The Army's Take on Culture

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anthropologies

The Armys Take on Culture

David Price

American negotiators should plan first to

engage in small-talk. Subjects such as poli-

tics, race, religion, and gender issues

should be avoided. These topics seldom

help to build relationships between

strangers. Instead, American negotiators

should try discussing the foreign countryshistory, cultural heritage, traditions, beauti-

ful countryside, contribution to the arts,

economic successes, and popular sports.

. . . Negotiators must be prepared to discuss

typical American traditions, sports, and

cultural heritage; however, they must be

careful not to go overboard with talk about

America. It may come across as pompous

and overbearing (U.S. Army 2008: 423).

The U.S. Armys recently leaked SpecialForces Advisor Guidenotes that, as the

world becomes increasingly more accessi-

ble, [Special Operations] are becoming

more dependent on the ability of the special

advisor to demonstrate an understanding of

the rest of the world (218). To solve this

dilemma, the Army has developed a how-to

manual that instructs its personnel on how

to successfully operate in foreign environ-

ments.

The Guidesinformation is ostensibly de-signed to help Special Forces personnel

overcome intercultural issues so that they

may more easily achieve mission objectives.

Most of the Guidecontains the type of com-

mon-sense advice that might be condensedin a paragraph or two in a Frommers travel

guide. Military personnel are warned that

the whole world isnt just like the United

States, and if they dont alter their approach

to other cultures, they will have problems.

The Guide discusses issues ranging from

cross-cultural negotiations to counterinsur-

gency. Its primary purpose is to instruct per-

sonnel how to best interact with other cul-

tures as advisors, occupiers, or visitors. At

times this surreal foray into cultural under-standing reads like Emily Posts Etiquette of

Counterinsurgency. Rather than providing

army personnel with fresh new insights,

however, the Guideexemplifies how the

U.S. military seeks and uses specific anthro-

pological data and a narrow view of culture

to reaffirm rather than enhance institutional

knowledge.

The Guides view of culture resurrects

what was state of the art psychological an-

thropology in the 1950s and 1960s. It relieson notions of culture and personality ar-

eas that have not been a tool in anthropo-

logical research for decades. These anti-

quated views simplify broad spectrums of

David Price The Armys Take on Culture 57

Military personnel are warned

that the whole world isnt

just like the United States.

AnthroNow_2-1_AnthroNow 3/8/10 10:15 AM Page 57


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cultural traits using metaphors. The models

created by culture and personality theorists

were widely rejected by anthropologists in

the 1960s because their renderings of com-plex cultural phenomena glossed over vital

complexities with stereotypes. This military

predilection for the antique is not acciden-

tal. Discarded notions of culture fit the mili-

tarys aim to interpret and control environ-

ments where they operate. These crude

cultural characterizations likewise fit the

militarys desire to access ethnographic data

through standardized categories of uniform

cultural databases.

The Guide reduces this rest of theworld into seven cultural regions consist-

ing of: North America and Europe (includ-

ing Australia and New Zealand), Southwest

Asia and North Africa, South and Central

America (including Mexico), Sub-Saharan

Africa, Pacific Rim (excluding the Ameri-

cas), Russia and the Independent Republics,

Oceania (the Pacific islands) (217).

The Guidedraws heavily on the Values

Orientation Model created by anthropolo-

gist Florence Kluckhohn and social psychol-ogist Fred Strodtbeck to present cartoonish

representations of regional cultural stereo-

types. The Values Orientation Model was

developed at Harvards Laboratory of Social

Relations during the 1950s based on the

premise that all cultures have a central

core of meaningbasic values. These corevalues are measured using a series of stan-

dardized questions, with the goal of under-

standing the root values of a given culture

(Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck 1961:2). The

model maintains that large cultural regions

are dominated by values that can be charted

on a simple scale expressing tendencies re-

lated to five cultural elements, each of

which has three possible descriptors. The el-

ements and their descriptors are as follows:

1. human nature(evil, mixed, good).

2. relationships of people to nature(e.g.,

subjugation-to-nature, harmony-with-

nature, or mastery-over-nature).

3. temporal focus(past, present, or future

orientation).

4. human activities(being, becoming,

doing).

5. social relations between men(hier-

archical, collateral, individual).

Using the Values Orientation Models

rubrics, a specific culture might have a col-

lective outlook that conceived of human na-

ture as either good, evil, or mixed, and so

on. The combination of the three possible

descriptors for each of the five cultural ele-

ments was claimed to produce concise de-

scriptors of culture groups (Kluckhohn Cen-

ter 1995).

This model is one among numerous ef-

forts by anthropologists to characterize ordescribe identifiable personality traits of en-

anthropology NOW Volume 2 Number 1 April 201058

The Guide draws heavily on the

Values Orientation Model . . . to

present cartoonish representations

of regional cultural stereotypes.



