Wow, thanks you! Finally some worthwhile discussion! I am certainly partially to blame for this not being possible to this point, and accept my lumps. No time for a systematic response to all of what’s been said, but I will say this:

1)Oneman: Ok, so my arguments are stupid. But by your own standard, I have to tell you that there are many, many Iraqi and Afghan nationals involved in HTS at all levels. I couldn’t quantify it for you off the cuff, but I’ve met a bunch….and to a person they see the value in the program (or rather, proof-of-concept). Of course, I recognize that this is selective in that I haven’t talked to those nationals or ex-pats who are opposed to HTS. But I’m just using your standard here. About North Carolina Freegans, I really couldn’t tell you. 🙂

One thing: Could you please elaborate on your comment about anthropologists putting their lives on the line in the service of the greater good (I’m paraphrasing)? Of course there are many selfless, committed anthros…I would never dispute that. But I’m wondering — really just thinking out loud on this — don’t you think that the economics of current academe play a part in all this? I really want to know what you think.

2) Zoe: Well, in many ways you’ve come to the nub of all this, at least as I see it. If you participate in military projects and are hired as an anthropologist, does this NECESSARILY mean that the work you are doing is anthropological? If it’s not, what on earth ARE you doing? I know that sounds counter-intuitive, so let me elaborate. Many of the HTS people I’ve met hold PhDs in a range of fields, and the impression I get is that they are there BECAUSE they hold PhDs…whether these are in anthro or not is a secondary concern. I know, that sounds horrifying at first blush! But I believe that it’s the “cache” factor that often motivates the army to hire PhDs. This actually shouldn’t surprise anyone, because it’s the same things that’s been going on in industry for years. A PhD is cultural code for “really smart and motivated” or something. I point this out in order to propose that what many anthropologists imagine HTTs are doing is in fact very different than what HTTs are ACTUALLY doing…not putting our discipline in the service of intelligence gathering, as many imagine, but in the service of communication and culture broking. I know this is ethnography-lite, and can sense the guffaws already…but this HAS saved lives that would almost certainly have been lost otherwise– and, yes, this statement will be much more available for and open to scrutiny before this debate subsides, and I don’t really expect anyone to be persuaded until it is (and maybe not even then).

I have more to say re. your comments, Zoe, but will save that for a later post.

One other thing before I go: I think it’s important to remember, too, that McFate is only one piece of a broader tapestry being woven here. She’s not some kind of Uber-deity controlling things from on high. People have been thinking about how to minimize casualties (civilian as well as military) for a long time. to reiterate, I am not arguing that you can change the leopard’s spots….but if anything the idea that yelling at will just make it shut up and go away is even more wrong-minded.

More later, and I like the looks of this new (and I hope civil) conversation.

Best regards,
Dee

While I readily acknowledge that there are those rare individuals in the military who are not only open to critique, but embrace it, the logic within which I have seen it framed (such as what you point out: personnel retention and methodological or tactical reform) is far from transformative. In fact, its precisely hegemonic. So I disagree; the leopard can indeed change its spots (by accepting that there’s no such thing as conventional warfare, giving cultural sensitivity training and suicide prevention classes to mobilizing units), but a leopard is still a leopard: vicious, effective, and unselfconscious.

As to the possibilities of the same researchers “set[ing] about both tasks independently of each other”; I won’t attempt the spacial metaphor to illustrate the near impossibility of this, as it exceeds my understanding of fractal geometry. Suffice it to say there are fundamental differences between the projects of someone like Catherine Lutz (cf Homefront) and someone like John P Hawkins (cf Army of Hope, Army of Alienation). To me, they seem incompatible, and I wouldn’t envy the well being of someone who embodied them both.

While I don’t feel that *engaging* the military automatically disarms one’s critical faculties, I do feel that by *participating in* military projects, one submits to critical zip-ties. In such a position, one can fire off critiques all they want, but they’ll only be shooting themselves in the foot. And while I may have my own feelings about the intentions of Mcfate coiffing the leopard, I think its more helpful here to take a lesson from James Ferguson: The solutions taken up are those which fit. They are constrained by the particular definition of the problem and the arc of possibilities which describes the array feasible solutions. It may always be this way, but the role of the critic is not to play along.

