Academe: November 2007 Archives
I can see the value in this sort of approach--I've read about American soldiers having to adjust to Iraqi social mores while doing intelligence gathering, and how as small a thing as realizing that in Iraq you spend 2 hours socializing and eating before doing 'business" can affect success in dealing with the populace, leading to smoother relations and decreased violence.
So knowing who you're dealing with should be a good thing, right? And the anthropologists should be pleased that they can help save lives by avoiding needless misunderstandings, right?
Well, apparently I have once again missed the point. Because the point, you see, is that the military is EEEEVILLLEE, therefore any anthropologist working with them is in danger of becoming hopelessly morally contaminated and providing the military with psy-ops stuff so they can kill more people more effectively!
Don't believe me? Here's the premise of an article written for the Chronicle Review - I'll quote the 1st paragraph in its entirety in case it's subscription only, but here's the link:
"Anthropology, long the handmaiden of empires, is once again being called upon to assist with warfare, this time in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the "war on terror." The U.S. military, the CIA, and some other government agencies and military contractors are recruiting a small but growing number of anthropologists and other social scientists to provide cultural knowledge and analysis, ethnographic research, and what the military calls "human-terrain mapping" to bolster counterinsurgency and other combat operations. Generally those involved wear military uniforms. Some are armed."
The piece is soothingly titled, "Enabling the Kill Chain." Note scare quotes around "war on terror." And the subtly veiled horror at the fact that folks in a war zone working for the military might a) wear a uniform, or b) have a gun. Horrifying! I KNOW! Also, I was unaware that Genghis Khan, the the British and Hitler had relied so heavily on ANTHROPOLOGY when empire-building. 'Cause all my history profs were saying that mostly they'd relied on guns and money--or spears and fire, whichever came more readily to hand. You learn something new every day, I guess.
Lest you think I am exaggerating this fellow's position, I'll direct you to this report in today's Chronicle which recounts a recent debate on the subject at their annual conference. Again, I'll pull quotes, but here's the link.
"The report emphasizes two central principles: Anthropologists should be open and transparent in their work, and they should not harm the people they study. Unsurprisingly, no one at Thursday's sessions objected to such broadly stated principles--but there was plenty of disagreement about how to put them into practice.
Some of the discussion concerned the Human Terrain System, a year-old program in which social scientists embed within military units in Iraq and Afghanistan. No participants in that program, however, were present at either session."
So a bunch of academics will discuss something they have no first-hand experience with? THIS will be fun! You think there might be some sweeping judgments about people and institutions they've never bothered to actually learn about, even though they're ANTHROPOLOGISTS? Bring on the quotes!
"A few scholars suggested that the U.S. role in Iraq is so clearly immoral that the Human Terrain System should be plainly condemned. There is no need--at least in the case of that particular program--to have nuanced discussions of ethics, they said.
"I like the call for sharpening the do-no-harm clauses in our code of ethics," said David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University. "But I think there are some forms of harm where we don't need to talk anymore. The military--the U.S. military in particular--is an institution of violence, that kills and has killed. ... What do we do if we find anthropologists who are members of the association committing acts that lead to death or serious injury?" (Mr. Vine wrote about the human-terrain program in The Chronicle Review this week.)"
So even though there's no evidence that the worst case scenario is true, and no one involved in the program is there to tell you what it's like, there doesn't need to be any more debate on the subject. Okay!
Reality, please?
"Mr. Rubinstein studies international peacekeeping operations, and he often works as a consultant with military and intelligence agencies about how to improve such operations. Two of his former students, Kerry B. Fosher and Brian R. Selmeski, spoke about their recent experiences instructing military and intelligence officers. This week Mr. Selmeski joined the faculty of Air University, which trains officers in the U.S. Air Force. Ms. Fosher is a command social scientist at the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where she instructs case officers about anthropological concepts.
"I have complete academic freedom, I have tremendous autonomy, and I have fantastic students," Mr. Selmeski said.
The military is "not particularly interested in anthropology per se," he continued. "They are interested in what anthropology can do for them. Now, we can lament that, or we can see it as a window that's opening and try to force that window open a little further."...
For now, however, Ms. Fosher said that she has been surprised and pleased by her Marine Corps colleagues' openness to "uncomfortable" concepts about culture. "We were successful in getting a much more sophisticated and robust definition of culture" into her agency's curriculum, she said."
So the military wants to know about other cultures because it might help them not get their asses shot off, AND they're pretty open to the information? Sounds like it:
As for whether their instruction will help the military target and kill
individuals more effectively, the two scholars offered divergent
thoughts. Mr. Selmeski said, "I have not found any individual
student--I'm not talking about policy makers, but students--who has asked
to learn about culture concepts in order to target. What I have heard
is, 'We would like to minimize violence when possible.'"
