How did World War II expand American anthropologists’ fieldwork in Indonesia, Africa, and the Pacific?

Prior to World War II, American anthropologists primarily focused their research on the native peoples of North and Central America. The war served as a major catalyst for the expansion of the discipline, as anthropologists were called upon to apply their expertise to assist the war effort alongside other social scientists.1

Following the war, as the United States gained increased global influence, the profession experienced explosive growth. This shift facilitated significant ethnographic fieldwork in several regions:1

• Indonesia and Africa: In the 1950s and 1960s, American ethnographers carried out important field studies in Indonesia as well as in East and West Africa.1
• The Pacific: Anthropologists conducted extensive research in numerous societies throughout the South Seas that had been brought under direct or indirect American control as a result of the war in the Pacific.1

This expansion transformed the discipline, leading some critics to argue that social and cultural anthropology was becoming a Western-centric science specialized in the study of colonial and postcolonial societies.1