Considering anthropology and small wars

ABSTRACT

Almost every war since the origins of the discipline at the beginning of the 19^th century has involved anthropology and anthropologists. In some cases, anthropologists participated directly as uniformed combatants. Following the philosopher George Lucas, one might call this ‘anthropology for the military,’ having the purpose of directly providing expert knowledge with the goal of improving operations and strategy. In some cases this scholarship is undertaken, anthropologists have also studied State militaries, which following George Lucas might be considered ‘anthropology of the military.’ Sometimes this scholarship is undertaken with the objective of providing the military with information about its own internal systems and processes in order to improve its performance. At other times, the objective is to study the military as a human group to identify and describe its culture and social processes. Both ‘anthropology for the military’ and ‘anthropology of the military’ tend to have a practical, applied aspect, whether the goal is improving military effectiveness or influencing national security policy. On the other hand, anthropology as a discipline has also had a long history of studying warfare itself, known as ‘the anthropology of war.’ The papers in this special edition fall into these myriad categories of military anthropology.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropology
• George Lucas
• human terrain system
• Islamic State
• Philippines
• war

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Montgomery McFate

Montgomery McFate is a professor at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Formerly, she was the Senior Social Scientist for the US Army’s Human Terrain System. Dr. McFate received a BA from UC Berkeley, a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University, and a JD from Harvard Law School. She is the editor of Social Science Goes to War (Oxford University Press, 2015) and author of Military Anthropology (Oxford University Press, 2018).