Democracy Now! | Anthropologists Up in Arms Over Pentagon's "Human Terrain System" to Recruit Graduate Students to Serve in Iraq, Afghanistan
Democracy Now! | Anthropologists Up in Arms Over Pentagon's "Human Terrain System" to Recruit Graduate Students to Serve in Iraq, Afghanistan
JUAN GONZALEZ: What specifically is the Human Terrain program? How did it start, and how does it typically operate now in places like Afghanistan and Iraq?
DAVID PRICE: The Human Terrain program is run through BAE, which is a contracting agency. You know, in some ways it’s very similar to Blackwater in the way that it works. What they do is they take ethnographers, they take anthropologists, who may or may not have cultural expertise in the areas where they’re working, and they take these ethnographers, embed them with the troops, they travel with them, and then they try and advise commanders about taking culturally appropriate action.
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DAVID PRICE: Yeah. I know basically the facts that you stated there. I was on a panel with her in a session organized by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists at the anthropology meetings, and her critique was very interesting. Her critique of Human Terrain is not my own. Part of it is. She had serious complaints, from the inside, about basically the intellectual incompetence of the people who are involved in the program. The ethnographers really don’t have linguistic or cultural competence for the regions that they’re working in. And so, her critique was that it’s being run very poorly.
But this is where I differ with her. She believed that if, you know, better anthropologists or people with higher degrees of competence were involved, then the program would be a good one. I disagree with that entirely, because that would not resolve the ethical issues, you know, as well as the moral issues of being involved in a very corrupt war being fought in Iraq today.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how this debate is being played out in the Anthropological Association and what this oath is all about.
DAVID PRICE: Well, the oath is very simple. You know, it’s a pledge that’s modeled after actions taken by physicists during the Reagan era, during Star Wars, where physicists said that they just wanted to be clear, individuals wanted to be clear, they did not want their research and they were not willing to be involved in the Star Wars program. Hugh Gusterson, an anthropologist who studies nuclear weapons production, came up with the idea of modeling a very similar pledge. So, you know, a small group of us, eleven of us, got together and hammered out some language—it’s very simple—saying that we’re not—you know, all of us are not even necessarily opposed to some work with the military, but anything involving counterinsurgency, such as this, or anything that violates ethical standards of research, we’re opposed to, and we’re simply asking our colleagues to stand up and be counted with us, saying that they’re not willing to use anthropology to these ends.
...
JUAN GONZALEZ: What specifically is the Human Terrain program? How did it start, and how does it typically operate now in places like Afghanistan and Iraq?
DAVID PRICE: The Human Terrain program is run through BAE, which is a contracting agency. You know, in some ways it’s very similar to Blackwater in the way that it works. What they do is they take ethnographers, they take anthropologists, who may or may not have cultural expertise in the areas where they’re working, and they take these ethnographers, embed them with the troops, they travel with them, and then they try and advise commanders about taking culturally appropriate action.
...
DAVID PRICE: Yeah. I know basically the facts that you stated there. I was on a panel with her in a session organized by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists at the anthropology meetings, and her critique was very interesting. Her critique of Human Terrain is not my own. Part of it is. She had serious complaints, from the inside, about basically the intellectual incompetence of the people who are involved in the program. The ethnographers really don’t have linguistic or cultural competence for the regions that they’re working in. And so, her critique was that it’s being run very poorly.
But this is where I differ with her. She believed that if, you know, better anthropologists or people with higher degrees of competence were involved, then the program would be a good one. I disagree with that entirely, because that would not resolve the ethical issues, you know, as well as the moral issues of being involved in a very corrupt war being fought in Iraq today.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how this debate is being played out in the Anthropological Association and what this oath is all about.
DAVID PRICE: Well, the oath is very simple. You know, it’s a pledge that’s modeled after actions taken by physicists during the Reagan era, during Star Wars, where physicists said that they just wanted to be clear, individuals wanted to be clear, they did not want their research and they were not willing to be involved in the Star Wars program. Hugh Gusterson, an anthropologist who studies nuclear weapons production, came up with the idea of modeling a very similar pledge. So, you know, a small group of us, eleven of us, got together and hammered out some language—it’s very simple—saying that we’re not—you know, all of us are not even necessarily opposed to some work with the military, but anything involving counterinsurgency, such as this, or anything that violates ethical standards of research, we’re opposed to, and we’re simply asking our colleagues to stand up and be counted with us, saying that they’re not willing to use anthropology to these ends.
...
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