Overview

Virtual War and Magical Death is a provocative examination of the relations between anthropology and contemporary global war. Several arguments unite the collected essays, which are based on ethnographic research in varied locations, including Guatemala, Uganda, and Tanzania, as well as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and the United States. Foremost is the contention that modern high-tech warfare-as it is practiced and represented by the military, the media, and civilians-is analogous to rituals of magic and sorcery. Technologies of ""virtual warfare,"" such as high-altitude bombing, remote drone attacks, night-vision goggles, and even music videoes and computer games that simulate battle, reproduce the imaginative worlds and subjective experiences of witchcraft, magic, and assault sorcery long studied by cultural anthropologists. Another significant focus of the collection is the U.S. military's exploitation of ethnographic research, particularly through its controversial Human Terrain Systems (HTS) Program, which embeds anthropologists as cultural experts in military units. Several pieces address the ethical dilemmas that HTS and other counterinsurgency projects pose for anthropologists. Other essays reveal the relatively small scale of those programs in relation to the military's broader use of, and ambitions for, social scientific data. Contributors. Robertson Allen, Brian Ferguson, Sverker Finnstroem, Roberto J. Gonzalez, David H. Price, Antonius Robben, Victoria Sanford, Jeffrey Sluka, Koen Stroeken, Matthew Sumera, Neil L. Whitehead

Full Product Details

Author:   Neil L. Whitehead ,  Sverker Finnström
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.00cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.445kg
ISBN:  

9780822354475

ISBN 10:   0822354470
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   19 April 2013
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Virtual War and Magical Death / Neil L. Whitehead and Sverker Finnström 1 1. Ethnography, Knowledge, Torture, and Silence / Neil L. Whitehead 26 2. The Role of Culture in Wars Waged by Robots: Connecting Drones, Anthropology, and Human Terrain System's Prehistory / David Price 46 3. Cybernetic Crystal Ball: ""Forecasting"" Insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan / Roberto J. González 65 4. Full Spectrum: The Military Invasion of Anthropology / R. Brian Ferguson 85 5. Today He Is No More: Magic, Intervention, and Global War in Uganda / Sverker Finnström 111 6. The Hostile Gaze: Night Vision and the Immediation of Nocturnal Combat in Vietnam and Iraq / Antonius C. G. M. Robben 132 7. Virtual Soldiers, Cognitive Laborers / Robertson Allen 152 8. Virtual Wars in the Tribal Zone: Air Strikes, Drones, Civilian Casualties, and Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan and Pakistan / Jeffrey A. Sluka 171 9. Propaganda, Gangs, and Social Cleansing in Guatemala / Victoria Sanford 194 10. The Soundtrack to War / Matthew Sumera 214 11. War at Large: Miner Magic and the Carrion System / Koen Stroeken 234 References 251 Contributors 279 Index 281"

Reviews

Virtual War and Magical Death is a creative project that is bound to stimulate constructive conversation. It inserts contemporary technologies of warfare, particularly the U.S. Army's Human Terrain System, into sociocultural anthropology's current reflections on its theoretical and methodological practices, as well as the purposes of ethnographic inquiry within and beyond the discipline. -Carol J. Greenhouse, author of The Paradox of Relevance: Ethnography and Citizenship in the United States By placing in brackets conventional ways of contrasting modernity and premodernity, the contributors to this groundbreaking collection of essays bring into startling relief the phenomenological commonalities that underlie warfare and witchcraft, militarism and magic, while offering radically new insights into the virtual and ritual dimensions of violence and the 'war on terror.' -Michael Jackson, author of Life Within Limits: Well-being in a World of Want The book is strongly recommended, not least to those who are tasked with finding out whether 'smart' warfare does what it says on the box. -- Paul Richards Journal of Military History [E]nchanting, ethnographic- and analysis-full... this volume gathers some of anthropology's most knowledgeable war scholars who collectively identify the enormous scope of contemporary virtual war in its multiple meanings and applications. -- Alisse Waterston The Australian Journal of Anthropology The volume elegantly frames early-twenty-fi rst-century militarism as a form of magical thinking. The result is a collection that successfully, and productively, brings into dialogue chapters that cover the origins of the US military's Human Terrain Systems and drone warfare programs with chapters on diamond diggers in rural Tanzania and the expansion of police violence in postwar Guatemala. -- Danny Hoffman Journal of Anthropological Research A powerful critique of the hubristic illusion perpetuated by the military, that the infinite diversity, ambiguity and creativity of the social may be tamed through proper techno-cultural management. -- Malay Firoz Social Anthropology This is a valuable collection... It is a fine tribute to Neil Whitehead, whose insights on why we kill each other will be sorely missed. -- Chris Hables Gray Technology and Culture

By placing in brackets conventional ways of contrasting modernity and pre-modernity, the contributors to this groundbreaking collection of essays bring into startling relief the phenomenological commonalities that underlie warfare and witchcraft, militarism and magic, while offering radically new insights into the virtual and ritual dimensions of violence and the 'war on terror'. - Michael D. Jackson, author of Life Within Limits: Well-Being in a World of Want .

By placing in brackets conventional ways of contrasting modernity and premodernity, the contributors to this groundbreaking collection of essays bring into startling relief the phenomenological commonalities that underlie warfare and witchcraft, militarism and magic, while offering radically new insights into the virtual and ritual dimensions of violence and the 'war on terror.' --Michael Jackson, author of Life Within Limits: Well-being in a World of Want

Author Information

Neil L. Whitehead (1956–2012) was Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His books Dark Shamans: Kanaimà and the Poetics of Violent Death and In Darkness and Secrecy: The Anthropology of Assault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia (coedited with Robin Wright) are both published by Duke University Press. Sverker Finnström is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University. He received the Margaret Mead Award for Living with Bad Surroundings: War, History, and Everyday Moments in Northern Uganda, also published by Duke University Press.

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