anthropology and counterinsurgency – Page 3

Human Quicksand for the U.S. Army, a crash course in cultural studies

By Steve Featherstone Harper’s Magazine, September 2008 In July of last year I was stranded for a week at a military base in Kuwait, waiting for a flight to Kabul. I was traveling with four members of a new U.S. Army unit called the Human Terrain Team (HTT). One morning the team sat at a […]

A “Radical New Experiment” in “Anthropology”? What HTS is NOT

So some political scientist (David Kilcullen) decides to call his counterinsurgency work “conflict ethnography.” Do we take that at face value as ethnography? On what basis is the Human Terrain System “anthropology” as Grant McCracken celebrates it, bemoaning that anthropology is only ever really applied when it is applied in dominating other nations and murdering […]

The McFarce Continues: Pravda publishes a second scathing article on the Human Terrain System; McFate feted by fliers

Two pieces of news here. The first is that a second article by John Stanton has just been published by Pravda titled, “US Army’s Human Terrain System: From Super Concept to Absolute Farce.” The second has to do with Montgomery McFate recently becoming a celebrity on city telephone poles. Continued. Read Part I of the […]

ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Tag: anthropology and counterinsurgency

Human Quicksand for the U.S. Army, a crash course in cultural studies

A “Radical New Experiment” in “Anthropology”? What HTS is NOT