On October 31, 2007, the American Anthropological Association’s Executive Board passed a statement concerning ethical aspects of the U.S. military’s Human Terrain System (HTS) project. The project, which has received widespread national and international media coverage, embeds anthropologists and other social scientists in military teams in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ethical and procedural concerns regarding anthropologists working with U.S. military and intelligence agencies have been under investigation by an ad hoc commission of the AAA. The Ad Hoc Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with US Security and Intelligence Communities will submit their final report on this subject—which extends beyond the particulars of the HTS project—during the AAA’s Annual Meeting in Washington DC.
To facilitate discussion on this subject, the AAA has created this blog as a forum for members to post comments regarding the Executive Board statement and related issues.
Read the Executive Board Statement on HTS
Read the Code of Ethics
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
AAA Board Statement on HTS
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238 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 238 of 238I would agree with J. A. Paredes' that one should not have to be brave in order to express oneself in the forum of their professional association. I was not at the annual meeting so can not refer to that context directly, but in this online forum there has been a general effort to foster frank and collegial discussion, which I hope would be the professional aim of participants.
At the same time, participants in this professional discussion have many of the same constraints as the public to which we all belong. We are deliberately misled by those whose bigger agenda justifies for them any manner of covert or overt tactics in order to accomplish their goals. We are surrounded by language of patriotism and terror, and threatened by the daily encroachment of governmental intrusion into our private lives, as well as by the countless examples of the Orwellian (if not Kafkaesque) treatment of anyone who is ‘against us.’
The very human impact of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is deliberately kept from our attention through concerted governmental policies and actions—drawing from a Viet Nam War lesson that if people see too much of the reality, they may oppose it. While the numbers of US combatants killed can hardly be hidden, the number of maimed and wounded returning home is a vague reality in our general consciousness; numbers of dead, wounded, orphaned, widowed in Iraq and Afghanistan, are not even our concern as we are taught to imagine how many instead “we have saved for democracy.”
To consider the so-called “Human Terrain” project in this context as an effort to “save lives” stretches credulity beyond limit. It calls for such a narrowing down of focus to the immediacy of one’s work in order to ignore the inescapable context of war making that it serves. “Empirical study” of the project might in fact help us to narrow such focus—but that would be just about the only ‘empiricism’ allowed by those who have otherwise sanitized the body count, made the deaths of innocents invisible, led us to imagine ‘weapons of mass destruction’ where there were none, all this and more as part and parcel of executing the war for their own ends.
In yesterday’s news there was a report about an 80 year old citizen of the U.S. who was handing out leaflets in the Smith Haven Mall on Long Island. He was with a group of others who were doing the same, expressing their concern about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were also wearing T-shirts that read “"4,000 troops, 1 million Iraqis dead. Enough." They were asked to stop leafleting in the mall—which they did; they were also asked to turn their ‘offensive’ t-shirts inside out while in the mall; the 80 year old did not. This citizen of the US, a former journalist for a diocesan (Roman Catholic) newspaper, former spokesperson under Mario Cuomo for the Division for Human Rights in N.Y., current deacon and parishioner of one of the poorest parishes on Long Island was arrested for the words he wore on his t-shirt about the war in Iraq!
If ‘saving lives’ is a significant concern for us as anthropologists in all of this, I think we’re going to have to look a little deeper and harder at who is enlisting us to save what lives—and for what purpose—and who is likely to suffer for taking a principled stand in the name of such commitment.
In the often-quoted (but often forgotten) words of Aeschylus:
“In war, truth is the first casualty.”
As anthropologists we cannot afford to be naïve about that first death, or be complicit in it.
Hello,
I am not sure why the AAA made this statement. It seems very extreme.
From what Mr. Paredes said, how could any of you support the AAA right now. The board followed political motivations to make a statement that can (almost certainly) lead to people being harmed. (The absence of anthropologists supports the status quo. The military mission remains business as usual. Peoples cultural rights are trampled under the weight of ignorance).
Obviously, the AAA did not follow the 'do no harm' policy as it went about goes about making this statement. Why should its members be scrutinized for the 'possibility' that they might not?
Arthur Strickland
Vermont
I am an undergraduate currently enrolled at Central Texas College and taking my first anthropology course. I have an associate’s degree in Applied Technology and I was somewhat hesitant to post a comment to this site because the majority of the comments are graduate and higher education levels. I did not have any intention of pursuing Anthropology as my major but this course has seriously made me reconsider the course of study that sincerely peaks my interests for reasons that words can not describe.
I am currently constructing my final exam project, which the topic I have chosen is “Anthropology Ethics.” There is a reason for choosing this topic but it derived from an article that involved a company called Ethnographic Solutions, which is a market research and brand strategy consulting company that openly claims they have professionally trained cultural anthropologists leading their research and cultural analysis efforts. Furthermore they elude “to utilize their professionally trained cultural anthropologists because many market research firms are increasingly claiming to use anthropological methods and perspectives to better understand consumers.” Within the conclusion of my essay I stated that it was my opinion that this is unethical because anthropologists are utilizing their studies of a culture for the industrialized countries to prey upon the weaknesses found from the anthropologists. The anthropologists are not considering the effects that these corporations may be causing to a country that may never had have “whatever product(s)” introduced into their culture, which may be causing harm. This use of fieldwork-derived information would also violate the stipulations in the AAA Code of Ethics that those studied not be harmed (section III A, 1).
