Critique of David Edwards’ Counterinsurgency as a Cultural System and Post-Modernism

David Edwards’ Counterinsurgency as a Cultural System is a reflection on the Human Terrain System’s effectiveness as an aid to the U.S. military’s overarching goal to reduce civilian casualties during counterinsurgency and counter terrorist campaigns during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The Human Terrain System is a program created by the military in which ethnographers specializing in Afghani and Iraqi culture are employed to educate soldiers on the civilian cultures present in the countries the U.S. is currently engaged.  As one might expect, the program sparked immediate controversy among the anthropological community as to the ethical and moral debate of using anthropology as a tool of war, whether or not it is intentioned to help reduce civilian casualties.

            Contrary to many of the critiques by anthropologists concerning the Human Terrain System, Edwards remains neutral as to his opinion of the program’s ethical practice and instead critiques its effectiveness at the completion of its intended purpose.  After a series of interviews and hands on experience with the program, Edwards argues that anthropological ethnography may simply be incompatible with American military culture.  He does through a series of arguments that are very post-modernist.  This is especially true in his discussion about the use of PowerPoints to present the collected ethnographic material. 

            In a military “brief” the ability to be concise, definite and to the point with one’s objectives, methods, and findings is considered the only way to make a proper report.  Now that ethnography has been incorporated into the military through the Human Terrain System, ethnographic data is expected to be presented in this concise military style.  According to Edwards, “The Brief consists of formal presentations made by various staff officers working under the unit commander.  The verbal component of these presentations is synched to and rhetorically constructed in relation to the PowerPoint slides that are invariably the centerpiece of the performance.” He then goes on to point out, “In the military, it appears that if you can’t say it through PowerPoint then you can’t say it at all.”  However, the post-modernist method of ethnography is incompatible with this style of presentation.

            Post-modernism critiques past ethnographies for their “all knowing” literary style.  It especially focuses on ethnographer’s use of scientific language to describe the subjective cultural phenomena experienced in field work, something that is described as impossible and flawed.  Instead, post-modernist theory suggests that ethnographies acknowledge the fragmentary nature of its observation and present it as a work of fiction.  A post-modernist critique of ethnography also rejects the idea that there is a definite reading of interpretation for observed phenomena and that it is instead essentially self-referential. However this so-called definite reading and scientific presentation of evidence that is deemed impossible within ethnography is exactly what the military brief calls for.  Therefore, the vagueness and indeterminacy associated with ethnographic data comes off very badly and incomplete in the eyes of the military personnel reviewing the work of the anthropologists involved in the Human Terrain System.  It is this type of incompatibility between the military culture and anthropological ethnography that Edwards is referring to when he concludes that these two systems and methods might not be able to work together. 

            While Edwards does not directly refer to post-modernism when discussing the disconnect between the U.S. military and cultural anthropology its influence in this review and the inability of ethnographies to live up to military expectation is very clear.  It is not that the information provided by the anthropologists cannot be useful to military procedures and saving innocent lives, it is the required method in which the information is provided that is the overarching flaw.  Unfortunately, the very nature of post-modernist ethnography limits the ability of anthropologists to adapt their research to military requirements.  This dichotomy and incompatibility hits home when Edwards writes, “…learning how to speak “Army” is more important than learning to speak Dari or Pushtu, and that understanding the ins and outs of military culture are more directly relevant to their (anthropologists’) success than understanding Afghan culture.”  The success of the Human Terrain System is limited by the underlying institutions of post-modernist anthropological work and U.S. military culture.