Opposition to the anthropological academic left has been late in coming, possibly because anthropology has always been tolerant of multiple theories of culture and has tended to attract self-selected individuals who not only advocate Rousseauean ideas about the nature of Man, but who also seem to assume that qualitative approaches are preferable, if not superior, to quantitative ones. Fieldwork now means that you are present at a crime scene and should become a witness whose first duty is to report crimes. You should use 'interpretation' to identify crimes, not empirical data. This oppression is, in turn, caused by states. States wield power.
Power rests on authority.
Science is a kind of authority that the powerful will appropriate for oppressive goals. Therefore, scientific anthropologists are oppressors and are to be condemned for ethical, moral and even criminal wrongdoing. Instead it leads to denunciations of various social practitioners, such as social workers, doctors, psychiatrists, economists, civil servants, bureaucrats, etc., and especially other anthropologists. A few weeks ago I would have been skeptical of D'Andrade's assessment. Ironically, while academic scientists must now defend the once- assumed rights of free and open inquiry, the public at large seems increasingly eager to learn about the kinds of issues that members of HBES regularly study and report on.