Because the AAA strongly opposes the use of Anthropologists for military purposes then what is next? Opposing academics to active duty military personnel that are pursuing an Anthropology degree, so as to restrict this field of study to a specific or targeted group? What exactly are the ideal student and future anthropologist in the eyes of the AAA?
I would venture to say that the AAA will not respond to these types of questions because this would open up a “can of worms” that would be very difficult to straddle the Civil Rights Act.
What is the future for students in my situation?
S.Wohlfert
Central Texas College
Commentary of interest on Anthropology and HTS:
http://justworldnews.org/archives/002893.html
War And 'Anthropology'
Posted by Helena Cobban at May 4, 2008 05:19 PM
I have been concerned about the Pentagon's program to enlist
anthropologists into its "Human Terrain System" (HTS) program ever
since I first heard about it. The relationship between western
"anthropology" (literally, in Greek, a "study of the human
condition") and various extremely exploitative colonial ventures over
the past 120 years is very well-known.
Recently, I identified one of my key concerns with this latest
version of the same-old, same-old attempt to use specialized
knowledge about the condition of other peoples in order to subjugate
and control them. It is this idea that our fellow-humans around the
world could be considered, in the military sense or any other sense,
to be merely "terrain" to be fought over, won, and controlled.
In military science, geographical terrain (from the Latin, meaning
"earth") is something that is to be studied, mapped, and understood--
and then, that understanding is used in order to control and exploit
that terrain.
So what are we saying about our fellow-humans if we say they are
merely "terrain"?
Isn't calling them "terrain" worse, actually, than using the many
zoomorphic slur-words that are used to dehumanize and denigrate human
"others"? Like former Israeli Chief of Staff's infamous reference to
Palestinians as "cockroaches" or "flies in a bottle," or any other
reference to opponents being merely "animals"... Other examples of
zoomorphic denigration are too numerous to list.
The idea that our fellow humans in Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere
else are merely "terrain" can be traced, most recently, to the US
military's late-2006 counter-insurgency manual (PDF here), as co-
authored by Gen. Petraeus. One of the key arguments made there was
that "the key battlespace is the mind of the citizens of the 'Host
Nation'." (The whole COIN concept was built, we can note, on the key
assumption that the US military would be waging its COIN warfare
inside other people's countries.)
So what the Human Terrain System program seeks to do is to provide
the key cultural/sociological knowledge required for the US military
to be able to control and exploit the minds of those other, non-US
men and women.
Now, when a military is waging a campaign to control and exploit
geographical terrain, some of that terrain may get chewed up, burned,
or suffer other other non-trivial damage. How about when it is waging
a campaign to control and exploit the mental "terrain" of our fellow-
humans in a distant country?
The mental damage inflicted on subjugated others in the more known-of
places like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo is only the tip of a vast
iceberg of damage inflicted.
Think of the million-plus children among the 2.5 million residents of
Sadr City. How has their mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing been
affected by the assaults the US military has launched against Sadr
City over the recent weeks?
Think of the four million or so Iraqis displaced from their homes and
scattered to places of distant (and always vulnerable) refugee over
the past 30 months. How has their mental and spiritual wellbeing been
affected?
It strikes me, though, that the people who run and implement the US
military's "Human Terrain" program are also suffering significant
spiritual damage through their participation in this very anti-humane
venture. They have been conditioned to believe that they have some
kind of "right", as contractors with or members of the US military,
to intrude into, study, and map the lives of subjugated Iraqis, with
the aim that the US military can use this knowledge to control and
exploit those others.
That, to me, is what the dehumanizing term "human terrain" connotes.
How spiritually sick can a person get?
You can find a a good round-up of recent controversies around the HTS
program here, on the Mind Hacks blog.
That blog post links to this recent Newsweek article on the program,
and this subsequent piece on the Wired blog, in which the female
anthropologist Montgomery McFate, one of the program's main
architects, defends it.
The Newsweek piece is titled "A Gun in One Hand, A Pen in the Other",
and is illustrated with a photo of a female in full military combat
gear, with a helmet and body armor, who is standing in what may be
the public square of an Iraqi town. She is earnestly taking notes by
hand in a little notebook.
In the piece, the writers, Dan Ephron and Silvia Spring write about
one HTS participant that, "Though he wears Army fatigues and carries
a gun, Griffin is a civilian, part of a controversial program known
as the Human Terrain System." They also write, "For their services,
the anthropologists get up to $300,000 annually while posted abroad—a
salary that is six times higher than the national average for their
field." Clearly, for many newly-minted anthropologists who have heavy
grad-school debts to repay, the pay would be quite a draw. As, too,
might the idea that they could "study" people foreign culture, thus
building up their research credentials in the fild-- and get paid
quite handsomely while doing so.
