price compares these documents for cross-references, similarities and influences, and unveils ties of researchers with security state institutions.
Chronologically and thematically, the book kicks off where Anthropological Intelligence ends, as it looks how US foreign policy shaped American anthropology in the first three decades after WW2. Early in the book, Price explains the structural and ideological faults he perceives that created the CIA's world-view, including how it hoped to create dependencies of newly independent countries on the US through a mixture of development aid and propaganda techniques. The 14 chapters of the book are divided into two sections. The first, shorter section, Cold War Economic Disciplinary Formations, describes the institutions, networks and political environment that made up the academic research and funding landscape in the early postwar years, much of which was 'framed by U.S. international concerns' (p. 105). The second part, Anthropological Articulations with the National Security Act, lays out in more detail the involvement of individuals and specific institutions, as well as how different forms of critique rose against the influence of the Pentagon and CIA on the discipline, as well as how the AAA's board and members dealt with this issue.
After WW2, the intelligence community still recognised the potential that anthropological expertise on foreign people and cultures possessed, and which during wartimes had been eagerly provided to them by American scientists aligned in the fight against totalitarianism and fascism. The newly established CIA perceived itself 'as an elite body harnessing the intellectual power of its citizens to gather information' (p.5). As such, it heavily advertised for academics to join its ranks and support its mission.
Partly because of loyalties to their former employers at wartime institutions (upfront part-time AAA president in 1947, Clyde Kluckhohn), and partly by probably 'misin-
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Book reviews
terpreting' America's post-war policies, so Price, many members of the AAA or the Society for Applied Anthropology willingly helped the intelligence and military community when being approached. One of these instances even involved the AAA providing the CIA with a roster of their members and their area specialisations in the early 1950s. Moreover, where the agencies were unsuccessful in recruiting scientists, they directly or indirectly infiltrated a large number of US educational facilities and funding institutions, including the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations, to gain access to researchers and their work. In many cases, the CIA influenced research outcome by supporting selected works of interest to them. Price especially describes the 'dual-use' outcome of this funded academic research, which often provided the involved academics with enough seemingly harmless research data to legitimise their civilian endeavour and make them unsuspicious of the additional side of their material which also made it interesting, and often applicable, for intelligence agencies. The hoped-for use of this research for national security could be manifold, as a study funded by the Office of Naval Research shows, ranging from psychological warfare to assisting in counterinsurgency operations (p. 59). The CIA even set up its proprietaries disguised as funding fronts. One of these, the Asia Foundation, which supported the AAA in inviting Asian anthropologists to the United States, in return for contact details of these foreign academics. Price further describes how the former assistant director of the CIA, Max Millikan, influenced the MIT Center for International Studies (CENIS) and greatly designed open and covert research, such as Project Troy, which focussed on US propaganda aimed at the Soviet Union (again with the help of Russia expert Kluckhohn). Other CENIS research initiatives were more subtle, such as Project Modjukuto, a multisite ethnography project aimed at postcolonial developments in Indonesia. Modjukuto funded Clifford Ge-ertz' fieldwork for his dissertation and book Agricultural Involution on Indonesia. Though Geertz denied being influenced by the environment that CENIS provided, his analysis, as Price puts it, 'aligned neatly' with CENIS' economists' views, 'downplaying the devastating effects of colonialism and Cold War relations of dependency' (p.97). Next to further, more known uses of anthropological knowledge for counterinsurgency measures, such as covert research for Project Camelot, the Thai Affair, or Gerald Hickey's work for RAND during the Vietnam war, Price describes many examples of individual anthropologists and archeologists with known or very probable ties with the CIA, who clandestinely gathered information under the guise of working for scientific foundations. Their scientific skills, training and networks among locals, administrators and civilian scientist communities provided them with perfect abilities and alibis to gather extensive information about their field countries. One chapter describes the funding front 'Human Ecology Fund', which channelled MK-Ultra research funds to unwitting scientists, among them anthropologists, eventually using their data to inform CIA interrogation methods. The book ends with several chapters dedicated to protesters and resistance against these uses of anthropology, as well as an evaluation of the outcome of these deliberate or unaware collaborations.
Some passages of Cold War Anthropology may seem familiar to followers of Price's studies, as the book (e.g. Chapter Eight) includes parts of his previously published articles, albeit in expanded form. Though the material presented is extensive, sometimes one does wish to have a little more background information on the many individuals and
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Anthropological Notebooks, XXIV/2, 2018
institutions named. Mainly due to its source material, the book sometimes reads as being somewhat technical, and at times slightly hastily arranged. The density of the work excuses these minor, mainly editorial lapses. A basic knowledge of American anthropology's history proves helpful at times, even though this is not just a book about anthropology, as it reaches into the history of many different academic institutions, as well as American foreign policy. All in all, Cold War Anthropology is a highly informative and in most parts thoroughly thrilling read, as one follows the author's analyses, stories, and even personal anecdotes to gain a better understanding of the power structures that influenced, and partly still influence, American anthropology's thought and ethics.
BENJAMIN HIRSCHFELD
University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
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