Study of Culture Increasingly Important to U.S. Military

Anthropologists discuss subject at university seminar

The U.S. military, which now has missions ranging from combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places to humanitarian relief and peacekeeping operations in Asia, Africa and the Balkans, is attaching increasing importance to an institutional awareness of foreign cultures.

A recent seminar on "Cultural Anthropology Knowledge for the U.S. Military," sponsored by the George Washington University's (GWU) Elliott School of International Affairs, considered whether it was appropriate for the military to have an anthropological component, and if so how it should be used.

Anthropology covers a number of subjects, but the study of culture - including language, religion and ethnicity and the social mores that surround them - are the areas of most interest to organizations like the U.S. military that seek to operate successfully in different societies.

"Actually, the anthropological community has a history of working with the U.S. military," said Robert Albro, visiting assistant professor of anthropology and international affairs at GWU.

Whether it was profiling World War II and Cold War-era leaders for the military or studying Vietnamese villagers during the Vietnam War as targets of the Viet Cong insurgency, "the need for cultural awareness - or soft knowledge - by the military existed and is now increasingly sought after," he explained.

Some academics fear the military's search for such expertise is a "weaponizing of culture" that could lead to their co-option and ethical missteps, Albro said. But a wider consensus finds collaboration is appropriate, and "anthropologists and the military are increasingly working together" on important issues like the factors that underlie and motivate sectarian violence and religious extremism.

Albro noted that the military approaches anthropology with the same mission, goal-oriented approach they do targets. The Marine Corps, for example, teaches about religion as "a feature of terrain to be understood and then successfully navigated" like a geographic obstacle.

"This is not to be criticized," Albro told his audience. It is a conceptual way of thinking that might be different from academic anthropology, but it leads to understanding and correct action all the same, according to Albro.

Hundreds of anthropologists now work for various U.S. government agencies, added David Abramson, an anthropologist and analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research who specializes on Central Asia and Islam. In that role, he said, "I look at religion as a social phenomenon" and what could constitute potential political threats by religious extremists.

"There is a strong desire in the government to understand foreign cultures, and so we [anthropologists] have credibility among policymakers," he added.

The U.S. Navy's top policymaker, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Michael Mullen, currently is reviewing a plan to introduce cultural studies into the fleet, said Clementine Fujimura, professor of language and culture studies at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Because the Navy is a "big machine" service with more than 276 warships, it tends to approach culture as a scientific tool, Fujimura said. So the plan is to use computers, the Internet and simulation software to teach cultural awareness on board ship to sailors.

At the Academy, Fujimura said she was pioneering a four-week "total immersion" program for midshipmen (naval cadets) who live with foreign families speaking only their languages. "Direct cultural experience is what is necessary" to truly understand and empathize with different cultures, she told the seminar.

The panelists agreed that humanitarian operations, like the U.S. military's quick reaction in providing relief to the hundreds of thousands of victims of the December 2004 tsunami that struck South Asia, increasingly are becoming a top mission for the Defense Department.

In April the Navy responded to the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Solomon Islands by sending the USNS Stockholm, a large transport ship, to deliver food and other emergency supplies.

In 2006 the U.S. military conducted more than 500 humanitarian projects in more than 90 nations - building schools, digging wells and removing land mines in addition to delivering hundreds of thousands of ration packages to distressed areas.

Cultural awareness experts have a role to play in these operations, said Paulette Otis of the Marine Corp's Center for Operational Learning. She noted that 85 percent of U.S. military missions now are not related to combat but instead are humanitarian operations. As a result, "every Marine officer is now required to have language skills and country-expertise to qualify for promotion," she told the panel.

As an example of what can go wrong when people are not culturally aware, Otis mentioned the Marine/Navy task force that quickly steamed to Sri Lanka after the 2005 tsunami and began to off-load relief supplies to people on the beaches. "What they didn't realize," she said, is that "they were giving the supplies to the Tamil Tigers [a rebel insurgency group] and Sri Lanka's government objected."

Times have changed, said Otis. The military has learned from its mistakes and is busy working on institutionalizing cultural awareness because "If we do not engage smartly with knowledge we cannot complete the mission," whether humanitarian or combat.

Source: U.S. Department of State

judythpiazza@gmail.com