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terror war anthropology

The below pieces critically examine the roles played by anthropology in Presidents Bush and Obama's domestic and international military campaigns.  As the "war on terror" reveals increasing the military and intelligence agency's ignorance about regions and cultures of world where the Bush administration desires to impose military hegemony, there are renewed desires to use anthropological knowledge for militarized ends.   While the current calls to apply anthropology for a newly conceptualized terror war appear to underestimate the extent of past applications and misapplications of anthropology to the needs of warfare, anthropology has regularly been deployed throughout the wars of the Twentieth Century--deployments that continue to raise serious ethical issues for anthropology.  My 2011 book, Weaponizing Anthropology collects essays and public talks critically examing the ways that American academia is increasingly being militarized. 

2011 Weaponizing Anthropology: Social Science in Service of the Military State.  Petrolia, Ca.: AK/CounterPunch Books. 

2011 "Case Western Breakdown: How Critical Engagements with Military Scholars Can Treaten Academic Transparency." CounterPunch November 14, 2011.

2011  "Uninvited Guests: A Short History of the CIA on Campus." The CIA on Campus: Essays on Academic Freedom and the National Security State pp 33-60, Philip Zwerling ed., Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishing.

2011 "Review of Barbara Rose Johnston & Susan Slyomovics, eds., Waging War, Making Peace: Reparations and Human Rights." Journal of Anthropological Research 67(1):120-121.

2011 "Pre-Apocalyptic Ethnography of American Nuclear Borderlands." Dialectical Anthropology 35:51-57.

2011 "Challenging America's Pharaoh: A Revolutionary Movement and the Future of Egyptian (In)dependence." CounterPunch February 2, 2011

2010 "Comments on Setha M. Low & Sally Engle Merry's 'Engaged Anthropology: Diversity and Dilemmas.'" Current Anthropology 51, Suppllement 2:S217-S218.

2010 “Silent Coup: How the CIA is Welcome Itself Back onto American University Campuses.”  CounterPunch 17(2):1-5.  Jan. 16-31, 2010.

 2010       “Governing Fear in the Iron Cage of Rationalism: Terry Gilliam’s Brazil Through the 9/11 Looking Glass.” Pp 167-182, in Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the “War on Terror.” Eds. Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula & Karen Randell.  New York: Continuum.

 2010       “Counterinsurgency.”  In Alan Bernard & Jonathan Spencer eds.,  The Routledge  Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2^nd ed.  Pp 162-164. London: Routledge.

 2010  “The Spook School Program.” CounterPunch 17(3):6-7. February 1-15, 2010.

 2010  “Human Terrain Systems Dissenter Resigns, Tells Inside Story of Training’s Heart of  Darkness.” CounterPunch February 15, 2010.

 2010       “Soft Power, Hard Power and the Anthropological ‘Leveraging’ of Cultural ‘Assets’: Distilling the Politics and Ethics of Anthropological Counterinsurgency.” Pp 245-260, in John D. Kelly, Beatrice Jauregui, Sean T. Mitchell & Jeremy Walton eds., Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

 2010  “The Army’s Take on Culture.” Anthropology Now 2(1):57-63.

 2009 "Going Native: Hollywood's Human Terrain Avatars." CounterPunch December 23, 2009.

2009 "Anthropology, Human Terrain's Prehistory, and the Role of Culture in Wars Waged by Robots." CounterPunch October 1-15:16(17):1, 4-6.

2009 "Cynical Design or Opportunism? Review of Jeremy Kennan's The Dark Sahara: America's War on Terror in Africa." Times Higher Education Septemner 3, 2009, p52.

2009 “Review of Ugo Mattei & Laura Nader’s, Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal.” Multinational Monitor January/February 2009, pp 48-49. 

2009       “Counterinsurgency’s Free Ride: The Press and Human Terrain Systems.” CounterPunch  April 7, 2009. 

2009       “Son of PRISP: Obama’s Classroom Spies” CounterPunch June 23, 2009.

2009  “Faking Scholarship.” In the Network of Concerned Anthropologists Steering  Committee, eds., The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual or, Notes on Demilitarizing American Society.  Pp 59-76. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.

