The Autonomy Question and the Changing Conditions of Social Scientific Work

Diana Forsythe's life was emblematic of the rapidly changing conditions of the work for anthropologists, and social scientists more generally, during recent decades. In her first fieldwork project in Scotland, she retained some of the traditional autonomy of the ethnographer that she lost during her years as an anthropologist living on soft money in Al labs. She was acutely aware of how the conditions of work restricted her ability to write and publish on some topics in the Al world, particularly the rampant sexism that she experienced and analyzed.