Virtual War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginaries for Terror and Killing

Abstract

War and Magical Death: Technologies and Imaginaries for Terror and Killing Edited by Neil L. Whitehead and Sverker Finnstrom [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Army readers will find that the late Neil L. Whitehead and Sverker Finnstrom, anthropologists from the University of Wisconsin and Uppsala University respectively, have edited an intriguing--yet at times vexing--book on virtual war. The work offers a masterful ethnographic perspective on virtual war, stemming from a synthesis of the techno-modern with the magico-primitive, while providing a critical analysis of the Army's Human Terrain System (HTS). To be fair, the work draws upon scholarly arguments derived from lessons learned from anthropology's colonial and neo-colonial legacies and is not meant to be overbearingly antagonistic in its approach. Still, for at least some of the chapter contributors, it is readily apparent that the HTS is indeed viewed as the equivalent of a present-day invasion of anthropology. Additionally, the angst generated within that academic discipline concerning what is legitimate and ethical scholarship permeates the work, especially in regard to some perspectives taken on embedded HTS anthropologists, and high profile scholars, such as former program spokesperson Dr. Montgomery McFate. The origins of the work can be traced back to a panel of the American Anthropological Association meeting in Philadelphia in 2009 on Virtual War and Magical Death and took three years to complete as a document. While the work is written primarily for other academics, specifically anthropologists, it may provide far more utility for defense and security analysts and senior military officers than the contributing scholars intended. The book is organized into eleven chapters with acknowledgments and an introduction in the front section and ample references, a listing of contributors, and an index in the back section. Along with the two editors, who have also written chapters, nine contributing authors exist. These authors all appear to hold Ph.D.'s in anthropology or closely allied fields, except for one doctoral candidate, and while mostly representative of United States scholarship, also hail from universities in Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. The various chapters in the work focus on topics related to ethical issues surrounding the use of ethnography in support of the state (Neil Whitehead); the Human Terrain System and its interrelationship to remote and drone warfare (David Price); human social cultural behavioral modeling (Roberto Gonzalez); the military invasion of anthropology (R. Brian Ferguson); the Lord's Resistance Army and witchcraft (Sverker Finnstrom); night vision technology as a hostile perceptual filter--much like a dark magical artifact--that allows US soldiers to dominate in nocturnal combat (Antonius Robben); the use of cognitive laborers as virtual soldiers/ mercenaries (Robertson Allen); virtual counterinsurgency (e.g., drone strikes) in the tribal zones of the Af-Pak theater (Jeffery Sluka); impunity as the generator of an alternative dimension in which chaos and death are the norm in Guatemala (Victoria Sanford); the shamanic-like use of music in war (Matthew Sumera); and a conclusion that argues the global political-economic order is a carrion system dependent on the growth of profit (Koen Stroeken). …

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