The word “theory” has an interesting effect on different people. I’ve noticed that many of my undergraduate students, upon hearing the word and learning that they are sitting in a course on “theory”, start to get the same look in their eyes as deer have caught in the headlights of a car. For many of them, “theory” is an incomprehensible collection of words that has been used to bludgeon them into ideological submission. They reify theory (i.e. turn “theory” into a “thing”) and externalize it as if it were a mad demi-God demanding they sign away their souls in return for a good mark. Others, and now I’m speaking of some of my military friends, have a jaundiced view of theory that flows from that of my undergrads. They ask, quite rightly, “what has it done for me?” (again, notice the reification). A still different reaction to theory shows up amongst some of my friends and colleagues who not only reify theory, but treat it as a religion. Very few people treat theories as tools to be selected, rejected, modified and shifted as required to meet immediate questions. But that is how we should treat theories; as our servants, not our masters.

I’m thinking about theories and our relationship with them for three reasons. One is that, once again, I’ll be teaching the core (and only) required course in the Directed Interdisciplinary Studies (DIS) program at Carleton again this Fall. The course is, basically, a “theory and methods” course but, since I have to cover the ~15-20 disciplines that our students fall into, I teach it as a course in applied epistemology and sub-title it “how to build a theory that works for you”.

The second reason I am thinking abut theories comes from having drinks with Jeremy (Jez) Littlewood yesterday afternoon. Jez, myself and a third friend Jan Fedorowicz, had spent a large part of last week hammering out a research proposal looking at terrorist groups and groups that might have, but didn’t become terrorist groups.

The third reason I’m thinking about theory comes from a recent post by Sam Liles entitled Asymmetric warfare: A research agenda looking at epistemological based or not. Early on in this post, Sam notes that

As I read the literature exiting as articles from the different journals and think tanks ran by the military I have been struck by an epiphany. Like a blinding flash of on target artillery I realized there is no formal language or research agenda for counter insurgency.

The post is worth reading in full not for any particular answers (he doesn’t give any), but for the way Sam frames the problem as being both social and scientific. As he notes towards the end of the post, “We need to find the big questions”, and he’s (partly) correct in that.

So, what do theories actually “do”? Well, theories, in the sense of explanatory models, are half of Dilthey’s conceptualization of science. For Dilthey, the root of science is experience. As he notes in his Introduction to the Human Sciences,

All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises.

This position (actually it’s an axiomatic [or "because"] assumption) leads Dilthey to argue that in order to truly understand something (an action, text, piece of art, etc.) you had to use two different forms of “knowledge”:

• “erkennen” - explanatory knowledge or, in other words, a story (narrative) that “makes sense” to a given audience, and
• “verstehen” - [empathic] understanding.

These two forms of “knowledge”, actually “epistemological stances”, are to be used in an iterative method to produce a product that will allow the receiver to “understand” the topic being analyzed. Indeed, the adoption of Dilthey’s method is at the core of Americanist Anthropology (Boas brought it over and his students spread it around).

In this model, “theory” is only one part of the equation to gain “understanding”. Theory appears in two areas; as the basis for erkennen and in the choice of language, as a semantic system, used to convey “understanding” to a given audience. Which brings me to the point of paraphrasing an old philosophical question: “if an individual gains understanding and cannot communicate it, is it understanding?”. I’m not even going to attempt to answer that one, but I will note that all knowledge that effects social change is communicated in some manner.

The communication of knowledge/understanding, is the sine qua non of all professional work whether that is officially “academic” or in some other profession (see Andrew Abbot’s The System of Professions on this); a point that, in some ways, renders the philosophical conundrum moot. But communication relies on the use of some form of “language” (words, signs, mathematical forumlae, etc.) and all languages are inherently limited and biased; and these limits and biases are inherited in the even more limited sub-set chosen to communicate a theoretical “understanding”. Despite occasional attempts to get around this problem, there is no such thing as a value neutral or “perfect” language (and the quest for one certainly pre-dates the rise of modern science!).

