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

博士论文研究：美国军队文化训练的动态

• 批准号: 1823432
• 负责人: Steven Caton
• 金额: $ 2.52万
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-08-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1823432&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Dynamics; Cultural

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.

十多年来，美国陆军集中了巨大的精力和资源来创建一支具有文化意识的军队。这一目标被正式和反复地与当代战争的独特需求联系在一起，特别是中东的作战环境。新的教义被写入。旧的战略被重新制定和修订。新的文化和语言培训计划，在实地和技术手册中强调文化，军事文化研究中心的扩大，以及人力情报，特种作战和其他军事领域被认为是文化主题专家的大量增加，都有助于实现这一愿景。一场高度公开的讨论清楚地表明，文化意识将是当代文化的关键。这个项目，它训练学生的经验，科学的数据收集和分析的方法，探讨文化在军事的业务和机构的目标的作用。此外，该项目还将通过在教科文组织以外广泛传播其研究结果来增进科学认识。贝瑟尼基布勒，在哈佛大学史蒂芬卡顿博士的监督下，将探讨知识的生产和流通，围绕文化的概念内的业务和机构目标的军事。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。与其他社会科学工作的所谓的文化转向，这往往是文件如何围绕文化意识的话语可能有助于重新定义的战争在不那么令人反感的条款，以美国公众，本研究探讨这种话语在一个更开放的和经验为基础的方式。研究人员调查了士兵们学习和实践文化和文化意识的训练场地、团队房间和巡逻路线。在18个月的时间里，我会问三个军事文化主题专家社区：当文化成为一种军事工具时，文化的概念是什么？当士兵们操作这个高层次和不断变化的愿景时，会产生什么关于战争、文化和文化能力的替代知识和/或认识论？最重要的是，关于士兵如何驾驭和塑造军事制度结构，文化意识的研究能告诉我们什么？在追求这一问题的过程中，这项研究测试了人类学的前提，即各种制度都是由代表和体现它们的人类代理人塑造的，而这种方式往往是高层领导或政策制定者未能认识到或预料到的。事实上，正如关于军队的新兴民族志文献所显示的那样，士兵往往是精明的消费者和投入的行动者，他们谈判、抵制和重塑军队规范和信息的各个方面。通过从根本上审视文化知识的军事生产，士兵们在面对这种知识时所承担和产生的相互竞争的认识论承诺，以及通过文化差异进行竞争的伦理学（训练员和士兵都认为这在道德和身体上都是危险的），这项研究旨在为中东研究，军事研究，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。