Afternoon light on the Thailand controversy: an afterword

Abstract

The editors have asked me to discuss the benchmarks in my career. This invitation provides an appropriate context for further contribution to a debate that began in the 1970s and challenged many Australian anthropologists, their national association and their students (including several authors in this collection). This was the so-called 'Thailand Controversy', 'which fractured the anthropological communities of Australia and the United States in the early 1970s, centred on the role of anthropologists in mainland Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War' (Hinton 2002, p. 155). In Australia, it particularly focused on allegations that the Tribal Research Centre (TRC) in Thailand 'had worked hand in glove with the military/intelligence establishment and contrary to the interests of the minority peoples who lived in the hills of north Thailand' (Hinton 2002, p. 155). The TRC had been established by Sydney University Professor W. R. Geddes, with funding from Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), and both Peter Hinton and I had received support for our postgraduate research through the TRC. Here, I consider the paper written about the 'Thailand Controversy' by the late Peter Hinton (2002) and begin with observations that offer a different perspective from his into the relevance of the Vietnam War (see Hinton 2002, pp. 170-2).