Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[M.L.]

Sociocultural Human Intelligence Teams.

They could work with the French military's Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre and Commandos de Recherche et d'Action en Profondeur.

Creative with the acronyms. You'd be a great addition to the Pentagon...

[M.L.]

There is an article in the November-December 2010 edition of Military Review entitled Controlling the Human High Ground: Identifying Cultural Opportunities for Insurgency. Needless to say, I’m disappointed we continue to dwell on this idea of “Human Terrain.” As I said when I started this thread, humans are not terrain. Humans aren’t even like terrain. Why we use the metaphor of “terrain” to describe human beings is beyond me.

Some might wonder why I am so intent to writing about this subject. How we model things is important. Here is an excerpt from a paper entitled On the Mismatch Between Systems and Their Models by Russell L. Ackoff and Jamshid Gharajedaghi:

There is a very serious mismatch between most social systems and the models of them that are in use. Barry M. Richmond, creator of the Systems Dynamics model and I-think language makes it clear that systems and the models of them in use are not the same. According to him “the way we think
is outdated.” He goes on to define thinking as:

consisting of two activities: constructing mental models, and then simulating them in order to draw conclusions and make decisions. The mental model is a “selective abstraction” of reality that we create and carry around in our head. As big as some of our heads get, we still can’t fit reality in there. Therefore all mental model are simplifications. They necessarily omit many aspects of the realities they represent.

To think about anything requires an image or a concept of it, a model. To think about something as complex as a social system we use models of similar, simpler, and/or more familiar systems. Unfortunately, as social systems become increasingly more complex, simpler mental models of them do not reflect their emerging properties.

In short, this is what is happening with human terrain. We are using a simple model (terrain) to imagine or conceptualize a much more complex system (human social/cultural groups). As a result, we draw bad conclusions about the nature of the system. This new article from Military Review is a perfect example. The model of “terrain” has erroneously led the author to believe that humans, like terrain, can be “controlled.” Humans are independent beings capable of making choices. While humans can certainly be influenced, they can never be controlled.

[Steve the Planner]

ML:

From inception, and throughout, the mistake that identifying human dynamic factors was the same as discovering On/Off switches and control dials was to dismiss foreign and enemy publics as something less complex and dynamic than our own electorate.

There is a very big conceptual gap between Big Government/Nations actors/organizations and those of Little Government/Local Governance that seems insurmountable under present structures.

Folks who live far away from a local consequence are more likely to support something with significant local impacts. The perceived impacts, at the local level, are area and impact-specific.

Terrain is the ground on which events occur. Terrain can shape and influence events, but only the actors and drive the events.

The silly notion that we are trying to "shape" terrain/events fails to appreciate the exigencies/realities of CT/COIN in a conflict/post-conflict environment.

In a conflict/post-conflict environment, a deployed and engaged military is not and "influencer" or shaper, except at the risk of falling to its own propaganda.

Occupy, dominate, control as long as is needed. Then build relationships, transitions.

Get over the notion that "wars" and "enemies" can be influenced, shaped, or PR-ed out of existence. Or that we can transition before we occuy, domonate, control.

Not doing so is as dangerous to mission, and soldiers as it is to the subject population.

[davidbfpo]

Moderator at Work

Prompted by the most recent post I have merged eight threads on the subject of Human Terrain, Human Terrain teams (HTS) and Anthropology into one. Most threads were in the Social Science forum and a few outside, including one in Job Seekers. I have left two threads on Iraq & HTS. (Ends)

Curious that the linked topics have fallen out active posts.

[davidbfpo]

A short e-article by SWC Member Marc Tyrell appeared in my in tray today and maybe of interest to SWC.

He ends with:

Do the military need and will they continue to use socio-cultural knowledge in order to complete their missions? Yes. Is this only provided by the HTS? No. It is more than time for us to stop flogging a dead rhetorical horse and start looking at the reality of the various and multiple engagements between the military and socio-cultural knowledge.

Link:http://www.e-ir.info/2012/02/05/the-...l-dead-horses/

[ganulv]

