See the full text of Laura Nader’s article “Up the Anthropologist: Perspective Gained from Studying Up”

“The study of man is confronted with an unprecedented situation: never before have so few, by their actions and inactions, had the power of life and death over so many members of the species.”

“Maybe these are attempts to get behind the facelessness of a bureaucratic society, to get at the mechanisms whereby faraway corporations and large-scale industries are directing the everyday aspects of our lives. Whatever the motivation, the studies raise important questions as to responsibility, accountability, self-regulation, or on another level, questions relating to social structure, network analysis, library research, and participant observation.”

“Studying ‘up’ as well as ‘down’ would lead us to ask many ‘common sense’ questions in reverse. Instead of asking why some people are poor, we would ask why other people are so affluent? How on earth would a…