Heads up re: U.S. Human Terrain program

Despite the American Anthropological Association’s condemnation of the Human Terrain program, in which anthropologists have been recruited to assist with counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon wants to expand the program. Congress is currently considering the Pentagon’s request for increased funding for the program.

Please join us in expressing our firm opposition to this abuse of anthropology by agreeing to add your signature to the “Anthropologists’ Statement on the Human Terrain System Program.” Modeled after a well-publicized 2008 statement written by economists to oppose the Bush administration’s first TARP program, this statement aims to clearly and concisely state the factual grounds for our opposition.

We want to collect the signatures of as many professional anthropologists as possible before Congress takes up the issue in a hearing scheduled for as early as February. To add your name to the statement, please email your name, title and affiliation to nohumanterrain@gmail.com. Please forward this appeal widely.

You can access the AAA Commission’s report on the Human Terrain Program (PDF) here.

The Network of Concerned Anthropologists Steering Committee: Catherine Besteman, Andrew Bickford, Greg Feldman, Gustaaf Houtman, Roberto Gonzalez, Hugh Gusterson, Jean Jackson, Kanhong Lin, Catherine Lutz, David Price and David Vine

Image: “Human Terrain Team Anthropologist Alex Metz: A native of the Pacific Northwest, social scientist Alec Metz is part of the Human Terrain Team that advises the ADT on Afghan tribal culture and interactions,” creative commons licensed Flickr content by user wfiupublicradio.

What is World Development all about?

Many people would argue that the journal, World Development, is one of the most pre-eminent publications in the field of development. Knowing that, I decided to search it for articles on Haiti. My search resulted in two articles that actually contain the word Haiti in the title: one on collective action and watershed management published in 1995 and the other on taxation in the coffee economy published in 1993.

In addition to these two Haiti-specific articles, my search produced another 244 articles that include content about Haiti or the Caribbean.

World Development started in 1973. It publishes a volume each year with an issue each month. Each issue contains anywhere between 8-15 articles. Let’s assume an average of 10 articles per issue. That’s 120 articles a year over a period of 36 years for a total of 4320 articles published since the beginning.

And only two have the word Haiti in the title. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere is apparently of almost no interest to “mainstream” development scholars and experts.

Image: “New Mission, Laugon, Haiti,” from Flickr user glasshalffull91, licensed with Creative Commons.

Boomerang aid: giving to get back

According to the World Health Organization, the Asia-Pacific region is one of the highest risk areas for the emergence of new infectious diseases. Factors such as dense rural populations living in close proximity to animals and dense urban housing are found throughout the region. Existing national and regional capacity to prevent or deal with disease outbreaks is uneven, ranging from more adequate systems in Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand to countries with minimal health-care infrastructure such as the Solomon Islands, Micronesia, and Papua New Guinea.

In June 2007, the revised International Health Regulations (IHR) of the World Health Organization became official after a 12-year revision process. The new IHR emphasizes prevention of disease outbreaks and spread rather than reaction. Each member state of the WHO has five years to fulfill the seven key obligations. While richer countries will not face a serious problem in implementation, developing country members will find it difficult if not impossible to meet the obligations by the deadline. They require an advanced health-care infrastructure including well-trained medical professionals and scientists, diagnostic laboratories, surveillance systems, and health care services far beyond their economic means.

In an article in the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Adam Kamradt-Scott, Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, reviews the challenges to the developing countries in the region of meeting the IHR obligations. He then considers the role of Australian aid in helping developing countries. Most recent AusAID funds have supported general development goals such as improving economic infrastructure and local employment with smaller amounts of funding targeted to strengthen health care infrastructure.

Kamradt-Scott finds this pattern regrettable since more emphasis on health care investment would have two “spin-off benefits:” improving the capacity for early identification of disease outbreaks and strategic building on the investments Australia has already made in enhancing pandemic preparedness in the region. Both, in turn, will benefit Australia in protecting the health of its own people.

A final benefit the author mentions, drawn from a AusAID document, is that such aid from Australia to regional LDCs will “bolster, and potentially extend, its existing sphere of influence” and help Australia achieve “other foreign policy objectives such as promoting regional stability and governance reform.” Refreshingly direct, isn’t it.

