Weaponized irony

There’s a fabulous little piece in the July issue of Harper’s from Graham Burnett and Jeff Dolven, a couple of professors at Princeton who put together a $650K, 3-year grant proposal for Lockheed Martin to identify irony and weaponize it.  An excerpt:

“Ideally suited to mobilization on the shifting terrain of asymmetrical conflict, inherently covert, insidiously plastic, politically potent, irony offers rogue elements a volatile if often overlooked means by which to demoralize opponents and destabilize regimes…

“If we don’t know how irony works and we don’t know how it is used by the enemy, we cannot identify it…. Without the ability to detect and localize irony consistently, intelligence agents and agencies are likely to lose valuable time and resources pursuing chimerical leads and to overlook actionable instances of insolence.  The first step towards addressing this situation is a multilingual, collaborative, and collative initiative that will generate an encyclopedic global inventory of ironic modalities and strategies.  More than a handbook or field guide, the work product of this effort will take the shape of a vast, searchable, networked database of all known ironies.”

Human Terrain indeed.

Harper’s notes that “Princeton declined to forward [the proposal] to Lockheed.”  It puts me in mind of David Vine’s vow to write a proposal for Minerva funding from the Pentagon to study “how overseas military bases affect relations with other nations, ‘how they’ve damaged our international reputation and how they’ve damaged the lives of people around the world.’”  Anyone know of other examples of this wonderful genre of grant proposal as parodic critique of the funding source?

–L.L. Wynn

Upcoming NT Intervention Protests

We haven’t posted anything on the NT Intervention for some time but the issue is still very much alive.  A report on SBS news last night included some interviews with Aboriginal women from Bagot,  an urban community in Darwin, on their views of the intervention.  Two key points stuck out for me based on those interviews:

1. The prohibitions of alcohol use appear to be leading to new population movements as people attempt to escape regulatory mechanisms.  This means that the effects of the Intervention are uneven, with problems being exacerbated rather than reduced in some areas.
2. The paternalistic nature of the Intervention, with its enforced quarantining and management of all welfare income, means that “model” members of communities — those who are best able to manage their funds independently — are resentful about being treated as though they were not capable of looking after themselves.   If the Government’s goals are pedagogical, i.e. aimed at producing new kinds of subjects closer to the bourgeois ideal of the self-managing individual, it’s problematic that those people most closely resembling that kind of subject are punished and feel disempowered.  The predictable result of such a policy would be the increasing institutionalisation of welfare dependence.

Meanwhile, anti-Intervention protests have been organised for this weekend.  Here are the details:

On June 20, marking two years of the Northern Territory Intervention, demonstrations will be held across the country in defense of Aboriginal Rights .

See the Youtube promo at

http://www.youtube.com/user/solidtv7#uploads/7/9rHbpKEZVco

Darwin: 11am Raintree Park contact Dave 0407209520

Sydney: 10:30 Belmore Park contact Monique on 0415410558

Brisbane: 11.00am Queen’s park contact Rob 0424265730 or Sam 0401227443

Melbourne: 12pm outside the State Library Cnr Swanston/La Trobe sts.

Perth: 12 noon Wesley Church.

This rally will have a focus on Aboriginal death’s in custody, demanding justice for Mr Ward.

www.rollbacktheintervention.wordpress.com

www.stoptheintervention.org

Anthropology cover girl

I am looking forward to reading Alfons’s posts; meanwhile, a PhD student at VU’s anthropology department, Erella Grassiani, has made it to the cover of the student newspaper, Advalvas.  I am not clear yet whether this paper is really edited by students, but at least it does discuss political controversies. In this instance, it is about Erella’s activism in opposing Israel’s intervention in Gaza. Erella, herself an  Israeli, recently completed her dissertation about Israeli soldiers who serve in the occupied territories, and recently was instrumental in setting up a group of Israelis in the Netherlands critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The cover story, entitled ”"Erella Grassiani may not criticize”, is about the reaction of Dutch Jewish groups, which have rejected her initiative, even as they support “dialogues” with Arab intellectuals who are similarly critical of Israel’s policies. Erella’s position is quite mainstream within Dutch academia (or dare I say it, “among Dutch intellectuals”), and her conflict with Dutch Jewish organisations may well be due in part to the challenge this poses to the latter in their role as spokespeople for the Jews vis-a-vis the Dutch government. Yet what makes it a more complex issue is that (as I speculated in an earlier post) anti-semitism may be rising in Europe, and though the synergies between the current popularity of anti-Israeli political positions and antisemitic conspiracy theories should not be overstated, they cannot be ignored either.

