Twenty-five years ago, in her article "Up the Anthropologist," Laura Nader appealed for a critical repatriated anthropology that would, in studying the cultures of the powerful as well as the powerless, throw new light on processes of domination in American society and help revitalize American democracy. 1Ten years ago, in their book Anthropology asJCultural Critique, George Marcus and Michael Fischer renewed the call, this time with a postmodern more than a social democratic inflection. In 1995 -in a world marked by a wrenching intensification of capitalist accumulation and inequality, by the globalization of industrial and bureaucratic elites, by the enduring strength of the national security state, and by the growing power of new technoscientific elites in the electronics and biotechnology industries -these appeals for a critical repatriated anthropology are as relevant as ever and, in important respects, remain substantially unrealized. And now anthropology -revitalized by the return of Marxism, the eruption of feminism, and the infusion of Foucault's theories of power, to name just three developments -has new theoretical tools to apply to studying up. In this article I want to assess the progress we have made since the late 1960's in developing a critical repatriated anthropology, pointing out lacunae as well as advances, then discuss the methodological and writing problems inherent in studying up. The article draws in part on my own experience writing an ethnography of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -the nuclear weapons laboratory in California where such weapons as the MX and the neutron bomb were designed. I see the Livermore Laboratory as emblematic of exactly the kinds of sites of power that more anthropologists should be studying.In her original article Nader pointed out that, although there were good reasons to study up, there were also significant obstacles in the way. These included the prevailing attitude of disdain towards those who did fieldwork at home as well as problems of access. Since the 1960's the prevailing attitudes within the profession have shifted to a large degree so that it is now increasingly permissible to do even one's first fieldwork at home. As Marcus and Fischer observed ten years ago, the reasons for this are practical as well as intellectual:There is less funding for social science research, especially for ethnography abroad, the practical applications of which are not apparent. Host societies, protective of their nationalisms, have complicated the acquisition of research permits. And there is indeed a growing awareness in anthropology that the functions of ethnography at home are as compelling and legitimate as they have been abroad (Marcus and Fisher 1986:113).Still, if one looks at the kinds of repatriated ethnographies that have been written, in many cases anthropology's traditional taste for the marginal and exotic has not so much been transgressed as imported and transposed upon American society, leaving us with more studies of scientologists and crack dea...

Brexit and Donald Trump's election victory are symptoms of a new nationalist populism in western Europe and the United States. This political and ideological movement has arisen in reaction to reconfigurations of power, wealth, and identity that are endemic to global neoliberalism. In the United States, however, the media's dominant “blue‐collar narrative” about Trump's victory simplifies the relationship between neoliberalism and nationalist populism by ignoring the role of the petty bourgeoisie and the wealthy in Trump's coalition. An anthropology of Trump requires ethnographies of communities largely shunned by anthropologists as well as reflexivity about the unintended role of universities in producing support for Trump.

Anthropologists’ selections of topics and field sites have often been shaped by militarism, but they have been slow to make militarism, especially American militarism, an object of study. In the high Cold War years concerns about human survival were refracted into debates about innate human proclivities for violence or peace. As “new wars” with high civilian casualty rates emerged in Africa, Central America, the former Eastern bloc, and South Asia, beginning in the 1980s anthropologists increasingly wrote about terror, torture, death squads, ethnic cleansing, guerilla movements, and the memory work inherent in making war and peace. Anthropologists have also begun to write about nuclear weapons and American militarism. The “war on terror” has disturbed settled norms that anthropologists should not assist counterinsurgency campaigns, and for the first time since Vietnam, anthropologists are debating the merits of military anthropology versus critical ethnography of the military.

There is a common perception in the West that nuclear weapons are most dangerous when they are in the hands of Third World leaders. I first became interested in this perception while interviewing nuclear weapons designers for an ethnographic study of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)one of three laboratories where U.S. nuclear weapons are designed (Gusterson 1996). I made a point of asking each scientist if he or she thought nuclear weapons would be used in my lifetime. Almost all said that they thought it unlikely that the United States or the Russians would initiate the use of nuclear weapons, but most thought that nuclear weapons would probably be used-by a Third World country.The laboratory took a similar position as an institution. For example, using terminology with distinctly colonial overtones to argue for continued weapons research after the end of the Cold War, an official laboratory pamphlet said, Political, diplomatic, and military experts believe that wars of the future will most likely be "tribal conflicts" between neighboring Third World countries or between ethnic groups in the same country. While the Cold War may be over, these small disputes may be more dangerous than a war between the superpowers, because smaller nations with deep-seated grievances against each other may lack the restraint that has been exercised by the US and the USSR. The existence of such potential conflicts and the continued danger of nuclear holocaust underscore the need for continued weapons research. [LLNL 1990:1 ] Cultural Anthropology 14(1):111-143. Ill CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGYIt is not only nuclear weapons scientists who believe that nuclear weapons are much safer in the hands of the established nuclear powers than in those of Third World countries. There has long been a widespread perception among U.S. defense intellectuals, politicians, and pundits-leaders of opinion on nuclear weapons-that, while we can live with the nuclear weapons of the five official nuclear nations for the indefinite future, the proliferation of nuclear weapons to nuclear-threshold states in the Third World, especially the Islamic world, would be enormously dangerous. This orthodoxy is so much a part of our collective common sense that, like all common sense, it can usually be stated as simple fact without fear of contradiction (Geertz 1983). It is widespread in the media and in learned journals, 1 and it is shared by liberals as well as conservatives. For example, just as Kenneth Adelman, a senior official in the Reagan administration, has said that "the real danger comes from some miserable Third World country which decides to use these weapons either out of desperation or incivility" (1988), at the same time Hans Bethe-a physicist revered by many for his work on behalf of disarmament over many decades-has said, "There have to be nuclear weapons in the hands of more responsible countries to deter such use" by Third World nations (Bernard 1994, quoted in Shroyer 1998. Western alarmism about the dangers of nuclear weapons in Thi...

Toward a critical ethnography of the university AES presidential address, 2017 A B S T R A C TAnthropologists have not systematically studied universities, and ethnographies of the university focus too much on student life. The literature on the Cold War university, broadly concerned with the relationship between power and knowledge, could serve as a model for a critical anthropology of the neoliberal university. Such an anthropology would investigate various important issues-including the changing character of public and private universities, the rise of casual labor and corporate employment practices on campus, the student-debt crisis, the university's role in increasing socioeconomic inequality and class immobility, and the relationship that such disciplines as economics and political science maintain with the state and capital. [university, neoliberalism, Cold War, class, debt, adjunct, United States] Los antropólogos no han estudiado la universidad sistemáticamente, y las etnografías de la universidad se enfocan demasiado en la vida estudiantil. La literatura sobre la universidad durante la Guerra Fría, generalmente centrada en la relación entre el poder y el conocimiento, puede servir de modelo para una antropología crítica de la universidad neoliberal. Tal antropología investigaría diferentes temas importantes -incluyendo la transformación de las universidades públicas y privadas, el aumento del trabajo temporal y de las prácticas corporativas de empleo en el campus universitario, la crisis de endeudamiento estudiantil, el rol de la universidad en el agravamiento de la desigualdad social y económica y la relación que mantienen disciplinas como la economía y la ciencia política con el estado y el capital-.