ABSTRACT
This Chapter deals with some of the assaults upon anthropology, and tries to answer the question of why so many anthropologists have been complicit in the Saidian project, and why Said's accusations and others inspired and encouraged by him are so inappropriate for the discipline of anthropology. This discussion will be directed primarily at North American anthropology because the case is clearest. First, American anthropology has by far the largest and most varied group of practitioners and developed as an academic discipline two decades earlier than the British. Second, American anthropologists have fallen hardest for 'Orientalism' and the whole train of 'posts'. Third, when the critics write of the errors of anthropology they frequently turn to the notion of 'culture', a concept central to 'classic' American anthropology but peripheral to the British tradition, and the postcolonial imaginary is more likely to fasten on American anthropologists such as Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Clifford Geertz.
