Antropologia, eserciti e intelligence. Breve storia di un rapporto controverso.

A passionate debate, that is animating the anthropological community in the last decade, concerns the involvement of anthropologists in the armies and in the intelligence agencies. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) has been particularly involved in this discussion since in recent years the US army has recruited numerous anthropologists, used in the planning of counterinsurgency operations and in projects such as the Human Terrain System. At the same time the CIA is funding a number of scholarships to train students with language skills and anthropological knowledge concerning the areas of strategic interest. However, the involvement of anthropologists in these fields is not new. In this article I explore the historical relationship between anthropologists, armies and intelligence highlighting the discontinuities that characterize it. I will start from the colonial case of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, then I will consider the period of the Cold War, and finally I will focus on the recent events I mentioned above. Through this diachronic analysis I will show the different ways anthropologists have been co-opted in the armed forces and in the intelligence agencies. I will argue that nowadays anthropologists are partially more constrained and less independent than in the past. All this rises a number of moral and ethical problems and it also questions the quality of anthropology that is produced by and for the armies