So we are left with a situation where our understanding of any given slice of reality we wish to understand must always be partial, incomplete and biased. To anyone who has examined the history of science (or religion for that matter), this is a blindingly obvious conclusion, and I am by no means the first person to talk about it (there was a really good debate between Carlo Ginsburg and Michel Foucault on this in the late 1970’s, early 1980’s). For the nonce, let’s just take it as an “agreed upon assumption of our discourse” that all of our understandings will be flawed, and go on from there.

Getting back to Sam’s post, he stated that “We need to find the big questions” and I noted, in passing, that he was partly correct. It’s not that we need to find the “big questions” so much as it is that we need to frame a context in which the “big questions” are inherent. So, when we look at asymmetric warfare (aka insurgency, counter-insurgency, etc.), the first thing to do is to look at the framing of the questions.

Now, from my readings in the area, I do have to agree with Sam that we are in a period that Thos. Kuhn would define as “schools”; competing frames, none of which is socially dominant and which often speak (and work) at cross-purposes. There is no dominant school and, certainly, no established paradigm for discussing asymmetric warfare. Without going into massive details on why I think this is so, I would suggest that one of the reasons is simple - the discussion has inherited too many axiomatic assumptions from other universes of discourse which really should not be applied. Or, in other words, the “language” of the general discourse is fatally flawed because it contains too many contradictory assumptions.

Let me bring out a couple of examples of what I would consider “fatal flaws”. Much of the discourse surrounding asymmetric warfare presupposes a post-Westphalian model of the nation state. Asymmetric warfare, in this universe of discourse, is always defined in relation to a “state” as if that state existed in anything other than a collective illusion (or was “socially constructed” if you will). Why? “Nation states” in this model are quite a recent invention (1648 to be exact; see here for a quick overview) and should not be confused either with the totality of how humans organize themselves or with some implicit scalar value of “social progress”. Within this particular universe of discourse, asymmetric warfare is viewed as an attack upon the legitimacy of the “state”, and the counter-insurgency component of a general theory of asymmetric warfare centers on the (re)establishment of the legitimacy of the government of that nation state (the “host nation” to use current US military jargon).

What an intriguing, and fatally flawed, concept to bring to “nations” that did not evolve directly out of the European models of governance that come from the Peace of Westphalia! Analogically, it is as if a person could only perceive two types of fruit, apples and oranges, and, when confronted with a kiwi, engaged in massive discourse on whether it was an apple or an orange! This type of “logic” shows up in the discourse in such terms as “failed state”, “rogue state”, “failing state” and (worst of all) “ungoverned spaces”. The fatal assumption, of course, is that “real” (i.e. “legitimate”) governance can only be via a post-Westphalian nation state and, in the absence of such a state, there is no governance. Ridiculous!

I’m going to shift universes of discourse for my second example. There is a position, promulgated primarily my neo-Marxists and post-Colonialists, that “self determination” is the source of legitimacy for state operations. Within this universe of discourse, one of the axiomatic assumptions is that people have the absolute right to determine their societies future and that any action taken by outside interests (usually defined as the United States and the former colonial powers of Europe) is inherently and act of “oppression” or “imperialism”. In this universe of discourse (which, by the way, usually assumes a Maoist model of insurgency theory), legitimacy stems from acts of resistance to “foreign acts of aggression”.

Now, in a rather round-about way, this set of perceptions stems from Marx’s work A contribution to the critique of political economy. In the preface, Marx outlines his basic theory of consciousness upon which his entire theoretical edifice is built: one simple sentence encapsulates his basic position

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

With this as his basis, Marx elaborates an entire model of consciousness which, in the works of his later disciples, ends up being he basis for the establishment of “national identity/consciousness” via struggle with the inherent contradictions of the world order. In effect, this position is an analogic extension of the proletarian-bourgeous struggle so beloved of Marxist theorists into the international area with the US and ex-colonial powers assigned the role of the bougeousie in the “new global order” (an exact inversion of the moral stance inherent in this position is taken by Tom Barnett, although I suspect he would be horrified at me for saying so).

So, what is the “fatal flaw” in this position? Simple, it is, in a nutshell, the quintessential denial of free will and its replacement with a hard version of economic determinism (and this holds both for the neo-Marxists and the neo-Conservative position). Now, I don’t have a problem with a “soft” version of economic determinism, for example, the idea that economic relations (both production and distribution) have an effect of peoples consciousness. I do, however, have a serious problem with the reductionist stance inherent in the hard version: despite assertions, people do have free will, and this free will extends to how people organize their economic activities.

