Description
Book SynopsisThe contributors to this provocative collection scrutinize the relations between anthropology and contemporary global war, contending that modern high-tech warfare is analogous to rituals of magic and sorcery, and examining the U.S. military's exploitation of ethnographic research.
Trade Review"
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 *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 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
