FORUM

Expert Knowledge: First World Peoples, Consultancy, and Anthropology

Edited by Barry Morris and Rohan Bastin

INTRODUCTION
Rohan Bastin and Barry Morris

The essays in this forum collection are concerned primarily with the application of expert knowledge in fields where there is the expectation of considerable cultural, social, and political consequence for human populations, as a result of state, corporate, or non-governmental organizational action. The essays here are, with a couple of exceptions, written by anthropologists whose knowledgeinsofar as it may be distinct from others in the social sciencesis based conventionally in a methodology of long-term fieldwork of a small-scale, faceto-face kind, and founded in theoretical orientations which are sensitive to cultural and social difference. Anthropology has traditionally questioned theories and opinions developed in zones of metropolitan dominance, usually Western. Its practitioners have often made it their point, regardless of their politics, and often because of the circumstances by which they construct their knowledge, to question what may be described as official theory and opinion. Anthropology as it has historically developed has been constituted in the mode of what may be called 'critique.' This, perhaps, has been its value, a value which depends upon its traditions of long-term immersion in the field, and its investigation of difference as a key problematic. While anthropologists engaging in practical work as anthropologists must usually forgo many of the advantages of their conventional methodology, we consider that the legitimacy of their work is founded in the reference they and others make to this anthropological tradition, and to knowledge constituted through it. This is so, even despite sharp criticism of the tradition by numerous anthropologists. What we refer to as anthropological convention is the
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ground of anthropological professional legitimacy in the overall field of the practice of expert knowledge which, of course, engages a great many agents who accredit their work through particular professional qualification. What can be described as the professionalization of anthropology is, to a large degree, a function of the increased involvement of anthropologists in applied or practical work for agencies that, in themselves, are not committed to the idea of anthropology as this exists as myth or fact. The professionalization of anthropology through practical engagement is a major force underpinning the reformulations of the nature of the anthropological project. In some way or another, anthropology has always been engaged practically. The link between anthropology and colonial or imperial hegemonic practice has been long noted and thoroughly critiqued, both within and outside anthropological circles The continuity of such complicity in the contemporary engagement of anthropologists now as expert advisers is well-noted (see Bastin 2003; Kapferer 2000), although the global political climate may be more tolerant of this fact. This is so because the world is, once again, in the age of Empire (see Hardt and Negri 2000), whose political economic projects are legitimated in terms of Human Rights which, despite their obvious virtues, are not altogether distinct from the Christian missionizing civilizational ideals that masked earlier imperial ventures. The problematics of such complicity must be a consideration in an anthropology committed increasingly to expert advice. It is all the more so in the contemporary circumstances of postmodernity. In many ways, the current professionalization of anthropology, the redrawing of its project, revisions of its methodologythe situation of postmodernity itself, and what have become its defining ideologies (the retraction of state power, the celebration of popular subjectivities, the individualist surpassing of the limitations of both culture and nature, the open horizonal stance)is, as Gramsci might have noted, organic to the contemporary global political and economic formation of Empire. No scientific or intellectual discipline is separable from the political and economic context to which it gives rise and to which it ultimately refers. This is especially so for the human and social sciences and debates that have been pursued within them, of the kind which oppose the 'pure' to the 'applied,' the abstract to the real, are disingenuous, to say the least. None of the essays in this collection subscribes to such a discourse, save to recognize it as being one of fatuous futility (see Janes, this collection). Insofar as the debate has been conducted recently, it descends far too easily into a name calling where the parties seem to be engaging in a struggle to possess the 'moral' or 'intellectual' high ground (e.g., Strathern and Stewart 2001). The raison d'etre of the following essays is different. They are written from various perspectives and positions within the overall field of expert advice involving anthropological knowledge, or relevant to an anthropological interest in cultural and social crisis (as in the case of personal and social trauma attendant on war or communicable disease such as HIV/AIDS). Furthermore, they place into comparative relation, issues relating to the application of knowledge

