1. Ally Fuller
2/6/15
Global Militarism & Unending War
The Infiltration of Culture
Knowledge is the basis for creating, destroying, and governing nations and their
citizens; therefore in the age of information, public relations are the primary weapon of
modern war. Metaphorically speaking, wars are no longer fought on the battlefield and
cultural knowledge as both a tool to infiltrate and appear sensitive to occupation, dances
along a very thin ethical ledge. The rapidly advancing sophistication of militarized
knowledge poses a great threat not only to targeted countries, but also to the reputation
and moral legitimacy of ethnographic research as a whole.
The cultural turn in the War on Terror both exploits and manipulates Middle
Eastern culture in ways that are in direct opposition to traditionally non-normative
anthropological research. Employing anthropologists equips our military with tactical
cultural awareness that conceptualizes the use of technical solutions to solve political
problems. In developing the multimillion-dollar-government-funded Human Terrain
System (HTS), the US military is attempting to differentiate friend from foe by dissecting
the culture and practice of Islam (280 Gusterson). Alternate motives include attempting
to sensitize the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. However in the case of HTS, the
extraction of cultural knowledge through interviews (often without informed consent) and
the motives behind the ethnographic fieldwork tramples on the moral codes widely
coveted by studying anthropologists. To this effect the military is adopting
anthropological study without adopting the culture itself.

2. The impetus behind academic counterinsurgency is lost somewhere between our
desperate need to name an enemy, and our fable attempt at a more humane approach to
the Iraqi people. On one hand we are implementing cultural research in more effective
interrogations, and on the other we’re maintaining the appearance of cultural sensitivity.
As seen in the documentary Human Terrain, a computer program was developed to
familiarize marines with Middle Eastern “cultural norms” in an attempt to minimize the
arousal of conflict. In doing this, it promotes the idea that culture is static and reduces the
Iraqi people to a homogenized, dehumanized foreign entity. This operationalization of
culture ends up making it the enemy and the main problem with occupation.
In the case of the HTS, gathering information on the “other” becomes
manipulative and the motivation behind anthropological study is lost to militarized
peacemaking. Often times abundantly funded think tanks and workshops subliminally
glamourize military use of cultural knowledge, and the rising demand for anthropologists
in the government greatly expands a previously narrow career path. Despite the fact that
it violates the “do no harm” moral code and attempts to establish and evaluate cultural
norms, many budding researchers are inspired by the prestigious title and salary. I would
more accurately describe the methods of the HTS as cultural infiltration, as it is too
morally removed to be considered anthropology. This distinction is a vital one in the
sense that if ethnographic research associates with militarization and the fear and
destruction that coincide, it could negatively affect the legitimacy of future study.
The parasitic relationship between the US military and anthropological
knowledge casts an ominous shadow on Western study of Eastern culture. It accentuates
the heteropatriarchal definition of “us and them” in addition to potentially cancelling out

3. any countries with less sophisticated methods of gathering intelligence. The attempt to
counter militarized anthropology begets the question: what is the basis of intention? If the
pursuit of security and protection of interests perpetuates war, is it now possible that the
pursuit of knowledge does? In developing methods of cultural preservation, we have also
discovered methods of destruction and it appears impossible to accomplish one without
the other.