On her book My Life as a Spy: Investigations in a Secret Police File
Cover Interview of January 23, 2019
Lastly
My hopes for the book are of three different types. First, I
hope it will bring into readers’ consciousness the topic of surveillance as
something that can happen every day, with unexpected effects. Surveillance—of any
kind—involves complex social relationships and special techniques. I believe
any citizen should become aware of them, in hopes of curbing threats to liberty—of
both political and commercial kinds. If the book contributes to developing
literacy about a disturbing aspect of the world around us, that will be a very
valuable outcome.
Second, for my readers in Romania—especially of younger
generations—I hope it will contribute to an understanding of the country’s life
under socialism, an understanding very different from that purveyed by older
generations. The decades of communist rule in Romania left devastation in their
wake, on many fronts. My way of trying to comprehend that system by means of
its secret police offers an alternative to officially purveyed histories of
communism, a vision that young people might find salutary.
Third, for the narrower readership in my discipline of
anthropology, I hope students will read it as a guide concerning that very
difficult form of research, fieldwork: learning about others through
participating with and observing them. It is not an easy method; the book
illustrates some of the reasons why. I hope those who train to practice this
method will find the book’s arguments and examples useful in their work. For in
the end, I remain a child of the Enlightenment, believing that through these
means we can best learn about other people’s ways of being—an admirable goal
for all of us.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
Lastly
My hopes for the book are of three different types. First, I hope it will bring into readers’ consciousness the topic of surveillance as something that can happen every day, with unexpected effects. Surveillance—of any kind—involves complex social relationships and special techniques. I believe any citizen should become aware of them, in hopes of curbing threats to liberty—of both political and commercial kinds. If the book contributes to developing literacy about a disturbing aspect of the world around us, that will be a very valuable outcome.
Second, for my readers in Romania—especially of younger generations—I hope it will contribute to an understanding of the country’s life under socialism, an understanding very different from that purveyed by older generations. The decades of communist rule in Romania left devastation in their wake, on many fronts. My way of trying to comprehend that system by means of its secret police offers an alternative to officially purveyed histories of communism, a vision that young people might find salutary.
Third, for the narrower readership in my discipline of anthropology, I hope students will read it as a guide concerning that very difficult form of research, fieldwork: learning about others through participating with and observing them. It is not an easy method; the book illustrates some of the reasons why. I hope those who train to practice this method will find the book’s arguments and examples useful in their work. For in the end, I remain a child of the Enlightenment, believing that through these means we can best learn about other people’s ways of being—an admirable goal for all of us.