The New Yorker’s archives dating back to 2007 are free for the rest of summer as part of their experiment in digital marketing and advertising.

After the free period, the magazine will analyze their website data to determine the conditions by which non-subscribers can access their content. I’ve highlighted some full text articles available to read through this clever and well-marketed promotion.

The magazine has a long history of engagement with the discipline of anthropology, such as this profile of Margaret Mead in 1961 (‘It’s All Anthropology’), Napoleon Chagnon in 2000 (by Patrick Tierney, ‘The Fierce Anthropologist’), Paul Farmer in 2000 (‘The Good Doctor’), and Franz Boas in 2004 (‘The Measure of America’).

Looking through what New Yorker has made available through the archives, one can trace out the major issues that anthropologists had to engage and contend with, and that continue to challenge us today. From battles over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the use of anthropologists in the Human Terrain System, and to defining what anthropology is and who performs and produces it.

The writer assigned most frequently to the New Yorker’s anthropology beat is Elizabeth Kolbert. She has written about Carolina Izquierdo’s research on youth (‘Spoiled Rotten’), Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer on sleep problems (‘Up All Night’), and Svante Pääbo’s work on Neanderthal genetics (‘Sleeping with the Enemy’).

While generally speaking articles in the New Yorker provide an overview of the various positions of camps on either side of a debate long after it’s flashpoint for the benefit of a general audience, sometimes something they publish generates even more discourse and controversy about the worlds it touches on. Examples of this are Jane Kramer’s article on Nadia Abu El Haj, as well as Jared Diamond’s piece on vengeance in Papua New Guinea.

On to the articles:

The Petition: Israel, Palestine, and a tenure battle at Barnard

Jane Kramer, April 14, 2008

Kramer writes about the Barnard faculty’s fight to grant tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj in the face of public pressure and opposition. At the time this was written, most of my seminars were at Barnard and so it was interesting to observe my professors and advisors in the context of national media attention regarding the merits of tenure for Abu El-Haj—something that faculty and others in the discipline should really have the final say on.

This article was written prior to Abu El-Haj being granted tenure by Barnard and Columbia. It’s hard enough to get tenure as a new academic, and harder still with Barnard and Columbia’s Byzantine tenure process, and I can imagine it’s even more fraught when what you study becomes the topic of national debate. It was gratifying to see Barnard president (and anthropologist) Judith Shapiro praise Abu El-Haj in the article. This act served to counterbalance the perceptions of Shapiro’s tenure as president after she stepped down. These days the Israeli/Palestinian conflict continues to be a minefield in Morningside Heights.

From the article:

“I’m not a public intellectual. I’m drawn to archives, to disciplines where the evidence sits for a while. I don’t court controversy.”

Annals of Anthropology: Vengeance is Ours: What can tribal societies tell us about our need to get even?

Jared Diamond, April 21, 2008

This came out while I was an undergrad and generated a lot of debate at my university and throughout the world of anthropology, starting with the post on Savage Minds by Alex Golub (a full recap here). The debates were about the validity of Jared Diamond’s research, and who could claim the mantle of anthropological research, as well as the usefulness of the categories of tribal and modern.

To me, as a student of anthropology, the things I was assigned to read and study in my courses and what was happening in mainstream media like the New Yorker often didn’t cross paths and in this instance it did. It was fascinating to see it play out and to have scholars and critics inside and outside the discipline like philosopher Jon Mandle writing in Crooked Timber, and really showed me how vibrant and timely academic debate can be.

After an investigation of the the article’s claims by Rhonda Roland Shearer (the widow of Stephen Jay Gould), Jared Diamond (UCLA) and the publisher of the New Yorker were sued for defamation by two of the PNG subjects in the article, but Diamond and the publisher stood by the story. The suit was dismissed in 2010, “withdrawn by mutual consent after the sudden death of their lawyer,” according to the New York Observer.

Michael Balter wrote up the scholarly debates around Vengeance is Ours in Science .

Knowing the Enemy: Can social scientists redefine the “war on terror”?

George Packer, December 18, 2006

I think George Packer’s piece provides great insight on why it is that a few anthropologists have come to be involved in what is known in the military field as ‘Global War on Terror’ or GWOT.

Let’s set aside the fact that Packer remarked on the hairstyle of anthropologist Montgomery McFate, and note well how he excerpts one of McFate’s articles in Joint Force Quarterly, which has become eerily prescient when viewed in hindsight in light of the ISIS insurgency in Iraq:

‘Once the Sunni Ba’thists lost their prestigious jobs, were humiliated in the conflict, and got frozen out through de-Ba’thification, the tribal network became the backbone of the insurgency. The tribal insurgency is a direct result of our misunderstanding the Iraqi culture.’

