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Technologies of the allied warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as remote-controlled drones and night vision goggles, allow the user to “virtualize” human targets. This coincides with increased civilian casualties and a perpetuation of the very insecurity these technologies are meant to combat. This concise volume of research and reflections from different regions across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, observes how anthropology operates as a technology of war. It tackles recent theories of humans in society colluding with imperialist claims, including anthropologists who have become involved professionally in warfare through their knowledge of “cultures,” renamed as “human terrain systems.” The chapters link varied yet crucial domains of inquiry: from battlefields technologies, military-driven scientific policy, and economic warfare, to martyrdom cosmology shifts, media coverage of “distant” wars, and the virtualizing techniques and “war porn” soundtracks of the gaming industry. Koen Stroeken is an Associate Professor of Africanist Anthropology at Ghent University. Committed to the value of reflexivity, he published most recently Moral Power: The Magic of Witchcraft (Berghahn Books, 2010), which is based on fieldwork in rural Tanzania.
Technologies of the allied warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, such as remote-controlled drones and night vision goggles, allow the user to “virtualize” human targets. This coincides with increased civilian casualties and a perpetuation of the very insecurity these technologies are meant to combat. This concise volume of research and reflections from different regions across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, observes how anthropology operates as a technology of war. It tackles recent theories of humans in society colluding with imperialist claims, including anthropologists who have become involved professionally in warfare through their knowledge of “cultures,” renamed as “human terrain systems.” The chapters link varied yet crucial domains of inquiry: from battlefields technologies, military-driven scientific policy, and economic warfare, to martyrdom cosmology shifts, media coverage of “distant” wars, and the virtualizing techniques and “war porn” soundtracks of the gaming industry.
The contributers reflect on their ethnographic work at the frontlines and recount not only what they have seen and heard in war zones but also what is being read, studied, analyzed and remembered in such diverse locations as Colombia and Guatemala, Israel and Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Haiti. They reflect on the important issue of "accountability" and offer explanations to discern causes, patterns, and practices of war.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, industrialization and military-technological innovation were beginning to alter drastically the character and conditions of warfare as it had been conducted for centuries. Occurring in the midst of these far-reaching changes, the American Civil War can justly be labeled both the last great preindustrial war and the first major war of the industrial age. Industrial capacity attained new levels of military significance as transportation improved, but in this, as in many other respects, the Civil War was distinctly transitional. Smoothbore artillery still dominated the battlefield, horse-drawn wagons and pack mules still carried the main logistic burden, seamstresses still outnumbered sewing-machine operators. Astride Two Worlds addresses the various causes and consequences of technological change for the course and outcome of the American Civil War.
Originally published in 1994, the late Keith F. Otterbein’s scholarship had followed an overall design since 1962, when he began conducting comparative studies of warfare using both ethnographic and cross-cultural methods. Through a conceptual framework derived from systems theory, he made signal contributions to our understanding of the role of warfare in human social evolution. He formulated a Fraternal Interest Group theory, utilizing it to explain not only feuding and warfare but also rape and capital punishment. Believing that armed combat is learned behaviour, he posed questions about its learning process that had yet to be answered. He acted as a major synthesizer of the growing literature on warfare and led attempts among anthropologists to apply their knowledge of war and peace to current events. This volume will serve both as a useful introduction to the anthropology of war and as a needed compendium of Professor Otterbein’s ideas.
This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet 'new theory of victory' represented a conceptualization which chronologically preceded technological procurement. Israel was the first to utilize the weaponry on the battlefield, but was the last to develop a conceptual framework that acknowledged its revolutionary implications. Utilizing primary sources that had previously been completely inaccessible, and borrowing methods of analysis from political science, history, anthropology, and cognitive psychology, this book suggests a cultural explanation for this puzzling transformation in warfare. The Culture of Military Innovation offers a systematic, thorough, and unique analytical approach that may well be applicable in other perplexing strategic situations. Though framed in the context of specific historical experience, the insights of this book reveal important implications related to conventional, subconventional, and nonconventional security issues. It is therefore an ideal reference work for practitioners, scholars, teachers, and students of security studies.