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in different political and economic regimes of discourse. The anthropological consultant in state-defined and regulated land claims of indigenous populations reveals implications and limitations on the construction and use of knowledge that is potentially distinct from the anthropologist who engages a professional competence in the field, for example, of NGO (Non Government Organization) humanitarian work under the aegis of global bodies connected with the World Bank or United Nations. One point of this collection, therefore, is to indicate the diversity of problematics that may attach to the engagement of anthropological expertise. We stress that consultancy or expert advice must vary in its consequence and implications, dependent upon the situation in which it is engaged and the comparative approach opened up here is alive to this fact. A vital dimension of applied knowledge in all fields must relate to the ethics or morality of practice. The formulation of codes of ethics or practice is associated typically with professionalization, and it is not surprising in this era of the increased consumption of professional and expert knowledge that the attempt to develop ethical codes has grown exponentially. This is especially notable in the universities whose conventional procedures for authorizing or condemning scholarly practice have, by and large, been abandoned (new criteria of 'excellence' are constantly being devised). Once virtually mini-states, universities have increasingly been reconfigured as 'knowledge corporations' in a way that is organic to the postmodern condition, which is largely being determined after the American model, the principal globalizing force of Empire. The knowledge corporation can be described as an organization of professional agents (now released from the regulatory control of disciplines) whose codes of ethics and new morality equips them with some of the protections and instruments of trust to participate In the risky world of capitalist and entrepreneurial activity upon which the contemporary university must be re-founded. That is, universities (especially in Europe, Australia and Asia) are now less-secured financially by the state, and must realize themselves more evidently as independent capitalist managerial organizations. Godes of ethics do regulate practice (and not merely in the interests of the market). But, in a larger sense, they do not necessarily render practice ethical, in the sense of protecting the interests or facilitating the life circumstances of those subjects they may be intended to serve. They may support a degree of professional ignorance or blindness to the consequence of certain kinds of professional practice. Ultimately, codes of ethics can be more protective of professional or corporate consumers rather than those for whom the experts and well-positioned clients (an interesting word demanding deconstruction) are making decisions. This is potentially the situation in the circumstances of an increasingly professionalized anthropology, or human or social science, whose agents are now able to do 'great damage' as a consequence of their professionalization and their commitment to participation in the global market. While codes of ethics are important, it is perhaps crucial that anthropologists explore, perhaps even more critically than before, the conditions and difficulties of their practice.

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It is imperative that anthropologists critically explore the conditions of their practice, both to determine the difficulties and limitations to their ethical practice which must finally be the interests of those human subjectsgenerally powerless in the face of ever new formations and transmutations of dominating political and economic force and potencyknowledge about whom they profess. Furthermore, such critical exploration is vital in the circumstances of the various reformulations of the anthropological project that the professionalization of anthropology in this postmodern century is likely to bring. The issue of expert advice focuses attention on two critical problems. Firstly, it is alive to the political and economic changes within which anthropology as an idea, discipline or practice is reproduced. The increase of anthropologists in the role of advisors demands a thorough and ongoing critical understanding of the political and economic environment in which they are working. To refuse such consideration can only be intellectually and even pragmatically irresponsible. It may even subvert the possibility of defining the circumstances of ethical professional practice. Secondly, the issue of expert advice directs attention to major changes in the anthropological project itself. We would suggest that some of the key intellectual aims of anthropologyaims which give anthropology its ultimate raison d'etreare not necessarily negated in the course of its increasingly pragmatic enterprise, subordinated as this may be to global interests of a market kind. Nonetheless, there are potential areas of conflict, and these must be openly addressed. The professionalization of anthropology could assist anthropologists in more sharply defining their aims. But there is a risk that some of the aims (e.g., a critical concern to arrive at an understanding of the nature of different realities) could be endangered if some kind of distinction is not made between professional advisory practice, on the one hand, and the pursuit of ultimate questions, on the other hand, which direct the production of anthropological knowledge and its relative distinction in the understanding of human being. Anthropology is not to be reduced to ethnography, fieldwork, or the mere collection of facts in out-of-the-way places to which occasionally the debate about the importance of the anthropological turn to practical use sometimes displays. We remark at the outset that consultancy is not a singular kind of practice. It varies, obviously, with regard to the problem at hand, and more significantly, according to the political and economic regime under which it operates. The diversity of consultancy practice has informed this collection of essays, concerned with such practice in different political and economic contexts, which manifest the distinct demands and limitations placed upon it. It is through such a comparative grasp that the problematic of consultancy as a contemporary phenomenon can be approached. The essays address the problematic of consultancy and NGOs as a contemporary phenomenon which exists in a number of distinct sites within different political and economic contexts. Some contributors highlight the relationship between NGOs and the state. It is not simply a matter of this or that NGO (replete with consultants) versus this or that government (often replete with its

