Art History and COIN

[120mm]

Ma'am,

I am currently training to become an HTS Team Lead, and I can see many uses for an academic with an Art History degree in COIN.

One of the concerns for our current upcoming deployment, is determining what cultural sites, native art and historical artifacts are located in our future area. The reason for this, is to show concern for and the perception that we are focused on preserving the local area's historical past which will hopefully assist in producing good will with the locals and indicate that our intent is not to steal their heritage.

A lot of times, the locals don't even know they have cultural artifacts in their area, but if you raise their awareness, they may be eager to claim the cultural history of their locale. Assisting them with this can lead to inroads into the folks who make decisions and wield power within the local polity.

Also, some of the best Army Leaders I've met were Art History majors.

Depending on how far you are from graduation, I would definitely consider studying the cultural artifacts from potential conflict areas. There is plenty of ground to be covered there up to the PhD level.

[patmc]

I was an Art History Minor in college. I took the classes because I loved looking at art, and because they were the complete opposite of my political science Major courses. Very relaxing and rewarding to look at slides of art in a dark classroom.

I don't think it help me doing convoy security, but it definately broadened my mind and made me notice subtle things like architecture, designs, etc... in everyday life. A critical exposure to art would definately help shape how people see the world and others. If you want to understand people, find out what they think is beautiful and special. It also helped me impress my girlfriend with lines like, "This looks like a Carravaggio" and it turned out to be a student of Carravaggio.

[tpjkevin]

I was an Art History Minor in college. I took the classes because I loved looking at art, and because they were the complete opposite of my political science Major courses. Very relaxing and rewarding to look at slides of art in a dark classroom.

I don't think it help me doing convoy security, but it definately broadened my mind and made me notice subtle things like architecture, designs, etc... in everyday life. A critical exposure to art would definately help shape how people see the world and others. If you want to understand people, find out what they think is beautiful and special. It also helped me impress my girlfriend with lines like, "This looks like a Carravaggio" and it turned out to be a student of Carravaggio.

I agree with you about art granting the user the ability to sense subtlety in a greater fashion.

I took a few filmmaking modules while in university and it also greatly helped me understand the first-hand power of influence of media in shifting the perception of others.

When you tell a story, you approach it and project this tale in a way that possesses familiar cues for the target audience. These stories that are consumed by the audience through the latter spotting familiar cues in the tale that resonate, and this resonation amplifies the message you are sending out.

The ability of an image to amplify ideas and messages is unparalleled, and I think in the arena of unconventional warfare, people who are skilled in dissecting the value of an image (or falsehood, or PR spin) that is being projected, or one that is projected to you, is valuable because it allows you to strip away the medium to see what the actual message is about, and how best to engage it.

[goesh]

"The ability of an image to amplify ideas and messages is unparalleled..."
(tpjkevin)

- ya' got that right. What would the reaction have been from Iraqis if early on many of our trucks and hummers and tanks had pictures drawn on them by Iraqi kids with color crayons, their names signed, etc etc ?? Talk about a dose of positive PR... I recall one time in a bush village in Africa a couple of PLO representative passed through and upon seeing me they approached and started haranguing me. They were mad and all of a sudden about 20-25 village kids came running up and surrounded me facing the PLO reps. It stopped them in their tracks. They stopped yelling and looked real confused then just walked away from me. Those kids got me out of the box. Box thinking says if kids colored their bright little pictures on the side of a Hummer, said Hummer then couldn't hide in the middle of a street and would be too visible to insurgents.