Its an old debate, and one I’m not sure its worth rehashing here, but when its possible, if difficult, to engage from the outside, why choose to life in the belly of the beast? While someone on the inside may can cause occasional indigestion, I’d submit that they also provide sustenance. As far as I can tell, any pain caused by Mcfate has been far outweighed by the analgesic effects of her proffered solutions.

And, while I appreciate your frank engagement with my comments and your willingness to take HTS off its pedestal, or at lease lower it a bit, I reiterate my point that programs like HTS and Minerva which, though in different ways, militarize intellectual work and present an openness to refinement as if it were openness to radical critique, are a *threat* to the critical space I spoke of, not simply parallel to it.

Mrs Ventura: SMers post pretty regularly about anthro and war, so lets not be so quick to disparage the un-tenured. And the profile of this particular contemporary political issue in American anthropology is actually quite high. Also, isn’t an online space such as this is in part about users carving out, or at least re-sculpting issues of interest?

Jumping (or indexing) topics, but I’m just curious why you chose North Carolina Freeganism? Was it just an arbitrary choice on your part, or as a native of Western North Carolina is the weirdness of my home lost on me?

I’ve not been all that active in these discussions, for a number of reasons. First, I’m struggling to keep my head above water in the rest f my life, and don’t have time to post here as much as I’d like. Yeah, that’s about being a non-tenured anthro — or, more to the point, about being an adjunct. But not how you suggest — it’s about time, not fear of protecting a career that, frankly, I will never have.

Second, I just spent several months writing first a conference presentation and then an article on HTS and the trouble with counter-insurgency. I’m burnt out. I’ve said my piece, here and in the article (book is forthcoming from U Chi Press, if I understand correctly).

Third, I don’t see any problem with providing a space for debate and then stepping back. It’s not our job to speak for the discipline or provide the final word on this stuff — if we wanted to do that, we’d… I dunno, but it sure wouldn’t be a blog! We have a three-year history of providing commentary and analysis, some of it damn good — but I’m more proud of the fact that our readers have led some rousing good debates here.

Now, for my own thoughts: Dee’s arguments are stupid. They follow directly from McFate’s even stupider “ivory tower” arguments, as if anthropologists don’t put their lives on the line every day in the service of issues bigger than tenure review and disciplinary politics.

There’s a very simple test of HTS’ intentions. A quantitative test, even. It involves answering two questions: 1) How many native Iraqi social scientists are embedded in HTS teams? 2) How many experts on North Carolina Freeganism are embedded in HTS teams? I’d expect to see a lot of the former in a program aimed at easing frictions between US occupiers and local populations, especially given the dearth of American Iraq, or even Arabic, experts. I’d expect to see the latter in a program designed to identify and eliminate resistances to occupation and/or ease the long-term administration of a subjugated people.

The Army prides itself on providing the best people for the job to be done, and I believe in HTS they’ve done just that.

Also, after months and months of covering and talking about HTS, and being told that the authors are too ‘elite’ and deal with ‘academic’ issues rather than doing truly ‘academic anthropology’ Its refreshing to have a comment that urges us to stop building community and act more like Real Professors!

How did Savage Minds ever get to be so boring, and afraid of covering political anthropological issues that the posts dealing with these issues have to be carved out by users? Why isn’t savageminds providing direct analysis of this? Is this a problem with having nontenured anthros running this, or is there a lack of interest in a political story that will soon suck the discipline down the drain?

Well, if he goes I should probably go too. I do apologize to the group for being witness to this ongoing discord. Since it’s pretty clear that little common ground can be found between myself (still not Mitzy) and MF, there’s not much point in boring everyone else. From my end, I promise to let it go there….and you may hold me to that. I wouldn’t dream of speaking for MF.

Best regards
Dee

Ah, it’s VERY good to see you sticking to your guns (so to speak). So, this means that I no longer have to point to Maxi’s blog to highlight his penchant for character assassination…you can all see it right here on SM. But for the record, in case I haven’t said so in no uncertain terms before, and may lightning srike me and all I love dead if I lie here: I am NOT Montgomery McFate!

