Savage Minds

[SWJED]

Just ran across this blog - Savage Minds - Notes and Queries in Anthropology...

Here is a post from this morning - Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain.

Via Kevin Drum, a press release about an article in the New Yorker. With a title like “Can Social Scientists Redefine the War on Terror?” it seems right up our alley. (See previous posts on the topic here, here, here, here, here, and here.) In the New Yorker article George Packer talks to “a remarkable theorist named David Kilcullen, an Australian anthropologist who is also a lieutenant colonel in his country’s Army and the chief strategist in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Coördinator [sic] for Counterterrorism.” There isn’t much saying what makes Kilcullen so “remarkable” except for his willingness to actively work for the military, but it seems he isn’t the only one:

Anthropologists and former military officers in the Pentagon are currently working on a new project called “Cultural Operations Research Human Terrain,” which is recruiting social scientists around the country to join five-person “human terrain” teams that would go to Iraq and Afghanistan with combat brigades and serve as cultural advisers on six-to-nine-month tours. Pilot teams are planning to leave next spring.

You can read some of Kilcullen’s papers here. I wonder if any of the anthropologists engaged with the military on these missions would be willing to blog about their experiences?

[marct]

I must admit to having a love hate relationship with Savage Minds. This is one of the times when the "Hate" part comes to the fore. Those "here, here, here..." references show very clearly how the military is viewed by many on Savage minds. BTW, the titles of those cross-reference "posts on the topic" are:

1. You Only Link Twice: Spying 2.0
2. Torture and Social Scientists
3. Anthropology and the CIA (again)
4. But We’re at War… [about PRSIP]
5. Funding Scholarship [about ICSP]
6. Anthropologists as Counter-Insurgents [reactions to the McFate article]

This is a good example of what I mean when I talk about "symbolic equations" - the connotative linking of one subject with another.

At least they are cross-linking to SWJ for Kilcullen's papers <wry grin>.

Marc

[Steve Blair]

I'd expect they consider him remarkable because he's a serving military officer with respected academic credentials.

[marct]

I'd expect they consider him remarkable because he's a serving military officer with respected academic credentials.

Could be... then again, it could also be because they consider it remarkable that the UG conditioning process failed. He is, after all, in the military .

I'm going to keep an eye on that blog entry and see if anything else comes out of it.

Marc

[jonSlack]

Link to the piece: George Packer - Knowing the Enemy

[marct]

Link to the piece: George Packer - Knowing the Enemy

A good piece, Jon, thanks for posting the link.

Marc