Toward an Anthropology of Landmines: Rogue Infrastructure and Military Waste in the Korean DMZ

Kim, Eleana

doi:10.14506/ca31.2.02

Cited by 77 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 17 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…Another trend critically assesses specific military programs or discourses, unpacking the history and assumptions within them (Gonzalez ; Network of Concerned Anthropologists ; Ferguson ; McNamara ), or attempts to provide contextualized, critical accounts of the experiences of personnel with issues, such as stress and relation to violence, which are sometimes simplified in broader discourses (MacLeish ; Hautzinger and Scandlyn ). Another trend focuses on the impact of the U.S. military on the population around bases and installations (Lutz , ; McCaffrey ; Kim ; Cox ; Vine ; Kanosky ). Over the past decade, there also has been a proliferation of new entries within an older trend focusing on the ethical and political complexities of anthropological engagements with the U.S. military (Albro et al.…”

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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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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“…Neither did they posit infrastructure as destructive of ecology: in different ways, they understood them as coproduced. Anthropologists have often foregrounded the damaging effects of infrastructures—including river dams (Errington and Gewertz ), orchard fences (Bird Rose ), landmines (Kim ), and flood shelters (Cons )—threatening the livelihood and existence of human communities, nonhuman animals, plants, and agrarian landscapes. Alternatively, studies have called attention to emergent ecologies that (somewhat unexpectedly) thrive in infrastructural rubble and ruins (Tsing ; Stoetzer ) and in infrastructures that unintentionally become habitats for nonhuman creatures, such as water sewers (Bruun Jensen ).…”

Section: Moral Ecologies Beyond Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

The Delta is Dead: Moral Ecologies of Infrastructure in Turkey

Scaramelli

2019

Cult. Anthropol.

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In a Turkish delta, fishers, scientists, and residents articulate contrasting moral ecologies of infrastructure. Contesting the infrastructural remaking of delta environments, fishermen connect ecological change to the concerns of working-class livelihoods; scientists assert a unique moral authority to create new habitats for selected species; and activists couch claims of ecological justice within existing legal spaces, all against the backdrop of increasing authoritarianism and economic crisis. This article extends insights from anthropological discussions of moral economy into political ecology to advance a new theoretical understanding of environmental infrastructure. I offer the notion of a moral ecology of infrastructure, theorizing infrastructure and ecology as inseparable, rather than set in opposition. In my use of the term, moral ecologies are assessments of justice and motivations for action that concern relations between humans and nonhumans. These assessments are not necessarily couched as resistance, but also encompass hegemonic and capitalist projects. This analytic proves helpful for understanding how, and why, people confront and respond to environmental transformations in an infrastructural world. At stake in these claims are moral notions of human and nonhuman livelihoods, notions that include those of water flows, birds, fish, sandbars, trees, and others. Özet Bir Türkiye deltasında balıkçılar, bilim insanları ve deltanın sakinleri, altyapının birbirine zıt ahlaki ekolojilerini ifade ederler. Her bir grubun delta ortamlarının yeniden altyapılandırılmasına karşı çıkış nedeni farklıdır: balıkçılar ekolojik değişimi işçi sınıfının geçim kaygılarıyla ilişkilendirir; bilim insanları seçili ender türlere yeni habitatlar oluşturmak için kendilerine özgü ahlaki bir otorite ortaya koyarlar; ve çevreciler artan otoriter rejim ve ekonomik krizler kıskacında, mevcut yasal alanlarda ekolojik adalet iddialarını dile getirirler. Bu makale, çevre altyapısına dair teorik yeni bir anlayış geliştirmek için ahlaki ekonomi ile ilgili antropolojik tartışmaları politik ekolojiyle ilişkilendirmektedir. Ahlaki altyapı ekolojisi kavramını önererek, altyapıyı ve ekolojiyi birbirine zıt olmaktan ziyade birbirinden ayrılmaz kavramlar olarak görüyorum. Ahlaki ekolojilerden kastım, insanlar ve insan olmayanlar arasındaki ilişkilere dair gelişen adalet anlayışı ve eylem motivasyonlarıdır. Ahlaki ekoloji mutlaka direnç demek değildir; aynı zamanda hegemonik ve kapitalist projeleri de kapsamaktadır. Bu yaklaşımla, insanların altyapı dünyasındaki çevresel dönüşümlerle nasıl ve niçin karşı karşıya kaldıklarını ve bu dönüşümlere nasıl tepki verdiklerini anlayacağımızı iddia ediyorum. Bu iddialarda dile gelen, insani ve insan dışı geçim kaynaklarına dair olan ahlak kavramlarıdır; suların akışını, kuşları, balıkları, kıyı kordonlarını, ağaçları ve diğerlerini içeren kavramlar.

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“…The question of the unknown and the fear it engenders are part and parcel of everyday life not only for many villagers in rural Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for numerous individuals and communities across the globe whose lives have been entangled with military waste in the aftermath of military conflict (Green 1994;Kim 2016;Kwon 2008;Navaro Yashin 2012). In this paper I focus on the two registers of indeterminacy and attend to them through ethnographic elucidation of emergent forms of knowing and living in the environment that is contaminated with military waste.…”

Section: Fucking Mushroomsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Living on the Frontline: Indeterminacy, Value, and Military Waste in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina

Henig¹

2019

Anthropological Quarterly

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More than 5,000 people around the world are injured or killed every year by landmines and unexploded ordnance, whether in active or former zones of conflict. This article explores how the after effects of war, materialised in military waste (unexploded landmines, shrapnel and bullets), transform forms of life in a post-war polity. It elucidates how the ongoing presence of military waste radically transforms the environment and the very conditions of liveability for those who dwell in such spaces many years after the actual conflict has finished. Situated in impoverished rural areas of postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina, I offer an ethnographic elucidation of the social life of military waste and its entanglement in people's attempts to remake livelihoods and reengage with their environment in the aftermath of the Bosnian war (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995) that has resulted in pervasive politicisation and privatisation of social redistribution, and has given rise to an unprecedented degree of precarity. My aim is to document how the ongoing presence of landmines and military waste renders the landscape and peoples' livelihoods not only radically uncertain and distressing but also often indeterminate, and thus open to the generation of unexpected forms of engagement, cohabitation, and value creation. By treating military waste as indeterminate, I ask what forms, practices, and potential for value creation military waste engenders in a particular spatio-temporal configuration of postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. By tracking the emerging activities surrounding land use and value creation in timber forest contaminated by military waste, I show how this invisibly dangerous landscape gives rise to new ways of engaging with the forest's economic potential vis-à-vis economic precarity in the postwar period. Ultimately, the article suggests how the subjective experience of fear gives rise to multiple modes of valuation, for people whose lives and the surrounding environment are mediated by experiences and remainders of conflict.

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Toward an Anthropology of Landmines: Rogue Infrastructure and Military Waste in the Korean DMZ

Cited by 77 publications

References 17 publications

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

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

The Delta is Dead: Moral Ecologies of Infrastructure in Turkey

Living on the Frontline: Indeterminacy, Value, and Military Waste in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina

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