Counterinsurgency by Other Names: Complicating Humanitarian Applied Anthropology in Current, Former, and Future War Zones

Price, David H.

doi:10.17730/humo.73.2.4n50n51170hg3740

Cited by 14 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…According to what is positioned as the mainstream narrative, US anthropology has a mostly unbroken legacy of activism since its formalization with Franz Boas. 5 The Cold War forced many activists into hiding-with a number of anthropologists targeted during the McCarthy witch hunts (González, 2004;Price, 2004). The Cold War also exposed anthropology's complicity in counterinsurgency, which some anthropologists denounced at great cost to their careers (González, 2009;Klugh, 2018;Price, 2014).…”

Section: Anthropological Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 The Cold War forced many activists into hiding-with a number of anthropologists targeted during the McCarthy witch hunts (González, 2004;Price, 2004). The Cold War also exposed anthropology's complicity in counterinsurgency, which some anthropologists denounced at great cost to their careers (González, 2009;Klugh, 2018;Price, 2014). What was perceived as a major rift widened between academic and applied anthropology while anthropology grappled with its colonial legacies (Asad, 1979;Deloria, [1969Deloria, [ ] 1988Harrison, 1991).…”

Section: Anthropological Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dilemmas of anthropological activism, solidarity, and human rights: Lessons from Haiti

Schuller

2023

American Anthropologist

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Building on a growing anthropological engagement with and interrogation of the multiple forms and meanings of activism, this article—based on over 20 years of activist engagement and ethnographic interviews spanning 11 years—offers ethnographically grounded understandings of solidarity activism. The rich and at times messy (auto)ethnographic data suggest that contradictions inherent to liberal humanism can increase hierarchies and social distance between groups across national boundaries. Further, new social media technologies notwithstanding, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) remain hegemonic vehicles for this transnational exchange. The experience in Haiti, dubbed the “Republic of NGOs,” highlights contradictions within solidarity activism, generating a useful set of questions for other activist anthropologists and solidarity activists who work elsewhere. Moving beyond the discussion of what anthropology brings to activism, or the reverse, this article offers insights from ethnographic analyses of NGOs, or NGOgraphy, to critically understand and assess anthropological activism. Specifically, building off insights of “NGOing” as a verb, this article interrogates the (micro)politics, structures, and consequences of intervention. Further, international solidarity activism often operates on logics of projects and deliverables, and therefore NGOing can eclipse other “metrics,” disrupting and dividing local communities. Like NGOs, anthropologists function within a hierarchical transnational political economy and division of labor. [activist anthropology, Haiti, NGOs, solidarity, autoethnography]

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Section: Anthropological Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Anthropological Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dilemmas of anthropological activism, solidarity, and human rights: Lessons from Haiti

Schuller

2023

American Anthropologist

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“…Anthropology has tended to address active duty U.S. military personnel in disparate ways that can be difficult to categorize . One trend in the literature grapples with the U.S. military in the context of a related topic, such as militarism (Gusterson ), masculinity and postwar experience (Wool ), science and technology (Gray ; Bickford ), or aid work (Omidian ; Price ), or as one factor in broader treatments of disaster and human rights (Farmer et al. ; Lloréns ).…”

Section: Anthropological Research On the Us Militarymentioning

confidence: 99%

Translational Research in a Military Organization: The Marine Corps Organizational Culture Research Project

Fosher

Lane

Tarzi

et al. 2020

Annals of Anthropol Pract

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This article provides an overview of a project combining anthropological practice and research to examine various aspects of U.S. Marine Corps culture, conducted at the organization's request, in the wake of significant gender‐related misconduct involving Marines on social media. We examine the context and practice leading up to the research, address research design and execution, and describe both the broader Marine population and the characteristics of those in our sample. By examining the details of the project's context and execution, the article aims to advance anthropological discussion about the complexities of research with active duty military personnel, as well as provide insights into practice and research conducted from a standpoint within a military organization.

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“…Largely, by using contractors, states may seek to reduce their exposure to international responsibility (Hoppe, ). This was highlighted in studies on the criminal liability of contractors (Finkelman, ; Price, ; Ryngaert, ) and the transparency related work on using these companies and on their actions (Avant & Sigelman, ; Østensen, ; Schooner, ).…”

Section: Wars Without Professionals?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Private security and military contractors: A troubling oversight

Swed

Crosbie

2017

Sociology Compass

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Though private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been addressed extensively in the literature, little research has been done on the contractors themselves, leaving us in the dark as to who these individuals are. In this article, we focus on the critical case of the United States armed services and argue that two broad developments have been converging that both point to the need for new, microlevel sociological research on the people who are involved in the global PMSC industry. To this end, we first draw from an extensive political science literature to illustrate the rise of the PMSCs and concomitant evolution of the security sector, while noting a new trend that points to the need for moving from the macrosocial to the microsocial level of inquiry. Second, we indicate the challenges contractors pose to the sociological paradigm of military professionalism: These suggest a need to move from the mesosocial to the microsocial level of inquiry. We conclude by reviewing the existing research on the demographics of the sector and then indicating the troubling gaps in our current understanding of this critical sector of the national security apparatus.

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Counterinsurgency by Other Names: Complicating Humanitarian Applied Anthropology in Current, Former, and Future War Zones

Cited by 14 publications

References 2 publications

Dilemmas of anthropological activism, solidarity, and human rights: Lessons from Haiti

Dilemmas of anthropological activism, solidarity, and human rights: Lessons from Haiti

Translational Research in a Military Organization: The Marine Corps Organizational Culture Research Project

Private security and military contractors: A troubling oversight

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