Last October, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological
Association, the professional body of US practitioners and teachers
in the field, issued a strong statement that measured the HTS program
against the ethical standards of their profession and concluded that
they disapproved" of the program. The statement added:
In the context of a war that is widely recognized as a denial of
human rights and based on faulty intelligence and undemocratic
principles, the Executive Board sees the HTS project as a problematic
application of anthropological expertise, most specifically on
ethical grounds. We have grave concerns about the involvement of
anthropological knowledge and skill in the HTS project. The Executive
Board views the HTS project as an unacceptable application of
anthropological expertise.
The Executive Board affirms that anthropology can and in fact is
obliged to help improve U.S. government policies through the widest
possible circulation of anthropological understanding in the public
sphere, so as to contribute to a transparent and informed development
and implementation of U.S. policy by robustly democratic processes of
fact-finding, debate, dialogue, and deliberation. It is in this way,
the Executive Board affirms, that anthropology can legitimately and
effectively help guide U.S. policy to serve the humane causes of
global peace and social justice.
In general, this is a good and strong statement. Personally, I would
not have put in the explanatory clause with which the first of those
paragraphs starts-- or perhaps, I would have phrased it differently.
I believe the ethical problems they earlier identified-- and in
particular the impossibility of obtaining the "informed consent" of
subjects of study in a context when the "anthropologist" in question
is wearing the uniform of and carrying the gun of an occupying army--
make the project "a problematic application of anthropological
expertise", regardless of how the war and occupation started. To
believe that anyone can wear the uniform, carry the gun, be a member
of a mutually supporting sub-unit of an occupation army, and be
considered by anyone to be an objective observer-- let alone a
friendly fellow-human with whom a "native"{ person might voluntarily
share one's view of the world-- simply boggles the mind.
(Why does the name of the Israeli "anthropologist" Clinton Bailey
keep popping into my mind?)
The dilemma faced by many anthropologists seems similar to that faced
by some humanitarian-aid workers in recent years. Back in the lead-up
to the invasion of Iraq., the US military made broad efforts to try
to "enlist" the collaboration of many US relief agencies. At one
point, Rumsfeld even openly said that the activities of such groups
could act as "force mulitpliers" for the US invasion force (which
otherwise might have to fulfill its own responsibilities to the Iraqi
population as occupying power in Iraq.) I know that many of my
friends in the humanitarian-aid community agonized over whether and
how far to coordinate with the invasion force. They wanted to "be
ready to help" deal with the humanitarian disasters that might
accompany a US invasion of Iraq, but they also wanted to be able to
do so in way that did not associate them with the policies and
priorities of the invading/occupying army.
As the occupation ground on, year after year, the dilemmas continued.
I have spoken to some western aid workers who strongly shunned any
collaboration with the occupation forces, and who also, with great
courage, refused to hire armed guards to accompany either their aid
convoys or themselves. But the security situation got worse and
worse. Their aid convoys became harder and harder to organize. I am
not sure if any of those convoys are being organized at all these days.
This reminds me, too, of Harold Evans, the Quaker from Philadelphia
who back in May 1948 had been named by UNSCOP as "municipal
commissioner" of the internationally administered "corpus separatum"
that, according to the 1947 Partition Plan, was supposed to be
established in Jerusalem and a broad area around it. Evans reportedly
got as far as Cairo, but he then refused to proceed any further until
the British military who were in control there would allow him to do
so without a military escort.
You could say that maybe some bloodshed could have been avoided in
Jerusalem if he had gotten there to administer it? I think that to
say that, would be to credit Quakers with too much power and influence!
Actually, the British were determined to stick to their timetable to
take their military out of the whole of Palestine, regardless of
whether (as occurred) Arab-Jewish fighting thereafter engulfed the
whole of the area of Mandate Palestine, including Jerusalem. So I
strongly doubt whether Evans would have had a chance to make a
difference in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, though, he kept himself-- and by
extension, most other Quakers-- unsullied from entanglement in the
British military's schemes.
In Evans's case, and in the cases where people are trying to carry
out unquestionably humanitarian aid missions, these can agonizingly
tough judgments to make.
But in the case where anthropology professionals are being asked to
gather knowledge about-- and then, to share with a military
occupation army-- information about the mores and views of the
"occupied" people, I don't think the ethical judgment is a difficult
one at all.
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This cannot have effect in actual fact, that's what I consider.
Here, I do not really suppose this will have effect.
To facilitate discussion on this subject, the AAA has created this blog as a forum for members to post comments regarding the Executive Board statement and related issues.
The rationalization of applying anthropological study through something such as the Counter Insurgency Manual and the so-called Human Terrain Project, seems nothing less than 21st century obfuscation of the gross misuse of our profession
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I think the politics in calling the objection anti-Bush, anti-imperial, &c and the presumption that the military's use of anthropologists is "twisted" is self-evident. Not just in your replies but in the replies of many. As I recall, one participant suggested that anthropologists involved in HTS should be tried for "war crimes."
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