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own consultants and NGOs), but a process mediated by conflicts and squabbles forged by a new kind of state hand in hand with what Nash (in this forum) describes as "transnational civil society" and Hardt and Negri (2000) call "Empire." Nash's essay considers the struggles for autonotny of the Zapatistas, and the role of NGOs in the context of the "militarization of civil society" by the Mexican state. The changes Nash describes underscore the fact that we are dealing with a process of transmutation of the modem state whereby NGOs and consultants stand in a potentially ambivalent relationship. The state may stand in opposition to NGOs and consultants or may become an extension of the bureaucratic legal apparatus of government. To emphasize the latter point, we conclude the forum with the essay by Roland Kapferer on the emergence of control society as this is marked by the era of the consultant. By contrast, Henrikson, in a more comparative essay of indigenous peoples, views the consultancy task of anthropologists and NGOs as a radical one, "when it aims at instituting systematic changes in the state." He draws attention, for example, to the "radical job" performed by anthropologists who formed the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) in response to atrocities committed against indigenous peoples of South America and later in Africa. The essays of Nash, Henrikson, Ramos, Robins, Daly, and Morris form a group of discrete studies primarily focused on consultancies conducted internally to particular nation states. The essays focus on the fates of displaced and/or emergetit indigenous minority groups, and the role of anthropologists and NGOs in state responses to indigenous community demands for recognition or autonomy as they negotiate a space within nation states. Ramos considers the contemporary struggles of indigenous peoples in Brazil. More particularly, Ramos considers the changing relationship of anthropologists to indigenous people from the 1980s, marked by the emergence of some two hundred indigenous associations, demanding acknowledgment and reciprocity with ethnographers in achieving their social goals. Robins considers the social, economic, and political position of the San in South Africa. He considers the place of the San in the politics of a post-apartheid world, and the role of the consultant working with a displaced minority group who were used as part of apartheid's 'dirty war' against the SWAPO and the ANC. Daly concerns the role of the consultant workitig with the "constitutionally landless" indigenous peoples of Canada. His essay is drawn from his work as a consultant for the Gitksan and Witsuwit'en First Nations in the major land rights case in northern British Columbia. He draws attention to the paradox confronted by those who work on aboriginal land rights, who must be "dispassionate and pursue with precision the facts before us" but, at the same time, recognize that we work within a "financial colonial system" which places constraints on research, and that those we work with "etijoy minimum empowerment in society." Similarly, Morris considers the "constitutionally landless" indigenous peoples of Australia, and the application of the Native Title legislation that followed the legal abandonment of the principle of terra nullius in the 1992 Mabo decision. The legislation similarly requires Indigenous Australians to demonstrate the authenticity of

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their claims to land, through complicated and time-consuming legal processes that cannot be expedited without the extensive participation of legal professionals, archaeologists, and anthropologists. Anthropology legitimates the legal process with expert testimony, precisely as that legal process shifts the nature of anthropological inquiry, and in the Australian context, for minimal returns to the indigenous people. By contrast, Wedel draws attention to the major differences between consultancies that operate nationally, where one expects a common set of cultural expectations, and those that operate internationally, where the rules and cultural expectations differ, and such practices can operate below or beyond the scope of public scrutiny or regulation. Her essay concentrates on the role of economic advisers and non-government sector responses to the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and the proliferation of "nation building projects" in the new nations of Central and Eastern Europe. Wedel, Weine et al., and Janes's contributions revolve around the ethics and practices of international NGOs operating in a global context. Weine et al. consider humanitarian interventions in Kosova that seek to build civil societies and democratic governments in the aftermath of genocide and war. They seek to consider humanitarian intervention and human rights agendas, where there is no common set of cultural expectations, and yet seek to impose their own agendas rather than facilitate local initiatives. Janes shows in his account of public health in post-communist Mongolia that there is a difference between simply studying the effectiveness of health care and doing the same research on behalf of an international organization such as the Asian Development Bank. Importantly, his essay makes the salient point that not all applied anthropology is consuhancy. Consultant practice is being formed under the conditions of transformations of a global nature in governing political and economic institutions. Kapferer, in the final essay, moves us away from the local considerations of other contributors to focus on the contemporary circumstances of the global political and economic climate. Consultancy has been growing apace in the circumstance of an ideological movement It has been growing apace in the circumstance of an ideological movement away from regulatory state power, the consultant often being conceived as an agent in the formation of new systems or schemes of social and political control or emancipation, depending on perspective. The political and economic environments of contemporary consultancy have major implications for anthropology. Only a relatively short time ago, anthropologists engaged in consultancy were in a minority. Now they are probably in the majority, and certainly carry a considerable amount of political (and intellectual) clout, not least of all because of the economic dependency of tertiary institutions on the money-earning capacity of their populations. The relative power of those engaged in practical work is seeing major redirections in the anthropological project. For some, the very continuity and future of anthropology is in its capacity to have practical effect. All this is reason enough to demand a critical appreciation of consultancy, especially anthropological consultancy, which the present contributions promise.

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REFERENCES
Bastin, R. 2003. "Surrender to the Market: Thoughts on Anthropology, The Body Shop, and Intellectuals." The Australian Journal of Anthropology 14, no. 1:19-38. Hardt, M., and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, Mass., and London. Kapferer, B. 2000. "Star Wars: About Anthropology, Culture and Globalisation." The Australian Journal of Anthropology 11, no. 2:174-198. Strathern, A., and P. J. Stewart. 2001. "Introduction. Anthropology and Consultancy: Ethnographic Dilemmas and Opportunities." In Anthropology and Consultancy, ed. P. J. Stewart and A. Strathern. Special issue. Social Analysis 45, no. 2:3-22.