Global Outlaws...Global Bullshit

So I'm supposed to be writing an essay comparing the "ethnography" Global Outlaws with the theoretical works of the previous century of anthropological thought. There's only one teeny tiny problem. Global Outlaws has no theoretical model. It's not even a freaking ethnography. Okay, two problems. The book is a shallow, cliched, and frankly juvenile examination of Angola and the crime that runs rampant as a result of the ongoing civil war. With that one sentence description I've done nearly as much as Dr. Nordstrom does throughout her entire book. Oh, I also should point out (to get all of her points across) that war is bad, orphans have it rough, and people who make money are bad.

This isn't to say I don't agree with her points: I'm as leftist as they come; I do believe that money is a corrupting force in this world. I, however, don't see the need to pretend that this is any deep insight. To even put this book in the same sentence as innovators and heroes of the field like Boas, Levi-Strauss, Durkheim, or Radcliffe-Brown is an insult to both these authors and the field in general.

The book is an attempt to make anthropology relevant again, as anthropology has (through its own design and guilt) withdrawn to the arena of academia. The first half of the 20th century was marked by anthropologists aiding governments with reports that are now considered harmful, racist, and frankly completely wrong. The result were governments attempting to completely wipe out people and cultures that didn't "fit" with the Western world (such as attempts to sterilize Native Americans, or to actively destroy their language and cultures). These are some of the worse atrocities that have been committed, and anthropologists feel the sting of their involvement. Now, some anthropologists are itching for a seat at the table again as they observe cultural ignorance causing unnecessary flares in diplomacy and outright failures in regions of the world where the "world community" doesn't know how to interact.

While attempting to rejoin the world is a noble goal: this book fails totally in every aspect. There is not a single piece of research that was done that a reporter could not do. In fact there was not a single element that you, my lovely reader, could not have researched by searching CNN archives. As for structure, she has elected for a narrative, to give to give the piece "zest" and relevance. Unfortunately she stole the narrative from "Oliver Twist," and she stole it poorly. Not many people are Charles Dickens, and Dr. Nordstrom certainly isn't. By page 40 we'd been introduced to the bright and handsome street boy who has to break some minor laws who ultimately disappears from the narrative (the Artful Dodger), the merchant who allows the boy to sell smuggled cigarettes for profit, but also to ensure the boy's survival (Fagan) and the corrupt government official who exploits the system for profit while his dependents suffer in poverty (the Beadle, Mr. Bumble).

There is no ethnography done. No participant observation. No data collected. Instead Dr. Nordstram apparently traipsed from town to town, interviewed single sources for each archetype (or at least reported the most juicy only) and moved on. This is NOT ethnography. The desire to tell a narrative can NOT be allowed to drive how much interviewing you do and which interviews to report. At the very least report that you did other interviews, but have chosen not to go into detail about them. There are no citations, the only direct quotes are of the author herself (the interviewees responses are given in large blocks of amazingly detailed, charming, and complex paragraphs...clearly paraphrased and parsed into colloquial and witty English).

In short this book is bullshit. Margret Meade and Ruth Benedict wrote ethnographies that were popular with the public, and while their information and methods are largely discounted today, at the time they were state of the art. Anthropology does not need to be dumbed down to a level where it is devoid of anything resembling anthropology, methodology, information, or insight besides "poverty is bad." And now, I have to write 8 more pages of bullshit on this bullshit book.

Bullshit.