1. The two methods, broadly speaking, of social and cultural anthropology are ethnography (field work of the sort done by Malinowski) and ethnology (cross-cultural comparison using textual and non-textual artifacts of various kinds). The former is not the exclusive domain of anthropologists, though I think it fair to say they were central in its legitimization amongst scientists social and otherwise. The latter isn’t, either, but doing it well presumes some background that would be difficult to acquire outside of anthropology and a handful of genetically related disciplines (folklore and [human & historical] geography, for example).
2. Good ethnography is difficult in the most stable social contexts. Presume an ethnographic encounter between a visitor with no particular self-interest beyond intellectual curiosity and a local with absolute willingness to reveal the warts and all of his or her knowledge. Even if the visitor is a top notch student and the local a top notch teacher 1:1 transmission of knowledge is impeded by cultural differences and the reliability of data and inferences built on them is always somewhat in doubt. Now imagine the same ethnographic encounter when the visitor shows up backed by a group of rough men in full kit and the local has to answer to his or her shadow governor after they have departed. The reliability of data gathered under these circumstances and inferences built on them are in serious doubt.
3. I do not on principle object to the use being made of tools associated with anthropology by any parties to a conflict. I may find their aims distasteful but the fact is that anthropology made its IPO long ago. I absolutely believe that the agent handler, ODA team member, or FSO with some formal training in anthropology will benefit from it in the field. That is not to say, however, that I believe that good anthropological field work is likely during wartime (see #2 above).
4. The entire HTS project strikes me as an effort to use ethnography to make an unfeasible strategy somehow serviceable. A better applied use of anthropological tools for OEF–like undertakings would be, IMHO, to run the strategy by a group of ethnologists and ask the seemingly simple question, “Do you judge this to be feasible in the first place?”

This is just my 5¢ as someone who knows a lot more about anthropology than do most military professionals (and who fully acknowledges that military professionals tend to know no less about anthropology than do most other non-anthropologists) and more about the military than do most anthropologists (which is not to be understood as a claim that I have a vast or even good knowledge of the military). Some of it may be restatement of previous posts in this thread but I haven’t read many of them since joining this forum less than a year ago. It’s a topic that in my experience involves a lot of misinformation, posturing, and talking past one another so I tend to give it a wide berth for better or worse.

[marct]

Hi Ganuly,

[LIST=1][*] The two methods, broadly speaking, of social and cultural anthropology are ethnography (field work of the sort done by Malinowski) and ethnology (cross-cultural comparison using textual and non-textual artifacts of various kinds). The former is not the exclusive domain of anthropologists, though I think it fair to say they were central in its legitimization amongst scientists social and otherwise. The latter isn’t, either, but doing it well presumes some background that would be difficult to acquire outside of anthropology and a handful of genetically related disciplines (folklore and [human & historical] geography, for example).

We could go back and forth on this since a lot of it is national school dependent but, sure, let's work with these as the two base methods for gathering and comparing data. That said, we do know a fari bit after 150 years or so about kinship systems, economic systems, etc. that, IMHO, does have some direct relevance.

[LIST=2][*]Good ethnography is difficult in the most stable social contexts. Presume an ethnographic encounter between a visitor with no particular self-interest beyond intellectual curiosity and a local with absolute willingness to reveal the warts and all of his or her knowledge. Even if the visitor is a top notch student and the local a top notch teacher 1:1 transmission of knowledge is impeded by cultural differences and the reliability of data and inferences built on them is always somewhat in doubt. Now imagine the same ethnographic encounter when the visitor shows up backed by a group of rough men in full kit and the local has to answer to his or her shadow governor after they have departed. The reliability of data gathered under these circumstances and inferences built on them are in serious doubt.[*]I do not on principle object to the use being made of tools associated with anthropology by any parties to a conflict. I may find their aims distasteful but the fact is that anthropology made its IPO long ago. I absolutely believe that the agent handler, ODA team member, or FSO with some formal training in anthropology will benefit from it in the field. That is not to say, however, that I believe that good anthropological field work is likely during wartime (see #2 above).

Absolutely agree! This means that whoever is doing "fieldwork" under such a condition must be top notch in their ability to perceive patterns and anomalies. Basically, it means that we have to throw out your point 1, except as background reference, and concentrate instead on observation skills.

1. The entire HTS project strikes me as an effort to use ethnography to make an unfeasible strategy somehow serviceable. A better applied use of anthropological tools for OEF–like undertakings would be, IMHO, to run the strategy by a group of ethnologists and ask the seemingly simple question, “Do you judge this to be feasible in the first place?”

LOLOL - yup, which is why I am increasingly coming to the opinion that "senor social scientists" should be lodged in Red teaming cells vs. something like the HTS. Of course, that's another article .

This is just my 5¢ as someone who knows a lot more about anthropology than do most military professionals (and who fully acknowledges that military professionals tend to know no less about anthropology than do most other non-anthropologists) and more about the military than do most anthropologists (which is not to be understood as a claim that I have a vast or even good knowledge of the military). Some of it may be restatement of previous posts in this thread but I haven’t read many of them since joining this forum less than a year ago. It’s a topic that in my experience involves a lot of misinformation, posturing, and talking past one another so I tend to give it a wide berth for better or worse.

I would certainly agree that the "debate" is often a case of people talking past each other. Honestly, it's been kind of frustrating for me since all of the sides seem to have decided to ignore what actually happens . I think that's why I stuck the "rhetorical dead horses" in the title of my piece: I was honestly tired or hearing the "same old, same old" again, with little movement happening.

Cheers,

Marc