Why am I talking about economics, outside of the fact that it is at the rot of this stance? Simple: if we examine all ofthe various forms of human governance from nation states, to hunter-gatherer groups, through pastoralist tribes, etc., etc., we find that one of the core roles of any system of governance concerns the distribution and creation of scarce resources. Now, most people can understand my comment about the distribution of scarce resources, but may have a problem with the concept of creation of scarce resources.

Well, groups of people band together to create “resources” that no individual could produce by themselves (at least in a “reasonable” amount of time). One of the byproducts of this group activity is the creation of a socially recognized “difference” between people (not limited to the Marxist concept of class or necessarily based on the mode or relations of production). This social recognition of “difference” creates a social grading of status within a group and becomes a key “resource” in any number of different social and cultural games (take a look at Jerome Barkow’s Darwin, Sex, and Status for some examples not usually dealt with by either neo-Marxists or neo-Conservatives). But if systems of governance produce differences beyond those of a purely economic nature (like status and its relationship to mate selection, etc.), the the hard form of economic determinism is inherently flawed. In a nutshell, Marx was wrong: the consciousness of men is not determined by their social being, but, rather, by their perceptions and interpretations of their selves and their social being.

Now Marx’s basic concept was quite valid, at least in the sense of being equally plausible with other assumptions, when he was writing in the 19th century. But the study of “consciousness” changed dramaticaly in the 1970’s with the discovery of neurotransmitters, and the 1980’s introduced new observationally grounded was of examining “consciousness” (e.g. Jerry Fodor’s The Modularity of Mind). Certainly by 2000, you would have to be completely out of touch with scientific developments to not have heard of the almost daily advances in neuro-psychology and cognitive science.

But hearing about something is not the same as bringing it in to professional discourse. While all of the advances in cognitive sciences were happening, many of the social sciences ignored them (see Barkow’s Missing the Revolution for a good history of this; the Introduction is available here). Marx’s basic assertion that social being determines consciousness had become so embedded in the professional knowledge systems of many social scientists that anything that disagreed with it was automatically excluded for “serious” consideration. This is not a matter of willfully playing ostrich and sticking their heads in the sand; it stems from the very nature and dynamics of professional knowledge (again, see Abbot’s The System of Professions on this).

While I think it is important to know where this flaw in the neo-Marxist and neo-Conservative discourse on asymmetric warfare comes from, I may well be showing my own bias - I hold, as an article of faith, that anyone engaged in building social theory should go back to the original sources as much as possible. And, if I wanted to spend a couple of days writing this post, I would trace both of them back into their common root in Christian eschatology (yes, it’s there, but I won’t inflict that on you now :)). Back to asymmetric warfare…

There is one other major theory of asymmetric warfare based on networks (e.g. 4GW, etc.), but I’m going to toss that one back to Sam for commentary and return to a consideration of what we would need to do in order to frame the question of asymmetric warfare.

First of all, I would suggest that we need to bypass the fatal flaws inherent in the various current universes of discourse surrounding the issue. As a start, this would require junking the concept of the post-Westphalian state as either “natural” or the “highest rung on a (supposed) evolutionary ladder. We need to re-establish this as a general question of governance and not limit it to one particular form. Second, we need to junk the economic hard determinism of neo-Marxism and neo-Conservatism and its basis in the construction of consciousness. This could be done in a number of ways, but I would recommend a double attack using both evolutionary psychology and cognitive science (they are both equally plausible given our current knowledge).

If we were to adopt such a revised stance, this would lead us to totally different questions about asymmetric warfare such as “under what conditions do people band together in groups to oppose a other groups?”, “what conditions facilitate or hinder groups (or individuals) moving into and out of kinetic operations?” and “what conditions favour asymmetric warfare in different battlespaces?”. If we wish to engage in a scientific examination of the phenomenon, then we must focus our investigative “lens” on basic questions that go well beyond the immediate realities of asymmetric warfare.