Marc | February 4, 2010
It’s been a busy, but stimulating, week so far. I just got back from a presentations on Canada’s Evolving Mission in Afghanistan, and I’m preparing to head down to Quantico on Sunday for an interesting workshop next week. This week and, to a lessor degree last week, have been quite synergistic in terms of my [...]
Category: Anthropology, COIN |
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Marc | January 22, 2010
Hugh Gusterson has a new piece over at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists entitled An American suicide bomber? It’s worth taking a look at for a number of reasons. I think that the central reason I found it interesting was because Hugh presents a very nice cautionary tale about how forgetful people can be.
Category: Anthropology |
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Marc | January 10, 2010
NPR just carried a nice story about Dr. Paula Holmes-Eber on teaching culture at the Marine Corps University (hat tip to Kerry Fosher who sent out the link over MilAnthNet). I’ve had several chances to talk with Paula about her teaching there, and I have been quite impressed with both what they are teaching and [...]
Category: Anthropology, COIN |
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Marc | January 7, 2010
A friend and colleague over at the SWC, Beezebubalicious (what a handle!), just posted a link to a BBC story on the rise of human sacrifice in Uganda. What sparked some of my interest was that he said he found this “hard to understand from a cultural (or a relativist) point of view.” Why?
Category: Anthropology |
15 Comments »
Tags: Cultural Relativism, Human sacrifice
Marc | November 27, 2009
Max Forte has just produced another posting on the historical relation of Anthropology and Science entitled The Social Production of Science and Anthropology as Knowledge for Domination. Don’t let the title put you off, it is well worth reading and, having studied the period under question myself, I can also say that it is, in [...]
Category: Anthropology, Human Terrain System (HTS) |
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Tags: Francis Bacon, Human Terrain System (HTS), Objectivity
Marc | October 23, 2009
I just stumbled across a wonderful blog called Work Matters run by Bob Sutton (hat tip to Mark Huselid and the HRDivNet mailing list). One of the terms Bob uses is “Jargon Monoxide” (originally created by Polly LaBarre). What a wonderful term, and one that I believe should enter the lexicon of those of us [...]
Category: Anthropology, Communications Theory, Epistemology |
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Tags: jargon monoxide
Marc | October 20, 2009
Well, I am writing this post from Oklahoma the night before I give a talk at Oklahoma University. I’ve been sweating this talk, trying to get the right words together to convey what I am seeing about how debates on the “nature” of war are shifting and changing. I’ll probably post the slides from the [...]
Category: Anthropology |
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Marc | September 29, 2009
Ken MacLeish has a very nuanced examination of the problems faced by a number of US vets and the structural use of the “Crazy Vet” stereotype over at Savage Minds. The post, Wounds of War and the Dilemmas of Stereotypes, is well worth reading not only for its nuance but, also, for its portrayal of [...]
Category: Anthropology |
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Tags: "Crazy Vet", PTSD
Marc | September 28, 2009
I have been following a series of posts by my friend Max Forte over at Openanthropology on his “relationship” with the Open Anthropology Co-operative (OAC). I won’t go into the details, they are all available on Max’s site, but the most recent one is extremely disturbing. There is, at least from the evidence Max provides, [...]
Category: Anthropology |
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Marc | May 18, 2009
Over the past several months, I have been doing a lot of thinking about how people think. This has led me down some rather odd trails, but I thought I would toss out a few ideas and see what people think.
Category: Anthropology, Communications Theory, Ethics |
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Tags: Communications, Ontology, Security Force Advising