Human Terrain & Anthropology (merged thread)

[SteveMetz]

I've been re-reading this thread...

You wrote earlier that the "primary source for doctrine is collective wisdom of the community of practice." If the information/ideas in FM 3-24 were based on either a group's general knowledge/wisdom or were sufficiently original not to need citation or other attribution, or if releases were obtained, and if, as the U of Chigago ed. (at xlviii) states all copyrighted material is id'd with footnote and other sources are id'd in source notes, why didn't john Nagl just write about that in refuting Price? If a good faith effort was made to comply, and some citations were in fact missed, and picked up by a nit-picker in furtherance of another agenda... it happened.

Instead, Nagl's respone to Price in part tried to justify the failure to cite all sources as a matter of "societal" differences. The argument about not being an academic pursuit seems to lose some power given the number of non-military degrees held by those involved with FM 3-24. Nagl also writes that Field Manuals are not designed to be judged 'by the quality of thier sourcing' but instead of leaving it there, he goes on to write that because they are indended to be used by soldiers, "authors are not named, and those whose scholarship informs the manual are only credited if they are quoted extensively. This is not the academic way, but soldiers are not academic; it is my understanding that htis longstanding practice in doctrine writing... is well within the provisions of "fair use" copyright law." If he had only bothered referencing where his understanding came from and how the Manual met with the it and/or the Army Publishing procedures (thanks, Rex) it would have been very helpful.

In any event, I was curious about why all this struck a "raw nerve." I understand that being compulsively academic can blind people to the merits of the substance of this subject matter, but i don't understand why formal academic rules would get in the way of educatioin at the military staff and war colleges. I would think they woudl enforce ideas of disciplined htought and thoroughness. I am also curious about what would be unacceptable about research and from what perspective. Is this a difference in ethical approaches or in the formality of the methodology? What is it about the accreditation process that changes the character of the colleges, and makes them try to be "ersatz universities" rather than what they are?

Adam

As I mentioned above, John's decision to try to answer Price is, as far as I know, his own. The Army and Marine Corps themselves have not. With hindsight, I wish John had just ignored him and simply said, "this is a government document for which academic standards do not apply."

The fact that many of the 3-24 authors have advanced degrees is absolutely irrelevant. I have an advanced degree and I'm working on a briefing that I will give later this week. I feel no compunction to make this meet academic standards because it is not an academic product. In fact, that's exactly what distinguishes the authors of 3-24 from Dr. Price: they understand the difference between an academic and non-academic product and he, apparently, does not.

I'm not sure why you think John Nagl (or anyone associated with the military for that matter) is obligated to justify the military doctrine development process to those who are not participants. If I were to question the content of Dr. Price's courses, would he be compelled to explain his university's curriculum development process to me?

What I was getting at in my comments on the war colleges is that all the things they have to do to get accreditation have real or opportunity costs, sometimes both. To give just one of many examples, it takes a huge amount of faculty and administrative time (and taxpayer money) to meet accreditation's requirements. That is time they are not spending augmenting their professional knowledge. Ultimately, staff and war colleges are not designed to produce scholars. They are designed to produce professional military leaders.

And I think you're just wrong in your intimation that only academic methods "enforce ideas of disciplined htought and thoroughness." There are many ways of doing that other than academic methods. To repeat an example I used earlier, doctrine manuals are vetted by and briefed to literally hundreds of professional experts before they are published. Does your average academic article undergo that degree of scrutiny? In my experience, if an author can get two or three referees (who very well may be his friends given the degree of hyperspecialization) to go along, there's a good chance of a work being published. Given that, I would contend that despite having a bunch of citations, your average academic publication has undergone a much less rigorous quality check than your average doctrine manual. Between the author of an academic article, the people who refereed it, and the people who were cited, it often reflects the collective wisdom of, at most, a couple of dozen people. A doctrine manual reflects the collective wisdom of hundreds.