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Distributed for Prickly Paradigm Press

The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual

With Contributions by Catherine Besteman, Andrew Bickford, Greg Feldman, Roberto J. González, Hugh Gusterson, Kanhong Lin, Catherine Lutz, David Price, and David Vine

Distributed for Prickly Paradigm Press

The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual

With Contributions by Catherine Besteman, Andrew Bickford, Greg Feldman, Roberto J. González, Hugh Gusterson, Kanhong Lin, Catherine Lutz, David Price, and David Vine

At a moment when the U.S. military decided it needed cultural expertise as much as smart bombs to prevail in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual offered a blueprint for mobilizing anthropologists for war. The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual critiques that strategy and offers a blueprint for resistance. Written by the founders of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, the Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual explores the ethical and intellectual conflicts of the Pentagon’s Human Terrain System; argues that there are flaws in the Counterinsurgency Field Manual (ranging from plagiarism to a misunderstanding of anthropology); probes the increasing militarization of academic knowledge since World War II; identifies the next frontiers for the Pentagon’s culture warriors; and suggests strategies for resisting the deformation and exploitation of anthropological knowledge by the military. This is compulsory reading for anyone concerned that the human sciences are losing their way in an age of empire.


140 pages | 4 1/2 x 7 | © 2009

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology


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Table of Contents

Preface
   Marshall Sahlins
 
Introduction: War, Culture, and Counterinsurgency
   Roberto González, Hugh Gusterson, David Price
 
Part I:  Counter-histories of Militarism
   1.  The Military Normal
        Catherine Lutz
 
   2.  Militarizing Knowledge
        Hugh Gusterson
 
Part II:  Countering the Counterinsurgency Manual
 
   3.  Faking Scholarship
        David Price
 
   4.  Radical or Reactionary?
        Greg Feldman
 
Part III:  Countering Counterinsurgency
 
   5.  Embedded
        Roberto González
 
   6.  Counter AFRICOM
        Catherine Besteman
 
Part IV:  Anthropological Implications
 
   7.  Anthropology and HUMINT
        Andrew Bickford
 
   8.  About Face!
        Kanhong Lin
 
Part V:  Alternatives
 
   9.  Proposals for a Humanpolitik
        David Vine

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