New Internal Colonialism

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Critique of Anthropology

DOI: 10.1177/0308275X97017001061997; 17; 91Critique of Anthropology

Susan M. DiGiacomoThe New Internal Colonialism

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The New Internal ColonialismSusan M. DiGiacomo

Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts

Abstract&squf;Anthropologys claims not only to special insight into systems of struc-tural

inequality,but a

specialmandate to

exposeand condemn them, become

problematic in light of the disciplines studied inattention to the emergence ofa large and growing underclass of underemployed and marginal professionalswithin its own ranks. Corporate outsourcing, downsizing and union-busting have

analogues in the exploitative hiring practices of the academy, where they are

mystified by appeals to departmental and institutional loyalty, and the need tomaintain course coverage and student enrollment figures. There is evidence thatserious attempts to bring this issue to the attention of the discipline at large areunwelcome; two cases, one involving the author, are described and analyzed. Itis argued that a professional ethics worthy of the name cannot be limited to the

study and representation of ethnographic Others, but must be conceptualizedbroadly enough to encompass our dealings with our colleagues.Keywords&squf; censorship &squf; discrimination &squf; elitism &squf; hiring practices &squf; professionalethics &squf;reserve army of labor &squf; tenure

In the 11 years since I received my PhD in anthropology, Ive taught in as

many different institutions of higher learning. In 1994-5, I replaced a full-time faculty member at a four-year liberal arts college where I earned a realacademic salary, and enjoyed benefits that were also real, if limited to theterm of my nine-month contract. My colleagues were welcoming and inter-ested in my work, and the office staff were unusually considerate and

helpful. In short, I felt more real here than at most of the other placeswhere Ive held temporary positions.

At the end of the spring semester, the college gave a little reception for

faculty and staff involved in the effort to develop an urban studies curricu-lum. The students in my urban anthropology course had done a fieldresearch project of which the office of community relations was aware, as

were members of the History andAmerican Studies faculties whom I invitedto share their expertise and local knowledge with my class, but my namewas somehow omitted from the guest list. My graduate assistant, whoworked in the colleges community service program, casually mentionedthat he was on his way to the reception, assuming Id been invited, too.

Seeing my puzzled look, he reacted quickly, and gallantly offered to

accompany me there.

At the reception I met a stylish and urbane young woman faculty

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member in the art history department who taught courses on architectureand urbanism. Oh, yes, she had heard of my course. The interdisciplinary

urban studies program was off to a good start, and I might be called uponto repeat my course in the future. The college would, she hoped, be ableto develop a closer relationship with the adjuncts.

Of course, she hadnt meant to be condescending, only encouraging,and it would have been inappropriate for me to get angry. I recount thistale of a moment of humiliation not for what it reveals about me, but for

what it reveals about how academics think now; specifically, some academicswho enjoy the relative security and permanence of tenured or tenure-track

positions. For the young art historian, the adjuncts constitute a naturallyoccurring and morally unproblematic social category, its members availableto be called upon as institutional need dictates.

Anyone who enjoys even a passing acquaintance with Marxian theory -and this accounts for a fair proportion of anthropologists - should have no

difficulty in recognizing social conditions strongly reminiscent of the earlyyears of the Industrial Revolution. The adjuncts are the reserve army of(academic) labor, and institutions of higher education behave no differ-

ently towards this category of surplus labor power than do the capitalist

institutions of industrial society. But colleges and universities - and anthro-pologists as a profession - claim a higher moral standard than the marketconsiderations that motivate corporate life. Part of anthropologys moralcharter is a special responsibility toward the dispossessed and disenfran-chised ... but only, apparently, when they are ethnographic Others. Ourcollective soul-searching over the question of whether anthropology is

inherently imperialist or racist has been uncoupled from legitimate con-cerns about structures of inequality and peripheralization within our owninstitutions and profession.

