Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Dynamics of Cultural Training in the U.S. Military

十多年来，美国军队将巨大的精力和资源集中在创建一支具有文化意识的军队上。这一目标被正式和反复地与当代战争的独特要求联系在一起，特别是与中东作战环境联系在一起。新的教义被写了下来。对旧战略进行了重塑和修订。新的文化和语言培训计划，战地和技术手册对文化的重视，军事文化研究中心的扩大，以及被视为文化主题专家的人类情报、特种作战和其他军事领域的大量增加，这些都有助于在组织上实现这一愿景。一个高度公开的讨论清楚地表明，文化意识将是当代当兵的关键。该项目对学生进行经验、科学的数据收集和分析方法的培训，探索文化在军事行动和体制上的反对意见中的作用。此外，该项目将通过在学术界之外广泛传播其研究结果来增进科学理解。在哈佛大学Steven Caton博士的指导下，Bathany Kibler将在军事行动和机构目标的范围内，围绕文化概念探索知识的生产和传播。自2003年以来，对文化和文化意识的重视塑造了数十万美国士兵的生活和经历。与其他关于所谓的文化转向的社会科学工作不同，这些工作倾向于记录围绕文化意识的话语可能如何用不那么令美国公众反感的术语来重新构建战争，而这项研究以一种更开放、更有经验的方式审视了这一话语。研究人员调查了士兵自己学习和实践文化和文化意识的训练场地、队室和巡逻路线。在18个月的时间里，跨越三个军事文化主题专家社区，我将问：当文化成为一种军事工具时，什么文化概念被动员起来？当士兵操作这一高水平和不断变化的愿景时，关于战争、文化和文化能力的替代知识和/或认识论产生了什么？最重要的是，对文化意识的研究可以告诉我们关于士兵如何驾驭和塑造军事体制结构的什么信息？在追问这一问题的过程中，这项研究测试了人类学的假设，即所有类型的机构都是由代表和体现它们的人类代理人塑造的，其方式往往是高层领导层或政策制定者未能认识到或预料到的。事实上，正如关于军队的新出现的民族志文献所显示的那样，士兵通常是精明的消费者和投入的演员，他们谈判、抵制和重塑军队的规范和信息的各个方面。通过自下而上地观察军事生产的文化知识，士兵在面对这些知识时带来和产生的相互竞争的认识论承诺，以及士兵在文化差异中作战的伦理(训练员和士兵都将其视为道德和身体上的危险)，该研究旨在为当前中东研究、军事研究和伦理人类学的对话做出贡献。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

For over a decade, the U.S. Army focused enormous energies and resources on creating a culturally-aware military. This objective was officially and repeatedly linked to the unique demands of contemporary warfare, generally, and the Middle Eastern operational environment, specifically. New doctrine was written. Old strategies were recast and revised. New cultural and language training programs, the emphasis on culture in field and technical manuals, the expansion of military cultural research centers, and a massive increase in human intelligence, special operations, and other military fields deemed to be cultural subject matter experts all helped realize this vision organizationally. A highly-public discourse made it clear that cultural awareness would be key to contemporary soldiering. This project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, explores the role of culture in the operational and institutional objections of the military. In addition, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings outside academe. Bethany Kibler, under the supervision of Dr. Steven Caton of Harvard University will explore the production and circulation of knowledge around the concept of culture within the operational and institutional objectives of the military. Since 2003, the emphasis on culture and cultural awareness has shaped the lives and experiences of hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers. In contrast to other social scientific work on the so-called cultural turn, which has tended to document how the discourse around cultural awareness may have served to reframe the war in less objectionable terms to the American public, this research examines this discourse in a more open-ended and empirically grounded way. The researcher investigates the training sites, team rooms, and patrol routes where culture and cultural awareness are learned and put into practice by soldiers themselves. Over 18 months and across three communities of military cultural subject matter experts I will ask: What notion of culture is mobilized when culture becomes a military tool? What alternative knowledges and/or epistemologies about war, culture, and cultural competence are produced as soldiers operationalize this high-level and ever-changing vision? Most importantly, what can a study of cultural awareness tell us about how soldiers navigate and shape military institutional structures? In pursuing this line of questioning, this research tests the anthropological premise that institutions of all kinds are shaped by the human agents that represent and embody them, often in ways that high-level leadership or policy-makers fail to recognize or anticipate. Indeed, as the nascent ethnographic literature on the military shows, soldiers are often savvy consumers and invested actors who negotiate, resist, and recast aspects of the military's norms and messaging. By looking at the military production of cultural knowledge from the ground up, the competing epistemological commitments soldiers bring to bear and generate in confronting that knowledge, and the ethics of soldiering through cultural difference (cast as both morally and physically dangerous by trainers and soldiers alike), the research aims to contribute to current conversations in Middle Eastern studies, military studies, and the anthropology of ethics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.