In Hungary, the front lines are drawn in a strikingly different way. Leftish/liberal Hungarian press has been full of condemnations of a prominent leftist intellectual, Tamás Gáspár Miklós, who had condemned fellow intellectuals for their cowardice in not protesting against Israel’s invasion, and stated that this had nothing to do with one’s opinion of Hamas. Although among my colleagues here and probably in Australia this position would probably be quite mainstream, the responses, ranging from conservative-liberal philosopher Agnes Heller to committedly left-wing sociologist Vásárhelyi Mária, were furious. They insisted that it was not possible to ignore the context of Hamas, and indeed some of them bid TGM farewell, saying he had parted ways with them. By contrast, the Hungarian nationalist press, which often publishes antisemitic articles, cheered TGM, although he is one of its most implacable and vitriolic opponents.

Blog: Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist

It’s always great to see anthropologists engaging in contemporary debates and attempting to give their perspectives some sort of public dimension.  Although, as Pal mentioned in a recent post, this is not all that easy in Australia, there are some out there trying.  One example I came across recently is a blog written by Italian-born anthropologist Gabriele Marranci, who is currently Associate Professor in the Anthropology of Islam at the University of Western Sydney National University of Singapore.  Called “Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist”, the blog takes a broad focus on Islamic issues, from writing about recent fatwas in Malaysia trying to ban Muslims from practising yoga,  to recent posts on the Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza (here and here — warning, the posts contains some graphic images).

The blog is a good example of engaged anthropology.  More than just being another social commentary, Marranci tries to define what’s anthropological about his approach.  For one thing, he cites Franz Boas and Margaret Mead as examples of anthropologists who social engagement as one of their key roles and duties.  Secondly, he links the concept of the blog to anthropological methodology, stating:

Being an anthropologist, my methodology is to conduct fieldwork through participant observation. For this reason, the title of this Blog is Islam, Muslims and an Anthropologist. As an anthropologist, I become part of the community I am studying, and am offered the opportunity to observe and understand things from everyday life and as an ‘insider’, instead of from the mass media or libraries.

Upcoming lecture: Anthropology in the Age of Securitization

One of the main themes of this blog is the application of anthropological methods and insights to matters of concern to the wider world.  An upcoming lecture by Prof John Gledhill at Latrobe University is directed at this very issue by focusing on a specific anthropological contribution about “securitization”.  Sounds interesting.  I won’t be able to make it to Melbourne myself, but if any readers can attend maybe they could post a summary or comments below.  Details of the lecture follow.

Jovan

La Trobe University
School of Social Sciences
Sociology and Anthropology Programs

Annual Joel S. Kahn Lecture

by
Professor John Gledhill

Anthropology in the Age of Securitization

The title of this lecture plays on two possible meanings of the word “securitization”, as a phenomenon at the heart of the current crisis in the global financial system, and as a discursive framework that redefines a vast range of areas of research in which anthropologists are engaged as questions of national and international security. My aim is to consider how far anthropology is equipped to make a significant contribution to critical public debate on these issues by virtue of its potential to transcend North Atlantic perspectives.

John Gledhill is Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology and Co-Director of the Centre for Latin American Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester, a member of the UK Academy of Social Sciences, co-managing editor of Critique of Anthropology, and Chair of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth (2005-2009). He has carried out fieldwork in Mexico and Brazil. His publications include the books Casi Nada: Agrarian Reform in the Homeland of Cardenismo (also published in Spanish), Neoliberalism, Transnationalization and Rural Poverty, Power and Its Disguises: Anthropological Perspectives on Politics (also published in Spanish, Greek and Chinese) and Cultura y Desafío en Ostula: Cuatro Siglos de Autonomía Indígena en la Costa-Sierra Nahua de Michoacán.

5 December 2008 from 5.30 to 6.30 pm
Martin Building Lecture Theatre
La Trobe University Bundoora Campus
ALL WELCOME

Enquiries: Dr John Morton: j.morton@latrobe.edu.au

More on the Military’s ‘Culture Rush’: Brian Selmeski interview

There’s a culture rush going on in the U.S. military. While the Human Terrain System gets most of the media attention for being the face of the military’s sudden interest in culture, there are a whole host of other military efforts revolving around the concept of culture. For example, as we have mentioned on Culture Matters, the Marine Corps has just published a textbook called “Operational Cultures for the Warfighter” with chapters that include sections on topics such as “tribes,” “folklore,” “rituals,” and “religious beliefs.” In 2006 the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) opened the TRADOC Cultural Center which teaches soldiers about foreign cultures and languages, particularly “the cultures of Iraq and Afghanistan.” And the Air Force teaches what it calls “cross-cultural competence,” or the idea that soldiers can be taught to comprehend and act in a culturally complex environment, even without having any past experience in that part of the world.

On 3 September 2008 (actually it was 2 September in the US), I interviewed one of the driving forces behind the Air Force’s Cross Cultural Competence (dubbed “3C”) program, Dr Brian Selmeski.  He’s the Director of Cross Cultural Competence at the Air Force Culture and Language Center of Air University at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. I thought it might be interesting for Culture Matters readers to hear about how one branch of the military is applying anthropological concepts in practice. He gives us information about the Cross Cultural Competence program and talks about the ethics of anthropologists working with the military.