Shortly after the urban studies reception, as I prepared to mark myballot for the annual elections of theAmericanAnthropologicalAssoci-ation, I read the candidates short bios and personal statements in theApril1995 issue of theAnthropology Newsletter. What caught my attention particu-larly were the statements of the candidates - all of them - for both slates ofthe Committee on Ethics. If these eight statements can be understood as

being in some sense representative of the profession, then ethical issuesarise only in relation to studying and representing Others. I am not tryingto minimize the importance of bringing ethical considerations to bear onquestions of intellectual property rights, trafficking in antiquities, new andintrusive technologies, biodiversity, or human (and animal) rights. But it isworth noting that in only one of these statements is labor relations men-tioned at all, and then only in connection with matters of concern to

archaeologists, which suggests that the candidate is thinking primarily ofthe hiring practices through which local labor is contracted to do the heavydigging.



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Since the reserve army of labor - not only in the academy, but every-where - is heavily feminized, we might expect the candidates for the Com-

mittee on the Status of Women inAnthropology to be especially sensitiveto this issue. Their statements show them to be deeply concerned - as theyshould be - about sexual harassment, prejudice based on race or sexualorientation, and the difficulties of balancing child care with professionalresponsibilities. However, regarding hiring practices that create within

departments of anthropology a class of invisible, marginal, underemployedand semi-affiliated professionals, the candidates statements are silent. JoanCassell (1995: 43) has recently argued that caste is a more appropriateterm than class, and I am inclined to agree with her.

The predicament of part-time faculty is hardly an isolated case. It is partof a much larger social process that also includes corporate downsizing and

union-busting, trends that index the collapse of the post-Second World Warsocial contract (see Kapstein, 1996 for a detailed analysis of the currentcrisis in the post-industrial economies of the world). In short, what wereonce understood to be broadly shared concerns about social equity are now

being recast as individual problems, and the academy is no ivory tower insu-lated from these forces.

Graduate student teaching assistants at Yale University have been tryingto gain the right to bargain collectively with the administration since 1990,when they found themselves suddenly faced with a significant reduction insources of funding and a new set of restrictive and punitive rules includinga provision that cut off library privileges, health benefits (for which, in anycase, graduate teaching assistants must pay, unlike other campus employ-ees who work more than 20 hours per week), and the right to register forcredits after the sixth year. In December 1995, the Graduate Employees andStudentsAssociation called for a grade strike. The response of a memberof the Yale history faculty, David Brion Davis (who teaches a course entitledThe Origins, Significance, andAbolition of New World Slavery), is typical:I consider this action outrageous, irresponsible to the students ... and

totally disloyal (quoted in Eakin, 1996: 54). The appeal to institutional

loyalty and to the sacrosanct notion that teaching is inviolable serves to

mystify an exploitatively paternalistic system, just as departmental needs tomaintain course coverage and student enrollment figures are invoked not

only to justify the hiring of adjuncts on a per-course basis, but to obscure

the fact that the labor of fully qualified professionals is being valued at onequarter of what their tenure-track colleagues are being paid for the samenumber of teaching hours.

In March 1996, The New York Times devoted an ethnographically detailed

week-long series of articles to corporate lay-offs, which have been fetishizedas the tonic that will magically restore corporate health. Corporate employ-ees whose colleagues have been deselected, displaced, discontinued,Inonretained or severed experience something like survivor guilt and

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rage at the arbitrary injustice of it all. Curiously, I sense no such anger inthe academy or in the professional associations to which I belong. The pro-

fession needs to recognize that ethics is also a matter of howwe

treat our

colleagues. The claim that anthropology not only achieves special insightinto systems of structural inequality, but has a special mandate to analyzeand expose them (and condemn them, to judge by several recent resolu-tions approved by theAAA membership) rings hollow indeed whentenured faculty continue to accept what Donald Unger ( 1995: 117) has aptlytermed academic apartheid.

There are indications that serious attempts to bring this issue to theattention of the discipline at large will be met with incomprehension and

obfuscation, if not with outright contempt.According to its own statementof mission, theAnthropology Newsletter, published monthly during the aca-demic year and supported by the dues of allAmericanAnthropological

Association members, claims to advance the discipline and foster the useof anthropological knowledge in addressing human problems through,among other things, discussions of issues of vital importance to the disci-

pline. However, attempts to stimulate discussion in the pages of the Newslet-ter on the production of professional marginality within the discipline have

been attenuated or silenced by the editor and editorial board on twooccasions of which I have personal knowledge; there may be others.