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tire cultures. In the early twentieth century

(1934), Ruth Benedicts book Patterns of

Culturepoetically used Nietzsches descrip-

tion of Apollonian and Dionysian to il-lustrate the power of enculturation. Bene-

dict described individuals raised in

Apollonian cultures (e.g., Zuni) as having

subdued and restrained personality types,

while those raised in Dionysian cultures

(e.g., Kwakiutl) exhibited cultural values of

excess and disruption. She believed that a

culture, like an individual, is a more or less

consistent pattern of thought and action

(1934, 46). During the Second World War,

anthropologists influenced by Benedictstheories conducted national character stud-

ies which reduced the complexities of other

nations into simplified and often pseudo-

psychological profiles. These profiles were

intended to help U.S. forces understand

their enemies. In the Cold War era, Mar-

garet Mead produced a RAND report de-

scribing what she believed to be uniform

features of the Soviet national character

(Mead 1951).

Most anthropologists came to reject ef-forts to identify broad culture and personal-

ity types for several reasons. First, when

generalizing diverse societies as unitary

types, anthropologists ignored more behav-

iors and beliefs than they explained. Sec-

ond, although the models provide statistical

assessments of normative cultural values or

behaviors, they ignore the significant varia-

tion among individuals in any society. Per-

sonality is not staticjust as individuals

have broad ranges of responses to situa-tions, so do cultures. Few anthropologists

today would be comfortable with the gener-

alizations that are the basis of Kluckhohns

work.

Because Kluckhohns simplistic modelhas been rejected by most anthropologists,

it might be surprising to find it so promi-

nently guiding the ethos of the Special

Forces Guide. Yet the mechanistic concep-

tion of culture dovetails nicely with existing

military world views. It makes sense that a

regimented military culture that seeks engi-

neered solutions would be attracted to a

rank-order principles model. When the

military wants to embrace something as po-

tentially soft as anthropology, it is oftendrawn to fantasies of hard science. The mili-

tary likes instruments that are quantifiable,

and science-like, to collect standardized

data that can be statistically analyzed and

scaled in relatively sophisticated ways.

These trappings of science, with complex

graphs, data tables, equations, and multidi-

mensional models, make it seem as though

values orientation does something more

than express stereotypes. Quantitative data,

however, is merely camouflage for elabo-rately delineated stereotypes.

The Guide downplays the problems of

Kluckhohn and Strodtbecks generalizations

with a disclaimer: its summaries represent

sweeping generalizations about very large

regions. They are deliberate simplifications,

intended only to capture some of the basic

cultural differences and similarities among

cultural regions (219). Yet the illustration

that accompanies this disclaimer belies it. It

states that North Americans, Europeans andAustralians all share a belief that human na-




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ture that is basically good and change-

able with a sense of time that is future-

oriented with social relationships that are

strongly individualistic. We wont discuss

here how Americas commitment to future-

oriented outlooks relates to its blind com-mitment to living on credit beyond income

production. Nor will we consider how its

basically good human nature might be

reconciled with accounts of American tor-

ture. The following page states that Central

and South American cultures believe that

human nature is unchangeable and is a

mixture of good and evil with authoritar-

ian social relationships. The sub-Saharan

African summary declares that this vast and

diverse region is governed by human naturethat has a mixture of good and evil, with

more evil than good and a sense of time

that is past-oriented with authoritarian

social relations.

While these summaries are mindless in

their simplicity, it is a mindlessness of a spe-

cific sort: It confirms institutional misunder-

standings about culture by reinforcing

stereotypes about vast regions of diversity.

In this sense, the Guideis a relic of the mili-

tarys worldview as it instructs us about thecontours of its institutional imagination. The

Guidecodifies and affirms prevailing under-

standings about values that the military al-

ready believes to govern actors around the

globe. The stereotypes in the Guideare se-lected not because they educate, but be-

cause they reaffirm what the military al-

ready knows. It allows the military to frame

the others of the world as imprisoned by

the exotic belief systems summarized in the

Guide.

In the Guides section on negotiations

and relationship building, the essential-

ized representations of entire regions are

used to suggest how the stereotypical per-

sonality traits dominating each region canbe used to maximize the American advan-

tage.

For example: This advice would be useful

only to the extent that those reading it were

truly culturally insensitive; although I would

question the wisdom of recommending that

representatives of U.S. armed forces discuss

the foreign countrys history given the

likelihood that the U.S. presence in a given

nation is part of a long history of foreign oc-

cupation, neocolonial extraction of wealth,or subversion of democratic self-rule.

Today the military seeks these absurd re-

ductions of culture and personality as part

of a template they hope will allow them to

quickly shift their theater of operations ef-

fectively and with little preparation. Their

ideal world might be something like The

Matrix: Special Forces would be able to

download some sort of culture-patch, fill-

ing them with specific data on mores, man-

ners, and cultural context for a given theaterof operations. These desires can be seen in


The stereotypes in the Guide are

selected not because they educate

but because they reaffirm what the

military already knows.



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such documents as the leaked Human Ter-

rain Systems Handbook, which describes

plans to produce human-relations data thatcan be accessed by handheld computers in

the field (see Gonzales 2009, Price 2008b,

Stanton 2008). That cultural knowledge is

not simple and wont lead to engineered

culture change in ways the military might

hope does not prevent opportunistic anthro-

pologists from selling dreams of cultural un-

derstanding and manipulation.

