Studying the American Tribe

When two well-dressed strangers turned up at a sleek apartment building on Chicago's Gold Coast, the doorman called the cops. The men explained they were anthropologists from the University of Chicago, anxious to study rich families. "The policeman couldn't believe it," said one of the men. "He looked first for my Encyclopaedia Britannica, then for my vacuum cleaner and then asked what was the gimmick."

The gimmick is that anthropologists, after decades of following Margaret Mead to Samoa and Bronislaw Malinowski to the Trobriand Islands, have staked out new territory--the nonexotic cities and rural byways of the U.S. Indeed, scores of sessions at last month's American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in Mexico City were devoted to the problems and rewards of studying U.S. subcultures. These may range from Greek-Americans and company towns to female athletes and Appalachian snake cultists.

The golden age of anthropology, as many older scholars wistfully call it, is now over. Increased concern with domestic social problems is part of the reason for the turn away from glamorous globetrotting. So is the growing shortage of primitive peoples, many of them now part of politically touchy developing nations which have set severe restrictions on visiting anthropologists. These days a candidate had better have outstanding credentials, the ability to prove he is not with the CIA, eagerness to share his findings with the host country and a total absence of subtle colonial attitudes. Even at home, the growing militance of American Indians is making traditional tribal research by white scholars more difficult.

No Jobs. Just at a time when foreign opportunities are decreasing, the profession is turning out Ph.D.s at a record rate--1,476 in the U.S. in the past five years, more than in the previous two decades. Traditionally, 90% of anthropologists return to the campus, but now colleges are cutting back sharply. Even by slowing the flow of Ph.D.s, colleges are expected to be able to employ only 25% of American anthropologists by 1990. At last month's A.A.A. meeting, President Ernestine Friedl of Duke University gingerly suggested to the 2,845 attending anthropologists that they look for work at junior colleges and in practical research--"directions for which the majority of us are ill prepared." Margaret Mead concurs about the need for practicality. In an interview with TIME Senior Correspondent Ruth Galvin, Mead charged that anthropologists are producing "academic versions of themselves and aren't oriented to things that need to be done in this world. They have spent too much tune discussing how many cross-cousins could dance on the head of a pin."

More than ever, sessions at the Mexico City meeting seemed designed to nudge scholars into practical fields--environmental impact studies, population anthropology, natural-resources research and maritime ethnology (studies of fishermen often sponsored by the fishing industry). Said former A.A.A. President George Foster: "Unless we are able to train people to do new kinds of research and break down our false pride, we will wither on the vine."

Focus on Ghettos. While there are probably fewer than 150 anthropologists working full time in industry or Government, an increasing number are following the federal and corporate dollar, helping to plan new towns, organizing farmers' markets, devising recreation programs, advising law schools and studying employee relations. James P. Spradley of Macalester College, St. Paul, had a hand in changing Seattle laws on alcohol abuse by showing that traditional laws enforced rather than deterred alcoholism. Michael Agar of the New York State Drug Abuse Control Commission is examining the impact of methadone maintenance on behavior patterns of New York City addicts.

The city is the traditional turf of sociologists, and some seem huffy that anthropologists are descending on their ethnic groups instead of padding off to Samoa where they belong. "I used to tell my students the main difference between sociologists and anthropologists was that sociologists study white people," says Rutgers Anthropologist Lionel Tiger. "Now it's no longer true." There are other differences: cultural anthropologists are trained to immerse themselves in a culture until its patterns emerge. Most sociologists work with survey research techniques and statistics that policy planners insist on.

Their professional training --to look at a culture as a whole--has led anthropologists to focus on various ghettos, partly because the ethnic populations can plausibly be regarded as "tribes," and to shy away from research about specific problems. Yet in a previous crisis, World War II, when many foreign sites were closed and the nation needed practical help, anthropologists rose to the occasion. They gave survival courses to pilots who might be shot down in foreign lands, did public-attitude surveys at home, and in one famous bit of advice, convinced the Government that Emperor Hirohito should not be vilified; he would be necessary to end the war.

After the war, however, says George Foster, "we blew it, because anthropology has always looked on applied work as second-class." Now the profession, which has always had an upper-class, literary cast, is being forced into practical studies, mostly at home. U.S. anthropology, it seems, must recognize that the primary tribe to study is the Americans.

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