February 5, 2007
Anthropology + Army = Really Smart Counterinsurgency!
An interesting story in the Washington Post describes the Army’s turn to a slew of doctors, of the uniformed Ph.D. variety, to undertake some deep thinking with respect to counterinsurgency in Iraq. One of the head folks of this new circle is an Australian soldier-anthropologist, Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, whose increasingly famous piece on the topic has turned heads throughout the Army. The warrior-intellectual has appeared in a new guise!
Why bring this up here? My curiosity is sparked by this decision, less because new thinking is needed in Iraq per se, but more because of a presumed recognition that individuals holding doctorates in the social and political sciences might be able to “think through” the problems of insurgency in a more effective manner than the old-school, non-Ph.D.-holding military types. In addition to this nagging thought I have that these first-order observations about insurgency leave little room to think about *how to think* about problems, there is the more pertinent question of what the social sciences can, should or do “add” (or not) in the production of this kind of knowledge, specifically in this present moment. Some members of ARC have probably put some thought into this question of the knowledge that the social sciences can and should produce in these or similar contexts (not to mention the institutional relationships between social science and the state and its defense apparatus); it be interesting to see this point taken up for awhile. - Dale
Dale: You might want to take a look at George Packer’s piece in the December 18 New Yorker: Knowing the Enemy: The Anthropology of Insurgency”. He focuses on Kilcullen and some other more familar folks.
If anyone has the stomach for it we would all benefit tremendously from a thorough look at this stuff. There has been a huge amount of talk about these issues, and various new protocols, tactical and strategic doctrines, and so on. But other than the name (anthropologist) what relationship to we have to this? I say that not because I think the answer is “none” but because it isn’t immediately obvious and might require some, well, inquiry to answer in a satisfactory manner.
George and I recently wrote about related issues for Anthropology News… more focused on the issue s related to the Intellipedia. here’s the related blog.
So they are now discovering Herder and Durkheim. The question is: How long will it take until they get to Luhmann and Nowotny?
I did a field statement on anthropology working for the government, to the point that there were several levels or kinds of relationships. These were regarded in multiple ways, up until Vietnam when they became coded almost exclusively as “ethics”. I could probably produce a more succinct genealogy if it seemed useful.
Previous discussion on this topic from the Vital Systems Security blog.
http://anthropos-lab.net/vss/2007/01/counterinsurgency-according-to-gen-petraeus/
http://anthropos-lab.net/vss/2007/01/counter-counterinsurgency/#more-40
Meg, a short genealogy would be interesting if you have time these days. Otherwise, are there any parts of the field statement that are easy to excerpt? For obvious reasons, I’m interested. Thanks for the generous offer.