The Ethnography of Things Military : Empathy and Critique in Military Anthropology

Reflecting on the troubled relationship between anthropology and the military, we do so by discussing the underlying epistemological, methodological, and moral claims of the distinction between an anthropology of and an anthropology for the military. Through the term ethnography of things military, we propose to reposition military anthropology as intense engagements with militarisation through empathic immersion in things military. We develop this term through feminist critiques of militarisation and compassion, through discussions of critique and empathy as part of (critical) ethnographic scholarship, and through anthropological debates about the relationality of fieldwork and ethnographer-interlocutor relations. Suggesting that an ethnography of things military relies on empathic engagements with military lifeworlds, we argue that the relationship between empathy and critique in military anthropology should be understood as a continuous collaborative (and not always predictable) process of interrogating military lifeworlds’ frames of reference without necessarily sharing compassion or sympathy for them.Aarhus Universitets Forskningsfond  AUFF-E-2015-FLS-77-HD</p

Whose hearts and whose minds? The curious case of global counter-insurgency

Traditionally regarded as a secondary activity in military thinking and practice, the notion of counter-insurgency (COIN) has undergone a remarkable renaissance. This analysis traces the origins of this renaissance to two distinctive schools: a neo-classical school and a global insurgency school. The global insurgency school critiques neo-classical thought and presents itself as a more sophisticated appreciation of current security problems. An examination of the evolution of these two schools of counter-insurgency reveals how the interplay between them ultimately leaves us with a confused and contradictory understanding of the phenomenon of insurgency and the policies and strategies necessary to combat it