Lisa L Wynn: Some have said that the past 5 years or so have seen a “culture rush” in the US military. Do you think this is an accurate assessment? Do you think it’s a passing fad or here to stay? And what do you think is driving this recent “culture rush”?

CFP: Global Food Crisis

The US National Association of Practicing Anthropologists has just released a call for papers on the subject of the global food crisis.  Here are the details:

Global Food Crisis: Perspectives from Practicing and Applied Anthropologists
Sponsor: NAPA Bulletin, National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA)
Contact Information:

David A. Himmelgreen
Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Ave, SOC 107
Tampa FL 33620
Email: dhimmelg [at] cas.usf.edu

Description

The NAPA Bulletin welcomes submissions for a thematic issue on “Global Food Crisis: Perspectives from Practicing and Applied Anthropologists,” to be tentatively published in Spring 2010. NAPA Bulletin is the official publication for the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (NAPA), a section of the American Anthropological Association. Recently, a convergence of events including environmental threats (e.g., floods, droughts, frosts) and cost of fuel in the United States and around the globe has resulted in skyrocketing food prices throughout the world, leading to a global food crisis not seen in decades. The ensuing threats of hunger and food insecurity have caused civil strife and political instability in dozens of developing countries. In the United States and other industrialized countries, rising food prices has further eroded the buying capacity of consumers and threatened the ability of families to access nutritious food in sufficient quantity. While the increase in food prices have been felt by most Americans regardless of socio-economic status, low income families have been the most drastically affected. The effect of this trend in rising prices on food security is clearly seen by increases in the use of soup kitchens in majority of the major U.S. cities. This proposed NAPA volume will bring contributions from both practicing and applied anthropologists to examine how rising food prices are affecting peoples’ food choices, to discuss the way international and domestic food and energy policies are exacerbating the problem of hunger and food insecurity in both developing and industrialized nations, and to provide recommendation for addressing the global food crisis in the coming years. This CFP invites practicing and applied anthropologists and other social scientists with expertise in aspects of agriculture and food, especially as they relate to global food policies, structural adjustment programs, and the development of food assistance initiatives either within or outside the United States to contribute full-length articles (approximately 7,500 wordsto this proposed volume.

Please submit a 250 word abstract and 150 word biographical sketch to David Himmelgreen , no later than November 1, 2008.

Engaged skepticism about Minerva

American Anthropological Association president Setha Low recently held a conference call with media reps to discuss the AAA’s position on Minerva developments.  The major development is the recently announced partnership between the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide rigorous academic review of the grant applications submitted for Minerva funding (currently there’s $50 million to be allocated over 5 years). Causal relationships are hard to pinpoint, but it does look like the DoD-NSF partnership may be at least partly the result of Low’s and the AAA’s early critique of the Minerva announcement, to the effect that social science proposals should be peer reviewed by scholars outside of the military. (Other anthropologists, like Hugh Gusterson, have also voiced skepticism.)

I had promised to listen in on the 4am (Sydney time) conference call, but I missed it because of a sick kid, so I can’t report back here on the call itself, but I can say that it’s been picked up in a couple of places, and the reporting hasn’t been altogether accurate — for example, Wired reported that Low’s skepticism was directed towards the Human Terrain System, when she was actually talking about Minerva, and the AAA PR person Damon Dozier has responded with a letter of correction (pasted at the bottom of this post because I can’t find where it’s been published — thanks to Kerry Fosher for sending this).

The issue was also covered in the Washington Post which quotes American University anthropologist David Vine as being skeptical, like so many others, about U.S. military funding for social science research. The argument in favor of Minerva is that this is an opportunity to direct foreign policy thinking in completely new ways.  The argument against is that research selected for funding by the military will only answer and ask certain questions, and that this funding influence will skew the very questions that we social scientists think to ask.

But according to the Washington Post article, Vine proposes doing something to test which of these perspectives will more accurately characterize which direction the influence will run between Minerva and academia:

Video contest: intercultural dialogue

Well, after something of a hiatus I intend to get more active with the posting from now on.

First of all, here is an announcement I just noticed on the Intersections blog about an online video competition with the theme “Intercultural Dialogue”.  Perhaps there are some young visual anthropologists who would like to put in an entry.

Xenoclipse, the group hosting the competition, can be accessed here.

Jovan Maud

Pentagon officially begins project ‘Minerva’

Wired magazine has just reported that the Pentagon has kicked off ‘Minerva’, its project to include social scientists and other academics into the “War on Terror”.  The article also mentions the debate that has been going on in anthropology over the US military’s new-found enthusiasm for culture and social science methods.

Wired also has covered this issue in surprising detail, and there is a good archive of related stories at the bottom of their article.

Thanks to ANU PhD student Bree Blakeman who posted this link on the AAS mailing list, AASNet.