In a range of deployments since the early 1990s—to Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and now Iraq and Afghanistan—the U.S. military has been tasked with making peace as well as waging war. From the transformation of conventional war-fighting to counter-insurgency and stability operations, the military has been coming to terms with the importance of culture across a wide spectrum of social relationships. Since 2003, "cultural sensitivity" has become a key component of training for troops deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, having identified a “culture gap” in U.S. military capability, high-ranking military and congressional leaders have begun to advocate new training and educational programs to promote understanding of the "cultural terrain” navigated by the military.
All this raises new questions for social scientists concerned with the use (and potential abuse) of the concept of "culture" by the U.S. military. In 2004, the Politics, Culture and Identity Program launched a project with the Global Security Program, which set out to investigate the ethical, practical, and technological issues raised by the military's quest for greater cultural awareness.
In collaboration with the Pell Center for International Studies at Salve Regina University, a workshop was held in December 2004, titled "Prepared for Peace?: The Use and Abuse of 'Culture' in Military Simulations, Training, and Education," which brought together social scientists and military personnel as well as U.S. Senator Jack Reed (RI) who opened the event just after returning from a fact-finding trip to Iraq. The workshop sought to draw lessons from participants' experiences in diverse cultural milieus, especially in the Balkans and Iraq, concentrating on training, education, and the use of simulations in operational environments.
A second workshop, titled “The Production of Cultural Knowledge in the United States Military” is scheduled for April 28-29, 2006. This workshop will convene military and civilian experts to discuss from research perspectives as well as personal experience the theoretical, practical and ethical issues involved in the production, consumption, and circulation of ‘cultural knowledge.’ The aim of the workshop is to produce edited outputs as well as to establish a network for future peer collaboration and consultation.
Overall, the workshops series is dedicated to advancing through multiple media a critical, pluralist, and empirically-informed dialogue on the ways in which the concept of culture is and has been ‘operationalized’ by the military in the post-Cold War period.
In addition to these workshops, Professors Keith Brown, James Der Derian, and Catherine Lutz, are spearheading collaborative research projects in three distinct but related areas.
Keith Brown is tracing the development of US military interest in culture since the 1990s, when all the services faced squarely the new challenges posed by operations other than conventional war.
Catherine Lutz is working on the development of cultural awareness training in UN peacekeeping operations.
In conjunction with the Global Media Project and Udris Productions, James Der Derian has produced a documentary film, Human Terrain, on how the US military deals with culture as a critical variable in the complex and asymmetrical conflicts of the 21st century.