Joan Cassells case (documented in Cassell, 1995) is most instructive,suggesting as it does that privileged anthropologists, much like privilegedpeople everywhere, avoid scrutinizing too closely a system from which theybenefit. In 1992, theAnthropology Newsletter did, in fact, publish her essayConfessions of a MarginalAnthropologist: Class and Caste inAnthro-

pology, revealing that despite a long and productive scholarly career, shehad never had a paid job in anthropology, but - to the authors surprise on

seeing the published version of her manuscript- minus its subtitle, and withAnthropologist changed to Woman. When she received some 58 lettersin response, all detailing experiences similar to or worse than her own,Cassell devised a Questionnaire for Invisible or MarginalAnthropologiststhat would, she was assured, be published in the special issue of the News-letter prepared for theAssociations annual meeting.Again, an unpleasantsurprise: not only was publication of the questionnaire delayed until afterthe annual meeting, but its title was changed to AAA Survey of Under-

employed and UnemployedAnthropologists, its subheadings altered, andthe entire document mendaciously presented as a response devised by theAmericanAnthropologicalAssociation to the resolution passed the previ-ous year in support of unemployed or underemployed anthropologists(Cassell, 1995: 44).

My own case is of interest here as well. In June 1995, following myexperiences with the college urban studies reception and the roster ofcandidates for office in theAssociation, I submitted to theAnthropology



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Newsletter an earlier version of this essay, focusing on the connectionbetween professional ethics (a topic frequently explored in the pages of the

Newsletter through anonymous and/or hypothetical cases) and professionalhiring practices. By lateAugust, I had not yet received so much as an

acknowledgement, so I telephoned the Newsletter editor. She suggestedcutting down my 2,000-word manuscript to letter-to-the-editor length (thatis, not more than 500 words) to give it greater impact. When I declinedto do so, I was told that the soonest publication date in the Commentarysection would be sometime in the spring. Fine, I said, Ill be happy to wait.

January came and went, and in early February I sent an email messageinquiring about my manuscript.After two weeks without a reply, I tried

again.After two more weeks of silence, I wrote to the editor by certifiedmail, pointing out that it is, after all, in the nature of newsletters to publishtimely material in a timely fashion, and requesting a clear statement of herintentions with respect to my manuscript. My answer came by email.

Attempting to shift editorial responsibility to me by suggesting that the

delay could have been avoided if I had cooperated with her recommenda-tion to publish a much-abbreviated version of my commentary in letterform, the editor went on to say that my manuscript was still in the active

category and would be considered for publication once an opening wasfound. (The May 1996 issue - the last one of the year - was published, pre-dictably, without my Commentary.) The implicit claim here is nothing lessthan astonishing: that editors do not plan publications, but simply wait for

openings to be found. The honesty of a simple letter of rejection andreturn ofmy manuscript would have been preferable to this clumsy attemptat passive censorship.

Taking up the matter with the president of theAmericanAnthropo-logicalAssociation, to whom I sent copies of all the relevant correspon-dence, resulted only in a brief note stating agreement with the most recentrecommendations of the editor (indefinite waiting for my manuscript tobe considered) and thanking me, with breathtaking condescension, for

my interest in theAmericanAnthropologicalAssociation andAnthropologyNezusletter (which, I should point out, comes at the cost of $75 - soon to beraised to $100 - per year in membership dues).

The 1993 Society forAppliedAnthropology annual meetings includeda panel on Elitism and Discrimination withinAnthropology. Hans Baer,

the co-organizer and chair, had become interested in the problem of elitismwithin the discipline through his own experience of the stigmatizing effectsof earning a PhD at a non-elite institution (the University of Utah) and

teaching at another (the University ofArkansas), and Joan Cassells 1992

Commentary provided a catalyst for the panel. Noting the increasingly cor-

porate-style structure of theAmericanAnthropologicalAssociation, Baer

suggested (1995: 43) that it was time anthropologists conducted researchon our own associations, conferences, pecking orders, departments, and

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mythology, as well as on the colleges and universities within which many,but by no means all, of us work. Estellie Smith, who never minces words,

did not hesitate to identify (1995: 53) theessence

of the problem: coreand

periphery in anthropology, a clear allusion to Michael Hechters by-nowclassic work, Internal Colonialism ( 975). Why, she asks ( 1995: 54), do we

appear incapable of addressing the issue [of the existence and persistenceof an academic underclass] given that this seems to be a prohlem in appliedanthropology, not unlike those we say we have the expertise to address?

