Human terrain systems and other ways of ordering people
Military social science creeps me right out. Well, mostly the military bothers me and the idea of working for or with them directly conflicts with almost all of my values. I bring this up because I just read a post on “the dangerous militarisation of anthropology” and I started thinking about military culture. Coupled with an article on the creeping militarisation of Canada that I recently read, I found myself getting more and more agitated at this subtle but certain assault on two things for which I generally have great affinity.
Now I think that the militarisation of everyday life is all about technology and security but it isn’t Bentham’s panopticon, Foucault’s docile bodies or even the disciplinary power manifest in CCTV and consumer RFID that I’m talking about. It’s the research, development and deployment of biopolitics and network technologies of terror, control and bare life that are actively re-shaping our very understandings of what it means to be together-in-the-world. It’s how people with real power are constructing–in procedure, policy and law–what it means to be human, what it means to be social, and even what we should be able to expect from each other.
Take the US military approach to the value of cultural understanding:
Networds: Terra Incognita and the Case for Ethnographic Intelligence
“The United States desperately needs a counter-network to fight the dark networks now surfacing across the globe. Ethnographic intelligence can empower the daily fight against dark networks, and it can help formulate contingency plans that are based on a truly accurate portrayal of the most essential terrain-the human mind. United States policymakers must not commit us ever again to terra incognita. The nation must invest in specialized people who can pay ‘constant attention’ to ‘Indigenous forms of association and mobilization,’ so that we can see and map the human terrain.”
The Human Terrain System: A CORDS for the 21st Century
“Cultural awareness will not necessarily always enable us to predict what the enemy and noncombatants will do, but it will help us better understand what motivates them, what is important to the host nation in which we serve, and how we can either elicit the support of the population or at least diminish their support and aid to the enemy… [But] HTS will fill the cultural knowledge void by gathering ethnographic, economic, and cultural data pertaining to the battlefield and by providing the means to array it in various configurations to support analysis and decisionmaking… In its current conception, HTS is built upon seven components, or ‘pillars’: human terrain teams (HTTs), reachback research cells, subject-matter expert networks, a tool kit, techniques, human terrain information, and specialized training.”
Still thinking out loud…
First of all, and please don’t take my enthusiasm as approval, what astounding paranoia and what an amazing model for collaborative action research, well worth reading about in detail. And the HTS database itself also sounds incredible: like the Human Relations Area Files for people in charge of controlling other people!
Actually, I was impressed, but not convinced, by the military’s characterisation of social science as “open-source.” I think they meant that people (i.e. they) are pretty much allowed to do anything they want with existing academic research as long as it’s cited properly, but if you don’t have a university library account you won’t be able to access that amazing HRAF database I just linked to so it’s definitely not free as in beer. But ultimately, this all becomes irrelevant once the social scientist is employed by the military because they own the collected data and means of array.
One of my favourite anthropology students used to love winding me up by threatening to go work for the military. (Sociology students seeking the same threaten to work for Stats Can.) And although he tried to persuade me along the lines of “it’s better me than someone else, right?” I never bought it, even when he reminded me that I teach students to always keep an open mind. I’ll also admit that these discussions of ours most often ended with me blurting out something intellectually rich like “But, but, but… It’s just WRONG to help them!” and him sitting back with a smug smile. (So much for rational argument or ethics, I was clearly signing up for a simpler moral judgment.)
But this position–my resistance–is part of an ethos too. It flexes depending on context and it takes into account when the military tries to do right and are prevented from actually doing it. It acknowledges that my research, my work, is always already political, and that I cannot and do not always want to control what others do with it. It also includes the somewhat unsettling reality that I can find a position or action intellectually valuable and simultaneously disrespect and distrust its proponent. (With the exception of The Pussycat Dolls, I prefer to keep interesting nemeses!)
So where does this leave me? I’m really not sure. Is it simply a matter of deciding when it might be best to work for or with someone, rather than against them? And is it just me or does that make me sound like a bloody hippy?!
May 31st, 2007 at 6:41 pm
No, it is not only you, or else there is a strong hippy movement resurfacing…
Really, I turn, and to your principle of moral judgments so does my stomach, in the same context. Now, the military, followed by the church provoke in me similar reactions, part of my cultural baggage and part of my moral conditioning and learning. But others follow in sequence. A sequence that when followed adequately leads to oneself. If how long it takes to reach you is a sign of virtue so be it. Unfortunately it points to more somber cracks and structural faults of the world we live in.
I mean to say after army and church… Friends, colleagues, and acquaintances working at say the United Nations - hoping for good - and being deployed for two year to Iraq to mess in the body politic of that region, trained in military procedures as means of self defense, to serve a population they don´t know for interests they don´t understand. And then numb, returning to the East Coast (not home…) and resume guilty meaningless lives, or lives with a two year memory gap by their own account. I was going to continue with those at multilateral organizations, World Bank - IMF, to Embassies, to organizations (reaching my current share) but the UN sample might be good for now.
Best regards,
Daniel
October 16th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Hi There,
Very interesting post!
I was amused by conceptualization of “Ethnographic Intelligence” as means to address “cultural awareness”.
If the USA army wants to be sensitive the local conditions they should 1st start asking why the violence has been scaling on Irak.
They should be concerned truly to understand the real causes rather than the symptoms.
Irak is by no means liberated. In fact the life of ordinary Iraki’s is harder than before. Security wise and quality of life (e.g. they’ve got just 2 hours of electricity per day). They are not liberated, they are invaded. Why Allocation of power = resources = oil.
Gonzalo