While humans are all united as a single species, sharing the same DNA, physical features and basic physique, a diversity of cultures and languages has emerged and continues to exist among humans today. We are all one human species, but we are divided by unique traditions that identifies us as individuals within our culture and society. When those from different cultures and backgrounds interact with each other, these differences in understanding due to culture can at times cause confusion and misunderstanding. By understanding the cultural differences that exist between human groups, many misunderstandings and much frustration could be avoided. This is the role that cultural anthropology has arisen to fulfill. The cultural anthropologist can have a positive role in creating a greater cultural awareness and respect between cultures. An educational program that focuses on instilling cultural awareness and understanding in students is missing from the basic educational curriculum in the U.S., leading to an adult society in which little cultural awareness exists. This condition that has led to a great deal of misunderstanding between Americans and people of other cultures.  The gap in cultural understanding between Americans and other cultures they regularly interact with has become dangerously wide in the present day, a fact with is contributing to unnecessary strife and violence. A solution to this dilemma is education, and understanding that the role of the anthropologist, and the study of cultural anthropology, is an essential part in creating a more peaceful world.

The role of the anthropologists in government and politics was, in the past, very hands on and progressive.  In fact, anthropology was “once called the handmaiden of colonialism” (Ferraro 89), a relationship that began in the early 1900’s and continued on through the Vietnam War.  The role  of anthropologists in colonizing other countries was begun by Britain in as early as 1908, when “anthropologists began training administrators of the Sudanese civil service” (Ferraro 93).  Cultural anthropologists are able to provide keen insight into a culture, its values, social system, norms and expectations. In cases of colonization,war or general strife, this information can be used in order to figure out the best way to reach out to the culture and find a solution to the problem at hand. The insight and answers that anthropologists provide, however,  has not always been particularly welcomed, in part to to cultural bias caused by ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism is defined as the inability to put aside one’s own cultural attitudes and imagine the world from the perspective of a different group. This quality can have many negative effects, especially in the context of business, politics and national security issues (Ferraro 90).  It is ethnocentrism that is at the heart of many of the failed interactions between cultures, due to preconceived held by one person of how a person of another culture should act, react or behave.  Ethnocentrism and a lack of cultural understanding has been a major factor in the prolonged, and mostly failed, war in Iraq. The American and European soldiers and contractors who are in Iraq, working and fighting side by side with Iraqis, know virtually nothing of their culture, society or language when they arrive in Iraq and many know little more after they leave. This barrier between the cultures leads to severe misunderstandings during interactions and has helped to impede the peace process.

The situation in Iraq has been compounded by several cultural misunderstandings. The soldiers that have been, and continue to be, sent to Iraq receive little or no training on Arab culture, traditions, values or language. They are not given the tools to understand the Iraqi peoples worldview, a concept that affects their every action and interaction. This has led to many negative interactions. The most infamous of these has been the abuses that American soldiers subjected  detainees to at the Iraqi prison Abu Ghraid. Abu Ghraid was, during Saddam Hussein’s rein, a prison of torture. Under the U.S., little changed. The American soldiers and civilians there had no training on the rules of the Geneva Convention. They had little to no oversight by regulatory agencies or agencies with a higher degree of training in proper interrogation techniques. Their understanding of their job was to “prepare Iraqi inmates for questioning (Leung 1).” The interrogators, knowing no Arabic and not understanding Muslim customs, used terror, violence and sexual abuse in order to get the inmates to talk. What the interrogators didn’t realize, is that for a Muslim, to die in service to God is honor. To them, their silence was protecting their countrymen in service to God. Death did not scare these inmates. Only dishonor did. So, to them, better to die than to talk. The violent interrogation techniques were worthless, only working to incite more violence against the American soldiers in the long-run as tales of the horror and abuse spread throughout the Iraqi community. Had a cultural anthropologist been able to explain all of this to the interrogators, perhaps this series of tragic events could have been avoided.