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 | September 7, 2008
Years ago, when I was researching Western Magic, I came across a then-obscure book called the Kybalion (my copy is from the 1940′s). It is a masterpiece of the esoteric genre; a genre designed to hide information in “plain sight”. Reading the comments on Wired in response to Steve Featherstone’s recent Harpers article brought the [...]
Marc | September 2, 2008
One of the more interesting ethical problems in the Anthropologists cannon is the question of when you are required to lie. For me, it is not only three particular question of when you must lie but, in reality, the perceptual assumptions that structure that “ethical” injunction. This wasn’t much of a problem for me in [...]
Marc on A Human Terrain System for Canada?
Pascale Siegel on A Human Terrain System for Canada?
JWC on Tribal Engagement Workshop: the Time dimension
Daniel Gallant on Some thoughts on games
MM on An important letter on the state of science