Some argue that the military needs good

anthropologists to improve its understand-

ing of other cultures.1 But this view misun-derstands the militarys intentions. The mili-

tary adopts inadequate culture models be-

cause they comfortably echo the militarys

own worldview. The Guideis just the latestinstallment in a history of failures to get mil-

itary bureaucrats to challenge their own as-

sumptions and adopt anthropologically in-

formed perspectives (Gordon 1987, Price

2008a). Since the Second World War, we

see that the military tends to ignore inde-

pendent academic research in favor of

racially essentialized just-so stories like

Kluckhohns Values Orientation Model.

Given this tendency, Kluckhohns model is

exactly the sort of theoretical orientationthat we should expect the military to select.


Culture AnalysisSouth America and Central America (including Mexico)Special Forces Advisor Guide, Figure 2-2 (TC-

31-73).



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Even when the U.S. Department of De-

fense (DOD) tries to fund independent aca-

demic research, it selects ridiculous pseudo-

scientific projects. The DOD-sponsored

Minerva Initiative directs nearly two milliondollars to psychologist David Matsumotos

efforts to identify potentially violent individ-

uals by scrutinizing their facial expressions.

Anthropologists know that Matsumotos ef-

forts to study video and transcripts from fig-

ures such as Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler,

Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hus-

sein, and Ted Kaczynski, among many oth-

ers in a effort to find identifiable faces of

evil is a high-priced fools errand (Bohan

2009). But this is exactly the sort of neo-phrenological science that the military

continually seeks, despite the groans from

academics who know that at best such ef-

forts will quietly fail, and at worst, will be

weaponized to harass minority populations.

The military appears bound to reproduce its

own blindness even as it flails to reach out-

side its institutional borders for new ideas.

The military recognizes its shortcomings in

anthropological understandings of culture,

but its own limitations, including predilec-tions to support neocolonial missions, hin-

der its ability to incorporate rigorous anthro-

pological analyses.

Notes

1. There are other serious problems with the

Guides scholarship. Like other military hand-

books, the Guidecommandeers the work of

unacknowledged scholars. Sections describing

basic descriptions of culture and enculturation

processes are only slightly modified liftings of

text appearing on the Websites of Washington

State University and the Consortium, the

Womens Colleges site, and an online site selling

prewritten college papers to cheating students.

For example, compare Guidesections 2-20, 2-21

and 2-22 with the following: http://www.wsu.

edu/gened/ lea rn-modules / top_cul ture /

behaviors/learned-behaviors-intro.html. See also

http://cwcinterculturalcomm.wikispaces.com/

M1T03?responseToken=9b3c4b1c1a505e97bacb

98b346c67fac. This is only slightly modified

from the text appearing at WSU, CWC, and a pa-

per mills website http://www.collegeresearch.us/

show_essay/4604.html.

References

Bohan, Suzanne. 2009. Research Wins Grant to

Study How Violence Can Be Seen in Expressions.

Oakland Tribune2/22/09. http://findarticles.com/

p/art ic les/mi_qn4176/ is_20090222/ai_n

31384292/.

Burnett, Steven F. 2006. Modeling Macro-Cog-

nitive Influence on Information Sharing between

Members of a Joint Team. PhD diss., Naval Post-graduate School, Monterey, CA.


The military appears bound

to reproduce its own blindness

even as it flails to reach outside

its institutional borders

for new ideas.



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Gonzlez, Roberto J. 2009. Springing a Leak.

Anthropology Today, 25 (1): 2728.

Gordon, Robert. 1987. Anthropology andApartheid. Cultural Survival Quarterly11 (4):

5860.

Human Terrain System. 2008. Human Terrain

Team Handbook. Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Sept.

2008.

Kluckhohn Center. 1995. Users Manual for the

Value Orientation Method. Bellingham, WA:

Kluckhohn Center for the Study of Values.

Kluckhohn, F. R., and F. L. Strodtbeck. 1961.Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston, IL:

Row, Peterson.

Mead, Margaret. 1951. Soviet Attitudes toward

Authority. New York: RAND/McGraw-Hill.

Price, David H. 2008a. Anthropological Intelli-

gence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

. 2008b. The Leaky Ship of Human Ter-

rain Systems. CounterPunch. December 12,

2008. http://www.counterpunch.org/price1212

2008.html.

Stanton, John. 2008. US Army Human TerrainSystem in Disarray. Online JournalAugust 15,

2008. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/

article_3624.shtml.

U.S. Army. 2008. TC-3173. Special Forces Advi-

sor Guide. Headquarters, Department of the

Army. July 2008. http://www.wikileaks.org/

wiki/US_Special_Forces_Advisor_Guide%2C_2_

July_2008.

David Price is professor of anthropology at St.

Martins University. His research uses the Free-

dom of Information Act, archives, and interviews

to document historical interactions between an-

thropologists and intelligence agencies. He is the

author of Threatening Anthropology (Duke,

2004), and Anthropological Intelligence: The De-

ployment and Neglect of American Anthropol-

ogy during the Second World War (Duke, April

2008).



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The Army's Take on Culture