Laura Nader, responding to the participants, saw fit to suggest that pro-fessional marginalization might be a blessing in disguise because anthro-

pologists who have no place in academia, by force or by choice [are we to

believe that it doesnt matter which?], are actively engaged with phenom-ena that they cannot treat as spectacle or performance or sum up as dis-course (Nader, 1995: 53). From her highly privileged position as a tenured

professor in one of the premier departments of anthropology, she is, ineffect, using her marginal colleagues as a stick with which to beat those ofher privileged colleagues - Geertz, Marcus and Fisher, anyone who useswords like subaltern or cites Foucault and other European intellectuals- whose ethnographic style she dislikes enough to condemn as mere trendi-

ness or, what is worse, mystification and forms of intimidation and flightfrom the concrete life of the people they purport to study (Nader,1995: 53). This approach trivializes entirely reasonable questions concern-

ing the invidious distinction between theoretical and applied work as amechanism for the creation of intellectual elites (Singer, 1995: 46).

The response of another member of the audience to this same SfAA

panel was particularly telling: I dont understand why you all sit here andwhine. Why dont you just go out and get a job? (quoted in Johnston,1995: 48). If that doesnt sound familiar, perhaps youre not paying suf-ficient attention to the rhetoric emanating from Capitol Hill lately. Just sayno to teenage pregnancy; just get off welfare and find a job; just stay on

your side of the border where you belong and dont expect hardworkingAmerican taxpayers to feed, house, clothe, educate and heal you.

I would prefer to believe that anthropologists are not really Republicanwolves dressed up in multiculturalist sheeps clothing. The problem of

unequal relations of power within our discipline in particular, and withinthe academy in general, is as compelling and as refractory as it is in some

ethnographic elsewhere, and equally in need of serious ethical scrutinyand analysis.

References

Baer, HansA. (1995) Commentary: Elitism and Discrimination WithinAnthro-

pology, Practicing Anthropology 17(1-2): 42-3.



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Cassell, Joan (1992) Confessions of a Marginal Woman: Caste and Class inAnthro-pology,Anthropology Newsletter33(3): 32, 21.

Cassell,

Joan(1995) Caste and Class in

Anthropology, PracticingAnthropology17(1-2): 43-4.Eakin, Emily (1996) Walking the Line, Lingua Franca March-April: 52-60.Hechter, Michael (1975) Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National

Development, 1536-1966. Berkeley: University of California Press.Johnston, Barbara (1995) Notes and Reflections on Life in the Margins, Practicing

Anthropology 17(1-2): 46-8.

Kapstein, Ethan B. (1996) Workers and the World Economy, Foreign AffairsMay-June: 16-37.

Nader, Laura (1995) Grumblings about Elitism inAnthropology, Practicing Anthro-

pology 17(1-2): 52-3.Singer, Merrill (1995) Reflections on Elitism inAmericanAnthropology, Practic-ingAnthropology 17 (1-2): 44-6.

Smith, M. Estellie (1995) Core and Periphery inAnthropology, PracticingAnthro-pology17(1-2): 53-5.

Unger, Donald N.S. (1995) AcademicApartheid: The Predicament of Part-timeFaculty, Thought andAction 11(1): 117-20.

&squf; Susan M. DiGiacomo is an adjunct professor in the Departmentof Anthropology,University of Massachusetts. She has conducted research in Catalonia (Spain) on

nationalism and language planning, and on cancer epidemiology and cancer treat-ment ; and in the United States on the long-term experience of cancer survivors.

Address: Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,MA 01003, USA. [email:[email protected]]


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