New Proposals for Anthropologists- A Reply

Gould's "New Proposals for Anthropologists: A Comment" (April 27, 1968, pp 682-685) with an increasing sense of bafflement as to its relationship with what I wrote in "New Proposals for Anthropologists" (September 9, 1967). 1 said that anthropologists had failed to grapple with the effects of western imperialism; I suggested the dimensions of the problem by classifying the underdeveloped world into (a) communist states, (b) colonial areas, (c) satellite or client states of the west, and (d) relatively independent nations of the "Third World". I pointed out the scope of revolutionary activity within the last three categories; and 1 suggested that anthropologists might study a variety of topics that they have, for the most part, failed to study. These included the following areas of research: (a) food production in non- communist Asia, Africa and Latin America on the one hand, and in China and Cuba on the other; (b) pattern and results of socialist and capitalist foreign aid programmes; (c) "comparative studies of types of modern inter-societal political and economic dominance" so as "to be able to define and refine such concepts as imperialism, neocolonialism, etc" and (d) "comparative studies of revolutionary and proto-revolutionary movements".