But then, Maxi…as I’ve said before, it matters little to me who you think I am or what Circle of Hell you think I (or McFate) come from! As far as I’m concerned, your attacks are destined for the dustbin of irrelevancy. So here’s a little character assassination of my own, since you can’t be persuaded to civility: your blog represents little more than a series of self-absorbed ramblings by a pot overly fond of calling the kettle black. You accuse McFate and others of having self-aggrandizing delusions of grandeur but we need look no further than your blog logo to see your OWN face splattered across a cheesy picture of the globe! Do you truly see yourself in this light, Maxi? A beacon of hope to a world gone topsy turvy? What a hypocrite you are, Maxi, and a testament to an overinflated ego. In sum, what a jackass — reduced even to making fun of her name…her NAME, for God’s sake! Is this truly goodbye? We can only hope. I’ll address you no further.

Now to Zoe’s much more interesting comments. Yes, by the way, the smallness of the conversation is disheartening to me too, believe it or not, so I’ll make a concerted effort to “play nice” should I contribute in the future…meaning I’ll do my utmost to ignore the ad hominem stuff concerning my friend, McFate. Onto the substance, I certainly didn’t mean to imply that civilian and military discourses and overt ambitions aren’t fused in a basic logic of governmental control and purpose. Reading back over what I wrote earlier, I suppose I earned that “quaint and naive” comment. To my mind, it is possible to BOTH maintain that critical intellectual space you speak of AND work within the constraints you describe — that is, the same researchers may set about both tasks independently of each other. HTS may or may not be destined to carry out critical social science on the military…certainly is is nowhere near that now, as I readily concede. Not sure how McFate feels about this, but that’s another issue. Having spoken to a few brigade commanders myself, I completely concur that the US military is adverse to criticism…but not ALL criticism. Embedded in the same set of powerful drives is a concern for mitigating loss of personnel (among other things). In other words, while you are almost certainly correct that sea changes in what the military is/does are not in the cards, incremental shifts on their logic of practice ARE attainable. In very practical terms, the HTTs don’t actually do much that we could call “anthropology”…it’s more like culture broking, and so far its effects are glowingly received by many (though certainly not all) brigade and division level staff.

Wrapping up this post, I also am no fan of the straight dichotomy, “Ra, Ra” versus “Boo, Boo” — I apologize if I left that impression. But honestly, that middle path is very difficult to chart unless people are willing to listen to your voice. I applaud you for doing the work that you do, and look forward to reading what you publish, etc. Odd as it may seem, many (at least those I’ve met within HTS…not a huge number, I’ll admit)are far more willing now than, say, two years ago, to listen to critiques of their methods precisely because of the efforts made by Montgomery and others to wedge open that door. Of course, nobody is naive enough to think this changes spots on the leopard. However, it may be enough to cause the leopard a spot of indigestion from time to time. Is that not worth the work? I don’t see that engaging the military leads inexorably to sacrificing one’s critical reasoning skills or willingness to speak them, if for no other reason than because military staff respect and listen to people they feel empathize with and/or at least understand their work. However savage, the critiques are thus blunted by respect. This is actually precisely how HTS got its start — and it HAS saved some lives in the small picture, though I understand we’re really dealing with “big picture” stuff here (I know, another false dichotomy…mea culpa).

Dee

Dee, you say “which wars get fought where and when isn’t up to the Army but to civilian leadership”…what a quaint and naïve distinction. If the ‘war on terror’ has taught us anything (which I increasingly fear it hasn’t), its that the determination of strategic foreign interests and foreign policy priorities is, in America, a military matter. AFRICOM is one example, SOUTHCOM’s new humanitarian face (personified in Admiral Stavridis) is another. What we have here is not an intellectualization or humanitarianization of the military, its an elimination of independent humanitarian and intellectual space, space which is vital for critique, which (I’ll do you the dignity of assuming) we all value.