Cultural anthropologists have defined many categories of gift-giving and exchange including the “free gift” for which there is no thought of a return of any kind at any time. A “free gift” is the logical opposite of theft in which someone takes something from someone else with no intention to ever return it to the owner. In between is reciprocity (which has subcategories such as generalized or balanced) in which two people exchange items of roughly equivalent value over time with no exact date specified for the return. Kula trading in the Trobriand Islands is a classic example of reciprocity. And then there is market exchange in which a seller seeks to make a profit through a sale in which a buyer agrees to transfer a specified payment by a specified date.

Development aid explicitly to expand influence poses a challenge to anthropological categories of giving and exchange. Unlike a pure gift, there is a sense on the part of the giver that a return is expected. Unlike reciprocity as in the kula, identifiably similar goods are not exchanged between roughly equal-status trading partners. Unlike market exchange, there is no sale involved, no buyer and seller. It’s not theft. It’s a gift given with the knowledge that its benefits will come back to the giver. It’s boomerang aid.

I don’t mean to point the finger of blame at Australia alone since many other countries, my own included, direct most of their aid to serve their own political or business interests. Readers: do you know of any recent studies that have compared bilateral aid organizations in terms of how much of their aid is self-interested and how much is more altruistic?

Photo, “long distance”, from Flickr, Creative Commons.

Why they killed: the micro-politics of Rwanda’s genocide

by Barbara Miller

One of the most unusual aspects of Rwanda’s genocide that continues to shock and puzzle, 13 years after the killings, is the high level of civilian participation. Other distinguishing characteristics are the speed of the civilian mobilization, the extensive geographic spread of the killing throughout the country, the velocity of the violence, and the high percentage of the victim group killed.

Dr. Omar McDoom, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Political Science at the London School of Economics, spoke about these issues on September 17 in the Elliott School of International Affairs at the George Washington University. His talk was the first in the 2009-2010 CIGA Seminar Series. CIGA is the Elliott School’s Culture in Global Affairs Research and Policy Program.

McDoom spent a year doing intensive fieldwork in Rwanda including conducting over 300 interviews with two groups of Rwandans: those who had killed (they were in prison at the time of the interviews) and those who were related to people who had been killed. He also uses population census data to estimate the number of victims and GPS data to locate regional patterns of killing.

In his talk, McDoom linked macro and micro levels in explaining why the Rwandan genocide occurred and its distinctive patterns. For example, he ties the unusual strength of the Rwandan state to the speed and extensive of the violence. Rwanda, in contrast to many other post-colonial states, had enduring boundaries and longstanding coherence as a “state.” A strong state can accomplish good things more effectively than a weak state and also bad things more effectively than a weak state.

At the micro-level, McDoom’s interviews reveal that killers cluster in families. That is, if one brother had killed, it was likely that his brother would also kill. GPS data indicate regional patterns. Killings were more frequent in densely populated areas. Those who lived in remote regions were less vulnerable.

McDoom is not a “political ethnographer” in the sense of someone who learns the local language and lives with the local people for a long time doing everyday things with them. While he did spend a substantial period of time in Rwanda, he had to use an interpreter for his interviews with killers and victims. And, of course, he was not in Rwanda during the genocide doing “participant observation.” Nonetheless, it is clear that his research benefits immensely from his interviews with many people who were involved and in recording and analyzing their views. If there were an anthropological award for a non-anthropologist, I would nominate McDoom for consideration.

McDoom’s MA training in International Development Studies at GW and his exposure to anthropology during that time likely had a formative influence on how he defines research questions and goes about finding data to answer them. His PhD from LSE is also in Development Studies. Given his postgraduate credentials (that also include a law degree), I am not quite sure how he recrafted himself to look enough like a political scientist to be hired in the Political Science Department at LSE in a regular faculty line. It is, though, a hopeful sign for the discipline. And a hopeful sign for genocide studies and genocide prevention.

Photo by Anne Wernikoff, from the GW Hatchet.