Finally, there’s this great line which should be familiar to anthropologists regarding political anthropologist and Australian military officer David Kilcullen, who claims that the global counterinsurgency against GWOT is first and foremost an information war:

The first tip is “Know Your Turf”: “Know the people, the topography, economy, history, religion and culture. Know every village, road, field, population group, tribal leader, and ancient grievance. Your task is to become the world expert on your district.”

Paint Bombs: David Graeber’s “The Democracy Project” and the anarchist revival

Kelefa Sanneh, May 13, 2013

Kelefa’s piece on former Yale anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber (now at Goldsmith’s) begins with a demonstration that occurred on August 2 prior to the occupation of Wall Street in the Financial District of Manhattan. He (mis)characterizes the demonstration as being led by Workers World Party (it was in fact organized by New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts) in order to contrast WWP’s organizing styles (‘vertical’ in David Graeber’s terms,) with Graeber’s preferred political mode (‘horizontal’). Having attended the demonstration myself, my observation was that the majority of people who were in the streets were from labor unions, along with a smattering of the old guard left and young radical anarchists. This is a common ratio for New York City demonstrations. Still, this is a great piece on Graeber, as well as the Occupy movement.

Kelefa on Graeber:

‘Early in “The Democracy Project,” he describes being at a demonstration in London that protested government budget cuts and corporate tax breaks. He remembers thinking, “It feels a bit unsettling watching a bunch of anarchists in masks outside Topshop, lobbing paint bombs over a line of riot cops, shouting, ‘Pay your taxes!’ ” Then he admits that he was one of the paint bombers.’

Further Reading

The Interpreter: Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?
John Colapinto, April 16, 2007

Colapinto details the controversial research by anthropologist Dan Everett on Pirahã language which challenges Chomskyian linguistic theories.

Colapinto writes that Everett’s work “remained relatively obscure until early in 2005, when he posted on his Web site an article titled “Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Pirahã,” which was published that fall in the journal Cultural Anthropology.” Colapinto’s piece was later anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing.

Don’t Shoot: A Radical Approach to the Problem of Gang Violence
John Seabrook, June 22, 2009

On the implementation of Operation Ceasefire, the program developed by David M. Kennedy (John Jay) to curb gang violence. Seabrook chronicles the successful implementation of the program in Cincinatti. It was found to have reduce street group member-related homicides in the city. From George Kelling in the article, on David Kennedy:

‘Cops put on a tough front about crime, but they really do care, and David speaks with passion, and with the credibility that comes from spending hours in the back of squad cars, so cops respond.’

Seeing and Believing: Experiences with Evangelical Congregations
Joan Acocella, April 2, 2012

In which Joan Acocella writes patronizingly of Tanya Luhrmann’s book “When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God” thusly:

If, in the end, she tries to resolve the question of her attitude toward evangelism by saying that she, too, came to know God, because she began to weep and pray at Vineyard gatherings—an experience that seems to me no different from crying at a sad movie (it wouldn’t butter any parsnips with the Pope or, I would guess, many evangelical pastors)—it is wrong to make trouble over this. She has addressed a subject that most other people would never touch. We should thank her.

Sleeping with the Enemy: What Happened between the Neanderthals and us?
Elizabeth Kolbert, August 15, 2011

Kolbert examines on efforts in part by Svante Pääbo (Max Planck Institute) to sequence the Neanderthal genome.

Dr. Garbage
Ben McGrath, November 13, 2006

Talk of the Town piece on Robin Nagle’s research on the New York City Department of Sanitation. Nagle is the anthropologist-in-residence of the department.

Spoiled Rotten: Why Do Kids Rule the Roost?
Elizabeth Kolbert, July 2, 2012

Kolbert takes a look at child rearing in the United States through the work of medical anthropologist Carolina Izquierdo (UCLA), and linguistic anthropologist Elinor Ochs (UCLA) who published Responsibility in Childhood: Three Developmental Trajectories in the journal Ethos. The journal article documented child rearing and development between Matsigenka families and families in Los Angeles.

Utopian for Beginners: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented.
Joshua Foer, December 24, 2012

On Ithkuil, a constructed language created by John Quijada

‘What if there were one single language that combined the coolest features from all the world’s languages?’