The American military does what it does very well; what it does is war. Just as I do not clip my nails with a machete—though I suppose I could—we are unwise to wield our military for tasks to which it is not suited. And though notions of hybridity may just now be trickling down into government bureaucracy (witness the rise of ‘the interagency’), subsuming the production and execution of humanitarian programs or foreign policy within the military is a bridge too far. More than that, it is dangerous.

Finally, as I’m currently wrapping up a year’s fieldwork in various military contexts, I offer two informed opinions. First, British Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, was right to say that the American military is overly and *unnecessarily*, bound to submission to hierarchy, quick to violence, and averse to criticism. When we think of the military, and its capacities, as an institution, we must remember that.

Second, the notion that our only options for engagement here are a whole hearted embrace of the myth of consenting patriotism (“Rah, rah, HTS, Monty says that you’re the best! Go USA!”) or reactionary negative critique (“Boo, boo red, white, and blue! But don’t ask me what we should do! Go AAA!”) is both counter productive and wrong. I can’t help but sides in that debate (in this iteration, I don’t mind saying, I’m in the Maxi camp), but there is another tune; that of positive critique which can only be voiced from outside (“War is bad, occupation worse! I demand you hear this verse! Go third way!”). If we want to save an independent, critical space, perhaps we could do less enumerating of the ways its being infringed on and violated and do a little more reclaiming of it. Instead of wasting all our energy in a fist fight (worthwhile though it may be), lets thing about a sit in.

I conceal my identity with good reason. Sure, you can address me by “Hey You” or whatever.

I appreciate you chiming in. I must beg to differ — even those critiques of McFate that begin as legitimate airing of difference descend very quickly into allegations that she’s involved in fundamentally immoral work that speaks directly to her worth as a person. Could or would the same things be said about serving members of the military? Those that support them? How about all the other social scientists in other disciplines, to say nothing of all the civil servants who work in some capacity or other for the military? I would be interested to know whether there similar controversies have erupted in political science or history. I have not heard of any, so if you come across any, please let us know. It seems to me that all this speaks to an unhealthy preoccupation with the history of our discipline that paralyzes many from having the moral courage to take action in new, unprecedented ways. It also reveals a hubris and arrogance among many anthropologists: MM should “know better” while others, poor misled fools that they are, cannot, apparently, be expected to.

I will not repeat the accusations against Montgomery here, simply because I have no desire to publicize them. Again, I refer you to Max Forte’s blog for a good example of how NOT to proceed with civil discourse.

I know Montgomery, and am of course aware of her “Man in Uniform” blog. While I suppose I found it rather uninteresting and maybe a little crude, this is my own taste. The blog had little or no bearing on these anthropological debates. It was “unearthed” in yet another effort to discredit MM as a person. As for the misinformed Pravda piece, many of us are already aware of the many ways in which it unfairly spun Montgomery’s ambitions and profits. It’s not my place to address this issue here — suffice it to say that the exaggerated reports of untold wealth are rather bizarre.

Yes, I’ve just read the new piece about MM’s mother-in-law. I’m gratified that you have used a “guilt by association” argument, and recognize that MM’s involvement in intelligence gathering (or, in the main report writing) cuts against the grain of what most anthropologists would consider legitimate anthropology. But then, MM does not appear to have been doing any of this AS an anthropologist…and so we are right back to arguments about her basic character, etc. Is all intelligence work morally flawed? Well, the army and CIA are very different organizations with different methods. While I’m not familiar with Sapone/McFate’s research, it does seem to have been private sector contracting, and I think we’d need to consider it much more closely before passing judgment on it. At first glance, I’m as unimpressed as you no doubt are with espionage on environmental groups, etc. But the whole story has yet to emerge. I hope that it will in due course.

Actually, Mitzy is very much in control…at least of her own perspective. She doesn’t contribute these blogs or visit the AAA much anymore because she’s tired of being a pin-cushion…I believe we could at least all sympathize with THAT position. But “crash landing”? Who are you talking about??? MM??? As I said in response to an earlier post….spoken like someone who has never met Mitzy. She’s already weathered the worst of anthropologists can throw at her.

Best regards,

Dee