Synopses & Reviews
Militaries around the world are increasingly tasked with complex humanitarian missions that extend beyond their traditional role. Such missions include development, diplomacy, stability, and peacekeeping operations, and often entail long-term engagements with civilian populations in conflict or disaster zones. This edited volume offers a snapshot of both the successes and challenges of the U.S. military's ongoing efforts to enhance its cultural expertise, and provides short and accessible descriptions, with analysis, of the different ways in which this turn to culture has been recently expressed. It provides a landscape of these important but little-understood developments for military colleagues, civilian counterparts from other federal agencies, and non-governmental organizations with whom the U.S. military increasingly collaborates. The book is also intended to orient non-military humanitarian professionals and students to what is currently happening in this rapidly changing environment.
Review
This benchmark volume examines how the U.S. military has upped its attention to local cultures in order to win wars [...] and enhanced its reputation by providing humanitarian relief and protecting heritage. Expert analysts [...] offer sophisticated treatments of overarching issues and specific cases in this concise, excellent, and very timely account. - Richard Kurin, Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, Smithsonian Institution
Synopsis
Featuring chapters from social scientists directly engaged with the process, this volume offers a concise introduction to the U.S. military's effort to account for culture and increase its cultural capacity over the last decade. Contributors to this work consider some of the key challenges, lessons learned, and the limits of such efforts.
About the Author
A sociocultural anthropologist, Robert Albro is a Research Associate Professor in American University's Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. His work addresses intersections of culture with policy in contexts of security, diplomacy, science and technology. He has been a Fulbright scholar and fellow at the Library of Congress's John W. Kluge Center, Carnegie Council, and Smithsonian.
Bill Ivey is an American folklorist. He has been director of the Country Music Foundation, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy. He is the author of three books, including Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Military Cultural Capacity after Afghanistan; Robert Albro and Bill Ivey2.Cautionary Tales from the US Department of Defense's Pursuit of Cultural Expertise; Kerry B. Fosher3.Changing Culture with Culture at the US Naval Academy; Clementine Fujimura4.Cultural Education and Training: the Era of COIN; Rochelle Davis5.Humanitarian-Military Collaboration: Social and Cultural Aspects of Interoperability; Robert A. Rubinstein6.Unsolved Issues of Protection and Recovery of Cultural Heritage in Times of Conflict; Lynn H. Nicholas7.Beyond the 1954 Hague Convention; Patty Gerstenblith8.Introducing Cultural Heritage Management to the US Military; Laurie W. Rush9.A Journalist's Reflections on the Military Cultural Turn; Steve Coll