Military and civilian organizations in the past have attempted to understand culture and the cultural environment of conflict zones through anthropology. While there is a small and growing number of studies examining the use of anthropology for counterinsurgency, no studies have compared the Anglo-Saxon ABCA Armies' approaches to understanding cultural factors for counterinsurgency and civil-military operations.Crisis of Cultural Intelligence: The Anthropology of civil-military Operations thus represents a timely investigation into a number of issues regarding the past and present relationship between militarized anthropology, settler colonialism, and Indigenous militancy and the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which has internationalized the claim of encapsulated nations for equal rights. Covering issues such as the use of militarized anthropology in the Vietnam War and the controversial Human Terrain System (HTS) program used in Afghanistan, this book addresses the need for constructive and informed discussions about the nature and function of cultural data collection and analysis for counterinsurgency, peace-building, and conflict prevention operations.Crisis of Cultural Intelligence: The Anthropology of civil-military Operations is particularly important today, as cultural values and heritage continue to inform civil-military interventions of intrastate armed conflict amongst the people. Following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this book will provide some insights into how militaries will now need to look ahead and consider the types of conflicts they may become involved in.

In almost every military intervention in its history, the US has made cultural mistakes that hindered attainment of its policy goals. From the strategic bombing of Vietnam to the accidental burning of the Koran in Afghanistan, it has blundered around with little consideration of local cultural beliefs and for the long-term effects on the host nation's society. Cultural anthropology--the so-called "handmaiden of colonialism"--has historically served as an intellectual bridge between Western powers and local nationals. What light can it shed on the intersection of the US military and foreign societies today? This book tells the story of anthropologists who worked directly for the military, such as Ursula Graham Bower, the only woman to hold a British combat command during WWII. Each faced challenges including the negative outcomes of exporting Western political models and errors of perception. Ranging from the British colonial era in Africa to the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Military Anthropology illustrates the conceptual, cultural and practical barriers encountered by military organisations operating in societies vastly different from their own.

This book seeks to chart and evaluate the impact of social research on the military itself. By "impact", the authors in this volume simply mean that which has a marked effect or influence on changing military policy, practices, knowledge, skills, behaviour, or living conditions. The book comprises a series of reflective contributions from scholars who have conducted research on the military as external scholars with no formal ties to the armed forces, as "native" researchers formally linked to them, as well as various kinds of contracted social scientists enabled by the military to carry out their investigations. The authors were asked to make the question of the impact of social scientific research on the armed forces an object of study in itself and to situate their reflections in terms of wider analytical questions. As a result, the chapters can be divided, broadly speaking, into two types of orientation: some are centered on theoretical and analytical issues, while others focus on the researchers’ lived experiences. This book will be of interest to students of military studies, sociology, organisational studies, psychology and political science.

In 1950, when he commissioned the first edition of The Armed Forces Officer, Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall told its author, S.L.A. Marshall, that "American military officers, of whatever service, should share common ground ethically and morally." In this new edition, the authors methodically explore that common ground, reflecting on the basics of the Profession of Arms, and the officer's special place and distinctive obligations within that profession and especially to the Constitution.

"This textbook is designed to help Marines link concepts of culture to the realities of planning and executing military operations around the world." -- p. 2.

The authors aim to assist the U.S. Army in understanding "influence operations," capabilities that may allow the United States to effectively influence the attitudes and behavior of particular foreign audiences while minimizing or avoiding combat. The book identifies approaches, methodologies, and tools that may be useful in planning, executing, and assessing influence operations.

Documents a study whose goals were to develop an understanding of commanders' information requirements for cultural and other "soft" factors in order to improve the effectiveness of combined arms operations, and to develop practical ways for commanders to integrate information and influence operations activities into combined arms planning/assessment in order to increase the usefulness to ground commanders of such operations.

Today we hear much talk of crisis and comparisons are often made with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but there is a crucial difference that sets our current malaise apart from the 1930s: today we no longer trust in the capacity of the state to resolve the crisis and to chart a new way forward. In our increasingly globalized world, states have been stripped of much of their power to shape the course of events. Many of our problems are globally produced but the volume of power at the disposal of individual nation-states is simply not sufficient to cope with the problems they face. This divorce between power and politics produces a new kind of paralysis. It undermines the political agency that is needed to tackle the crisis and it saps citizens’ belief that governments can deliver on their promises. The impotence of governments goes hand in hand with the growing cynicism and distrust of citizens. Hence the current crisis is at once a crisis of agency, a crisis of representative democracy and a crisis of the sovereignty of the state. In this book the world-renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and fellow traveller Carlo Bordoni explore the social and political dimensions of the current crisis. While this crisis has been greatly exacerbated by the turmoil following the financial crisis of 2007-8, Bauman and Bordoni argue that the crisis facing Western societies is rooted in a much more profound series of transformations that stretch back further in time and are producing long-lasting effects. This highly original analysis of our current predicament by two of the world’s leading social thinkers will be of interest to a wide readership.