Marc | March 2, 2009
MAJ Ben Connable’s recent article in Military Review (April, 09) is well worth reading (hat tips to Kerry Fosher and Max Forte). Max has already posted selective quotes from it, but I think it is better to read the entire article (Max would probably agree – it’s that limit on the blog format). In essence, [...]
Marc | March 1, 2009
I have had a rather heavy schedule for the past couple of weeks, and I am leaving for Toronto in an hour or so. What this means is that I have had to cut back on my blogging. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I haven’t been doing anything . I have been followingthe Dudley-Flores [...]
Marc | February 24, 2009
One of the more frustrating (for me) so-called “contributions” to the discussion of the Human Terrain System (HTS) is coming out of the Robert Young Pelton article – Afghanistan: The New War for Hearts and Minds – over at Men’s Journal. In particular, it appears as if Pelton – RYP to his friends, many other [...]
Marc | February 21, 2009
Last Thursday (Feb. 19th, 2009), Inside Higher Ed published an article by Dr. Adam Silverman called The Why and How of Human Terrain Teams. This piece, which is well worth reading, is one of the few that has come out by an HTT member describing their actions in the field – it also “enjoys” comments [...]
Marc | February 15, 2009
Well, Wired has picked up on the shift of the HTS from contractors at BAE to temp Gov’t employees. Noah’s article, ‘Human Terrain’ Contractors’ Pay Suddenly Slashed, doesn’t really have much more detail that John Stanton’s original post on the subject, although it does have a few new quotes, one of which echos a concern [...]
Marc | February 11, 2009
According to the latest reports by John Stanton (thanks for letting me know, John!), it looks like the HTS is being “nationalized”. While John’s report has a lot of quotes in it, including an email from BAE, many of them appear to reflect rumours running around inside the HTS. If this is the case, then [...]
Marc | January 26, 2009
The past several days have seen more publications come out on the Human Terrain System. I want to focus in on one in particular that shows up, of all places (!), in Men’s Journal: Afghanistan: The New War for Hearts and Minds by Robert Young Pelton. The simplest way to describe Pelton’s article is as [...]
Marc | December 22, 2008
It certainly seems as if my previous post on the idea of evaluating the HTS caused a fair bit of reaction on both theoretical and epistemological grounds. I thought it would be worthwhile to pull out some of the ideas I talked about in that post a little more. And, I’ll admit, that I was [...]
Marc | December 17, 2008
The many woes of the HTS, at least the public casting and presentation of them, have been ably collated by my colleague Max Forte at Open Anthropology (e.g. here, here and here amongst many other places). What truly bothers me, in addition to Pravda being considered as a reputable publisher < rolleyes>, is that the [...]
Marc | December 12, 2008
Hat Tip to Max Forte for putting up a link to the HTS handbook (available here). I’ve only had a chance for a quick scan of it but, based on what I have seen so far, it looks like a moderately decent Intro to Methods text. The problem, of course, is that the HTS is [...]
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