Bateman's blog posting is the key...
I think that the Bateman blog message provides insight to why I and others have a problem with the missing cites:
"Hanson is tricky. He plays upon a uniquely American dichotomy. Generally speaking, we Americans respect academic qualifications, but at the same time harbor deep-seated biases against those we deem too intellectual. The line there is squiggly. Thus, Hanson tries to claim academic credentials as a historian, but then immediately switches gears and denigrates any potential opposition as mere 'academic' history squabbles. Yes, academic history, with its unreasonable insistence on things like footnotes or endnotes so that your sources can be checked, is not to be trusted. Indeed, he dismissed the whole lot by saying, 'Academics in the university will find that assertion chauvinistic or worse -- and thus cite every exception from Thermopylae to Little Bighorn in refutation.' Ahhh, I love the smell of Strawmen burning in the morning…"
Yes, we have an "unreasonable insistence on things like footnotes or endnotes so that your sources can be checked." It's part of our training. The practice is hammered into us over the course of years of hard work. It represents a code of ethics and conduct as strong to the historian as, say, the ethos inculcated in a Marine officer during OCS and TBS. And however much one might like to dismiss this as pesky, or pinheaded, or part of an ivory tower mentality, the real value of this practice is to keep us all honest, to make sure that the work we do is not personal opinion or politics masquerading as "history."
Like it or not, this manual is as a much a work of history as doctrine. As doctrine, it might be pure genius -- or, at least good enough to get the job done. However, as a piece of history, the flaws grate. They detract from the value of the work, because they preclude the sort of rigorous analysis to which a work of history must be subject.
Gen. Petraeus might not agree, but Dr. Petraeus ought to understand.
Regards,
Jill
The latest from the AAA...
Quote:
AAA Board Statement on HTS
Welcome
On October 31, 2007, the American Anthropological Association’s Executive Board passed a statement concerning ethical aspects of the U.S. Military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) project. The project, which has received widespread national and international media coverage, embeds anthropologists and other social scientists in military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.
More here. The full AAA statement here.
back to the research ethics issue...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wm
1. The AAA stands to lose any meaningful ability to enforce its professional ethical standards.
While the AAA and other professional scholarly associations may comment on ethics issues, and those comments may even have some effect on perceptions of ethical protocols, it is worth mentioning that in the social sciences (unlike, to some degree, medicine or law) the associations play no substantive guardian role. Rather, ethics clearances are the responsibility of university-level research ethics boards and granting agencies (in Canada, from what I can tell, this is much more structured than it is in the US).
I've noted somewhere in another thread that there are real ethical dilemmas in moving between (or having one foot in each of) the academic research and the applied (especially COIN or IC or foreign policy) worlds. )Indeed, I ran across an interesting one last week, although I'm not sure I can post
the details :wry:) These usually aren't insurmountable in my view, and I think it would be useful if the AAA would address these directly rather than pronouncing from on high.
For what its worth, I think the HTS has, from all outward appearances at least, been lax in also not addressing these up front and explicitly. Is there a predeployment HTT training session on balancing ethical responsibilities, for example? Is there an advisory or reporting mechanism (preferably outside the regular chain of command) where HTT members can seek guidance on potentially troublesome dilemmas? It seems to me that these would be very useful mechanisms to have in place, for normative, practical and political reasons.
The bigger issue here is the marketability of HTT "graduates" in the academic job market, post-deployment. Members of departments of hiring committees may well be biased against former HTT members. Given the dynamics of hiring processes, they needn't even explicitly articulate these: they simply need to highlight other perceived weaknesses in the applicant's file, or rally around "untainted" colleagues. Frankly, explicit HTS attention to ethical issues might help to reduce post-deployment academic employment issues for former HTT members too.
It would be interesting to put together a formal panel discussion on this some time, either at a professional association meeting (AAA, MESA, etc) or a Washington-area think tank (heck, I would even consider coming down to DC for it).
Why Anthropopligists are essential and impossible
HTT's and everything of their ilk (Civil Affairs, Psyops, FAO's etc) are an attempt to understand something that is only a major factor in Small Wars. The best soldiers are those that understand the terrain upon which they fight, and in Small Wars the human terrain is at least as important as the physical terrain. The difference is that the physical terrain has only five major and three minor terrain features, and it can be taught effectively to virtually anyone who goes through basic training. Of course the effective use of that terrain is another matter, but the basic verbiage is available to every Soldier and Marine on the ground.
On the other hand, human terrain has not only dozens and perhaps hundreds of features but each feature can have thousands of variables. There are over two thousand religious sects in the United States alone! We cannot possibly hope to teach that to the wider military audience in a short time. Experts are required and that is why we try to involve anthropologists, among others, in forums such as this one.
Unfortunately there is a fundamental conflict between the philosophy of anthropology and that of the military. Because anthropology is concerned with the study of people, any injection of other people or societies into the study can alter it. It would be like trying to take a temperature with a thermometer that is self heating. Therefore anthropologists are trained to limit their involvement with cultures in order to study them better.
Those techniques include, but are not limited to, identifying and distancing themselves from the subject. While these techniques are not perfect, and contamination does inevitably occur, it is what they are trained and required to do to be considered anthropologists. This is also the cause of the perceived moral relativism. While some anthropologists are indeed relativists the study of the cultures itself requires a completely blank slate.
This is also why, in part, the AAA is going to oppose the use of Anthropologists in HTT's. I am not saying that there is not an anti-military bias, which there may well be. But what the military is asking the anthropologists to do goes against, not some vague hippie ideal, but the very science the military wants anthropologists to represent. We are asking them to do their job, without following the principles of their training. It is like asking an infantryman to take a bunker without shooting, or communicating.
That said, everyone would be better off with anthropologists, and other people involved. I don't know the total solution, but the beginning is the same as the beginning of any communication between two cultures, or in this case sub cultures, and that is understanding. The military needs to understand the difficulty of what they are asking anthropologists to do, and they need to respect it. Likewise, the anthropologists, need to understand what the military is trying to do. Until communication occurs between groups, there is no point in working at the group level, e.g. DOD and AAA. The best we can hope for is to win people one at a time, and that is going to be too little too late, I fear.