The war instinct is part of human nature, but the means to fight war depend on technology. Alex Roland traces the co-evolution of technology and warfare from the Stone Age to the age of cyberwar, describing the inventions that changed the direction of warfare throughout history: from fortified walls, the chariot, battleships, and the gunpowder revolution to bombers, rockets, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first century, new technologies continue to push warfare in unexpected directions, while warfare stimulates stunning new technological advances. Yet even now, the newest and best technology cannot guarantee victory. Brimming with dramatic narratives of battles and deep insights into military psychology, this book shows that although military technologies keep changing at great speed, the principles and patterns behind them abide.
Although war has been analyzed from many perspectives, no scholar has satisfactorily explained why the human race fights and how we came to create a degree of military sophistication capable of destroying the entire species. Gabriel addresses these questions in his study of the origins and development of warfare. He looks particularly at the relationship between the evolution of the social institution of war and the development of the military institutions, tactical sciences, and technology required for organized conflict. Beginning with a discussion of the biological and evolutionary history of man, Gabriel investigates the proposition that the human race is genetically predisposed to warlike behavior. He next reviews the archaeological record to test the common assumption that war has existed from the earliest times. He traces the evolution of the social institutions and technology of war in a succession of ancient cultures beginning with the Bronze Age. The development of armies, tactics, logistics, and weapons is examined, together with the psychological and social implications of mankind's choice to use them. The work concludes with a discussion demonstrating how the practice of war in modern times relates to the perpetuation of values and institutional forms created by earlier societies--especially those of classical Greece and Rome. The first study to integrate the findings of cultural anthropology with the concerns of military analysis, this work will be of interest to students and academics in these and related fields.
This book studies the impact of cultural factors on the course of military innovations. One would expect that countries accustomed to similar technologies would undergo analogous changes in their perception of and approach to warfare. However, the intellectual history of the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in Russia, the US, and Israel indicates the opposite. The US developed technology and weaponry for about a decade without reconceptualizing the existing paradigm about the nature of warfare. Soviet 'new theory of victory' represented a conceptualization which chronologically preceded technological procurement. Israel was the first to utilize the weaponry on the battlefield, but was the last to develop a conceptual framework that acknowledged its revolutionary implications. Utilizing primary sources that had previously been completely inaccessible, and borrowing methods of analysis from political science, history, anthropology, and cognitive psychology, this book suggests a cultural explanation for this puzzling transformation in warfare. The Culture of Military Innovation offers a systematic, thorough, and unique analytical approach that may well be applicable in other perplexing strategic situations. Though framed in the context of specific historical experience, the insights of this book reveal important implications related to conventional, subconventional, and nonconventional security issues. It is therefore an ideal reference work for practitioners, scholars, teachers, and students of security studies.
A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare—and why we must resist. War Virtually is the story of how scientists, programmers, and engineers are racing to develop data-driven technologies for fighting virtual wars, both at home and abroad. In this landmark book, Roberto J. González gives us a lucid and gripping account of what lies behind the autonomous weapons, robotic systems, predictive modeling software, advanced surveillance programs, and psyops techniques that are transforming the nature of military conflict. González, a cultural anthropologist, takes a critical approach to the techno-utopian view of these advancements and their dubious promise of a less deadly and more efficient warfare. With clear, accessible prose, this book exposes the high-tech underpinnings of contemporary military operations—and the cultural assumptions they're built on. Chapters cover automated battlefield robotics; social scientists' involvement in experimental defense research; the blurred line between political consulting and propaganda in the internet era; and the military's use of big data to craft new counterinsurgency methods based on predicting conflict. González also lays bare the processes by which the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies have quietly joined forces with Big Tech, raising an alarming prospect: that someday Google, Amazon, and other Silicon Valley firms might merge with some of the world's biggest defense contractors. War Virtually takes an unflinching look at an algorithmic future—where new military technologies threaten democratic governance and human survival.