Human Terrain Teams PDF Download

Author: Christopher J. Lamb
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780988864207
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This study explains the performance of Human Terrain Teams, why the large majority of commanders found them useful, and why collectively they did not ameliorate-much less reverse-growing cross-cultural tensions between U.S. forces and Afghans. It examines the tremendous challenges the Human Terrain Team program faced in starting and rapidly expanding a non-traditional military capability, and why some challenges were met successfully while others were not. First, a historical analysis explains how external forces and management decisions affected team performance. An organizational analysis then explains the variations in team performance by examining the teams with variables substantiated by previous studies of small cross-functional teams. Finally, all available commander observations on Human Terrain Team performance are analyzed to better determine why commanders were satisfied or dissatisfied with their teams. The insights from the three analyses-historical, organizational and commander assessments-are then integrated. The results demonstrate that Human Terrain Teams had to overcome numerous organizational limitations to perform well, but that they were able to meet the expectations of commanders who did not fully appreciate the optimum role the teams could play in an integrated counterinsurgency strategy.

Author: Montgomery McFate
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190216727
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
This volume addresses themes of enduring importance for US national security, such as the role of US forces in 'nation building, ' challenges of interagency coordination, innovation during wartime, and the larger strategic issues of the need for socio-cultural knowledge in American foreign policy. This book gives the reader insight into the growth and development of HTS, the largest single investment ever made by the Department of Defense in applied social science. This book also conveys what the experience of working on a small team in a combat zone was really like, both good and bad

Author: Montgomery McFate
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190934727
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
In almost every military intervention in its history, the US has made cultural mistakes that hindered attainment of its policy goals. From the strategic bombing of Vietnam to the accidental burning of the Koran in Afghanistan, it has blundered around with little consideration of local cultural beliefs and for the long-term effects on the host nation's society. Cultural anthropology--the so-called "handmaiden of colonialism"--has historically served as an intellectual bridge between Western powers and local nationals. What light can it shed on the intersection of the US military and foreign societies today? This book tells the story of anthropologists who worked directly for the military, such as Ursula Graham Bower, the only woman to hold a British combat command during WWII. Each faced challenges including the negative outcomes of exporting Western political models and errors of perception. Ranging from the British colonial era in Africa to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Military Anthropology illustrates the conceptual, cultural and practical barriers encountered by military organisations operating in societies vastly different from their own.

Author: Vanessa M. Gezari
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439177392
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Part of the Pentagon's most daring and controversial attempt since Vietnam to bring social science to the Afghanistan battlefield, three tough-minded American civilians find their humanity tested and their lives forever changed by this little-known mission.

Author: Gavin Weston
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429861206
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book uses controversies as a gateway through which to explore the origins, ethics, key moments, and people in the history of anthropology. It draws on a variety of cases including complicity in "human zoos", Malinowski’s diaries, and the Human Terrain System to explore how anthropological controversies act as a driving force for change, how they offer a window into the history of and research practice in the discipline, and how they might frame wider debates such as those around reflexivity, cultural relativism, and the politics of representation. The volume provokes discussion about research ethics and practice with tangible examples where gray areas are brought into sharp relief. The controversies examined in the book all involve moral or practical ambiguities that offer an opportunity for students to engage with the debate and the dilemmas faced by anthropologists, both in relation to the specific incidents covered and to the problems posed more generally due to the intimate and political implications of ethnographic research.

Author: Roberto J González
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315424681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Militarizing Culture is a rousing critique of the increasing infiltration of military culture into American society by leading cultural commentator. Despite its pervasiveness, González insists that warfare is not an inevitable part of human nature, and charts a path toward the decommissioning of culture.

Author: Joy Rohde
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801469597
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
During the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon launched a controversial counterinsurgency program called the Human Terrain System. The program embedded social scientists within military units to provide commanders with information about the cultures and grievances of local populations. Yet the controversy it inspired was not new. Decades earlier, similar national security concerns brought the Department of Defense and American social scientists together in the search for intellectual weapons that could combat the spread of communism during the Cold War. In Armed with Expertise, Joy Rohde traces the optimistic rise, anguished fall, and surprising rebirth of Cold War–era military-sponsored social research. Seeking expert knowledge that would enable the United States to contain communism, the Pentagon turned to social scientists. Beginning in the 1950s, political scientists, social psychologists, and anthropologists optimistically applied their expertise to military problems, convinced that their work would enhance democracy around the world. As Rohde shows, by the late 1960s, a growing number of scholars and activists condemned Pentagon-funded social scientists as handmaidens of a technocratic warfare state and sought to eliminate military-sponsored research from American intellectual life. But the Pentagon’s social research projects had remarkable institutional momentum and intellectual flexibility. Instead of severing their ties to the military, the Pentagon’s experts relocated to a burgeoning network of private consulting agencies and for-profit research offices. Now shielded from public scrutiny, they continued to influence national security affairs. They also diversified their portfolios to include the study of domestic problems, including urban violence and racial conflict. In examining the controversies over Cold War social science, Rohde reveals the persistent militarization of American political and intellectual life, a phenomenon that continues to raise grave questions about the relationship between expert knowledge and American democracy.

Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309175119
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
This book examines the human factors issues associated with the development, testing, and implementation of helmet-mounted display technology in the 21st Century Land Warrior System. Because the framework of analysis is soldier performance with the system in the full range of environments and missions, the book discusses both the military context and the characteristics of the infantry soldiers who will use the system. The major issues covered include the positive and negative effects of such a display on the local and global situation awareness of the individual soldier, an analysis of the visual and psychomotor factors associated with each design feature, design considerations for auditory displays, and physical sources of stress and the implications of the display for affecting the soldier's workload. The book proposes an innovative approach to research and testing based on a three-stage strategy that begins in the laboratory, moves to controlled field studies, and culminates in operational testing.

Author: Guy Delisle
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 177046574X
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
"From the author of Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea and Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China, is Burma Chronicles, an informative look at a country that uses concealment and isolation as social control. It is drawn with Guy Delisle's minimal line while interspersed with wordless vignettes and moments of his distinctive slapstick humor. Burma Chronicles has been translated from the French by Helge Dascher. Dascher has been translating graphic novels from French and German to English for over twenty years. A contributor to Drawn & Quarterly since the early days, her translations include acclaimed titles such as the Aya series by Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie, Hostage by Guy Delisle, and Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët. With a background in art history and history, she also translates books and exhibitions for museums in North America and Europe. She lives in Montreal."

Author: Robert A. Rubinstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781565495487
Category : Anthropological ethics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The relationship between anthropologists and the United States military has commanded a lot of attention, especially in regard to the controversial Human Terrain System (HTS) that embeds anthropologists in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conversations at professional meetings, in the pages of disciplinary journals and in books have been heated and frequently harshly polemical with some participants branding military anthropologists as war criminals. In this book, a number of anthropologists who have either worked with the US armed forces or who teach at military service academies reflect on what they do and teach in their military anthropologist personae. Through their personal accounts they show that the practice of military anthropology is much more than HTS and that they are more than mere technicians of the state as critics allege. Revealed here are thoughtful and moving essays that deal with issues of ethics, morality and professional decorum. Whether one agrees with these accounts or not, they do show that the linkage of anthropology with the military is complex and multi-faceted and the importance of frank and open exchanges of ideas for dealing with the relationship of military anthropology to the wider discipline. Essential reading for those considering anthropology as a career, those concerned about the relationship of the academy to the military and for those seeking to fathom transformations in our lives following 9/11 and the ongoing war against terror.