The Morality of ‘Military Anthropology’

Abstract

This article describes the use of anthropologists ‘embedded’ with military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq to provide onsite knowledge, interpretation, and practical advice regarding local cultures and practices. The specific development of this ‘Human Terrain System’ (HTS) project is distinguished from other, related employment of anthropologists to assist in the writing or revision of military policy and doctrine (as in the U.S. Army's new Counterinsurgency Field Manual), provide pre-deployment education and orientation to military troops in language and regional cultural studies, or even to engage in anthropological field research focused on military services and organizations themselves. All of these distinct activities are customarily grouped under the broad heading of ‘military anthropology,’ a distinct subfield of the discipline that has provoked public controversy, and which poses a number of interesting ethical dilemmas for those engaged in such efforts. This article addresses specific features of the moral challenges associated with each of the several different varieties of military anthropology. The HTS project, in particular, invites analysis from two distinct perspectives: the anthropologists’ own professional code of ethics, governing their responsibilities toward individuals and cultures studied; and features of classical just war theory, governing the role of those (whether combatants or support personnel, such as civilian academics or scientists) who find themselves participating in conflicts which may (or may not) satisfy the basic criteria of moral or legal justification. I focus in particular on the role of ‘embedded’ anthropologists participating in wars of intervention that might not satisfy just war criteria, in order to determine whether or not the various forms of assistance they might render to the intervening military forces would necessarily be proscribed.