SESSION V
269
work in assoc.ation with embassies in different countries but also
living among the people and with a liaison tu the State Department,
both to their university and back to the local embassy. Hopefully,
there would be a constant feedback of cultural understanding which
would flow back to the university and the State Department. These
atudents would then be good candidates for cultural attachés some
years later. Actually, [ believe the Foreign Service Institute does
make some effort to give some cultural snthropology to the Foreign .
Service people, but in actuality the cultural attachés who are sup-
posed to be the people to do this are, by and large, almost completly isolated from the community in which they serve,
{ think that the question raised is, ina very broad sense,
if we
are concerned with a variety of incidents, (and we are going to have
incidents, not all nuclear, but we are going to have incidents with
other countries al! over the world), if we're going to meet these incidents appropriately, we've got to have a great deal of cultural ineight with reapect to every other country that we can bring to the
fore, How do you meet this situation tf it has te do with Thailand
and their culture, which is going to be quite different from meeting
it in Spain?
MILLER:
Yes.
[think that, for one thing. the adviser, an cx-
pert, might be able to indicate the person wno can influence the peaple or can advise that there ie no auch ieader, that the situation requires a second line of delon:e and what it should be,
FREMONT-SMITEHE fut at least there should be a current aware.
ness of the cultural attitudes with respect to a variety of things in
any country with which we have any dealings at ail.
EISENBUD- { might be worth noting that shortly after that lapanese epraode both the State Department and AEC had a scientific
liaison in Toyko Embassy. Of course, this wae done in other parts
of the world as well, I don't know whether we have anybody over
there now.
I presume we do as a scientific attaché,
FREMONT-SMITH: Yet a ecientifse attaché is not a cultural anthropologist. This is a different story. He'll be an expert in physics,
you see, or possibly in biochemistry; in the social sciences [ think
they are very, very rare. [think we had one in India and a ccuple
of other places for a short .ume and then this was caput. But the
concept of using social science insights and especially cultural anthropology, which [ think ought to be one of the key ones, | don't
think it hae penetrated,