But this is an academic conference, so the word of grad students who are actually working with the killbots must necessarily take a backseat to the bloviations of PhD's who Know Better and will invoke the Semiotics of Absence to Prove They Know Better:
Most members of the audience had apparently not had time to read the committee's report. But one scholar raised a criticism: Daniel A. Segal, a professor of anthropology at Pitzer College and the association's secretary, suggested that the report's authors were too quick to infer that no anthropologists were doing certain kinds of ethically dubious military activity, simply because the authors were unable to find any such anthropologists.
"I'm concerned about how you're interpreting these absences," said
Mr. Segal, "given that we have an administration that never
acknowledged prisons that it's running in other countries. ... It seems
to me that when we don't find something in this context, to interpret
it as not being there, as opposed to our not knowing whether it's
there, is a mistake."
Haven't read report? Check. Ignoring actual evidence in favor of conspiracy theory based on the fact that you "know" the military is evil because of random factoid that has nothing to do with your discipline? Check.
Irony offers you a six-pack and a salute, anthropologists!
I'm interested to see what comes forth post-Thanksgiving - a 3 foot felt tree with velcro ornaments? A giant menorah? Rudolph? A Yule log complete with faux-felt flame?
I'll be very disappointed if I just end up with a set of fake antlers.
And now your WTF moment for the day:
Former BYU Professor Tasered in Court During Suit Against Mormon Group
A few questions I had when I saw this are:
- Why was this man suing the Mormons, and why was he representing himself in court?
- What, exactly, is stress-induced disability, and how does it cause "mania?"
- How are 5 grown men incapable of taking down one stressed out prof with "disabling mania" without resorting to high voltage?
Also, I love the way that the media folks, in the interest of "getting to the truth," show the clip over and over, and even in slow motion, so that you, dear viewer, can "decide for yourself." There's nothing gratuitous to see here, folks! Move along!
"When Mexicans come north as illegal immigrants, we call them wetbacks," he told the Brandeis student newspaper, the Justice, in describing his comments. He says he wasn't saying that's what they should be called, but what many Americans do call them.
So two students didn't see it that way, and complained. Then what happened? A meeting? An attempt to discern what actually happened in the classroom, facilitated by administrators?
Not exactly.
Cue sanctions and classroom monitoring, lest this obviously crazed racist do something else, like read the definition of "niggardly" aloud in class! Good God.
Via.
And a follow-up, here.
Example? The whole University of Delaware kerfluffle would probably have been avoided if no one could get a Ph.D. in student affairs (read the comments thread on the linked article for a good time!).
Hyperbole? Not much. I worked in the student life area of the university for a while after completing my MA (in English, a broad, real by-God discipline, she says snootily), venturing briefly into the first dot com bust and finally retreating to academia, and I was consistently horrified by the sloppy writing and slipshod logic that passed for "research" in the area of student affairs and higher ed. Sure, the folks involved were all earnest and bright-eyed, but they were always one small step away from crossing the line between, "We should tell students about this," and "We should convince students of this," and that's how the concept of individuality tends to get eroded.
This is not to say that the intentions behind creating the discipline were bad, or stupid, or slipshod, or any of the above; rather, I think the failure of this discipline is mostly due to the fact that there was never enough "meat" to sustain it as a discipline in the first place. Student affairs is a narrow field, which concerns itself with a fairly narrow goal - or at least it did at first - helping students adjust to the university and university living, so that they might focus on getting their education, and offering opportunities for students to enhance their education outside of class.
So how did we end up with "dorm curricula" and the inevitable slide toward indoctrination? I'm thinking it's simple mission creep brought on by attempts to fill the research vacuum created by making a small area of concentration big enough to allow folks to matriculate with a degree in student affairs.
If you get your niche elevated to the level of discipline, you've gotta keep convincing folks of the need for that discipline, and you do that by constantly producing new research, and round and round we go.....makes you dizzy, frankly, and in a niche, your opportunities for "discovering the new" are somewhat limited, as is your circle of peers, and - well, I think you can see where this ends up, with the "Insert argument about isolated, out of touch academics stuck in an intellectual circle-jerk" here.
In other words, the normal progression of specialization that takes place as a student moves from BA to PhD within a discipline is occurring earlier, and the focus now can be much narrower, which leads to intellectual myopia, sweaty palms, and madness of the RA - led "treatment" variety.
I'm not arguing that no one should be able to take courses in these areas, but I do think that quite a bit of fat could be trimmed by demoting some of these niche PhD's to "concentrations," and letting a little more of the "big picture" filter through.
Yes, I know. I've just suggested syllabus and canon wars, and things that eliminate grant money - in short, Academic End Times. Sorry. Not my job to fix it, just to point out that sometimes, more isn't always better.
Not that I'm bitter. But I am a snob.