2009 "Counterinsurgency, Anthropology and Disciplinary Complicity: An Interview with Roberto González on Human Terrain Systems." CounterPunch February 3, 2009.

Keller, Josh. 2008. "The Ethics of a Code for Anthropologists: Q & A Interview with David Price" Chronicle of Higher Education December 5, 2008, 54(15):A6.

2008 "The Leaky Ship of Human Terrain Systems: First read of a Leaked Handbook" CounterPunch December 12, 2008.  

2008 "Social Science in Harness: Inside the Minerva Consortium." CounterPunch June 25, 2008.

2008 "The Military 'Leveraging' of Cultural Knowledge: the Newly Available 2004 Stryker Report Evaluating Iraqi Failures." CounterPunch March 18, 2008.

2008 “Payback Time: The Student Who Decided to Not Be a Spook.” CounterPunch 15(15):6-8. 9/1-15/08.

2008  “On the Ambivalence of Orthodoxy in American Anthropology.” Reviews in Anthropology 37(2): 101-121.

2007 Interview with Amy Goodman for story on "Anthropologists Up in Arms Over Pentagon’s “Human Terrain System” to Recruit Graduate Students to Serve in Iraq, Afghanistan" on Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio, December 13, 2007.

2007 [co-authored with Hugh Gusterson] "Reconsidering Why Dr. Johnny Won't Fight." Small Wars (in press).

2007  "Anthropology and the Wages of Secrecy." Anthropology News 48(3):6-7.

2007 "The Long Lost War: This Occupation Shall Remain Nameless" CounterPunch April 25, 2007.

2007 “Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus’ Counterinsurgency Manual.” CounterPunch Vol 14, No. 18. Oct. 16-31, pp 1-6. Spanish translation: "El manual de contrainsurgencia del general Petraeus es desbaratado por inccluir innumerables plagios."

2007  [co-authored with Roberto J. González] “When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents: Pledging to Boycott the ‘War on Terror.’” CounterPunch September 28, 2007.

2006  "American Anthropologists Stand Up Against Torture and Occupation of Iraq." CounterPunch November 20, 2006.

Interview with Amy Goodman for story on “CIA Supports ‘Secret’ CIA Scholarships” on Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio, August 3, 2005. 

 2005  [co-authored with Hugh Gusterson] “Spies in our Midst” Anthropology News 46(6):39-40.

 2005  “America the Ambivalent: Quietly Selling Anthropology to the CIA” Anthropology Today 21(5):1-2.  

2005  "From PRISP to ICSP: Skullduggery Among the Acronyms" CounterPunch Vol. 12, No. 5. March 1-15. pp 3-4. (reprinted on CounterPunch online May 22-23, 2005)

2005  "The CIA's University Spies" CounterPunch Volume 12, No. 1. January 1-15, pp 1-6. (reprinted on CounterPunch online, March 12-13, 2005) [Translated into Spanish by Cecilia Paterno, as: “Los espías de la CIA en los campus universitarios”]

2004  “’Like Slaves’: Anthropological Notes on Occupation” CounterPunch January 6, 2004. 

2003 "Prostrate Before The Patriot Act: Librarians As FBI Extension Agents" CounterPunch March 5, 2003.

2002 Here is a piece discussing the likelihood that an American military invasion of Iraq could lead to political instability in Egypt. I wrote this after a trip to Egypt in September 2002, and had much of the second of half of it published in the print version of CounterPunch as: "Cops As Robbers" CounterPunch October 1-15, 2002:4. "Unleashing Blood Meridian: Bush’s War Threatens Egyptian Stability" 

2002 “Interlopers and Invited Guests: On Anthropology’s Witting and Unwitting Links to Intelligence Agencies" Anthropology Today 18(6):16-21.  

2002  “Reply to Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Sluka” Anthropology Today 18(2):23.

2002  “Present Dangers, Past Wars and Past Anthropologies” Anthropology Today 18(1):3-5.

2001 “Academia Under Attack: Sketches For A New Blacklist” CounterPunch Nov. 21, 2001.

2001 “War Without End: Terror and Indigenous People” CounterPunch Nov. 3 2001:1-3.

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