Conference: April 23-25, 2009

Reconsidering American Power

A conference organized by the workshop on Science, Technology, Society & the State

Audio from the 2008 conference on Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency

    April 25, 2008 - Day 1

  • Keynote Address

    Bad Weather: On Planetary Crisis
    Joseph Masco, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
    • April 26, 2008 - Day 2

    Session 1
    Categories of Conflict and Coercion: The Blue, the Green, and the Other

  • The Blue-in-Green: Countering Insurgency by Civil-izing Security
    Beatrice Jauregui, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
  • Blue Helmets, Black Masks: Policing and Provisionality in Haiti, 2004-2006
    Greg Beckett, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
  • The Categorization of People as Targets of Violence: A Perspective on the Colombian Armed Conflict
    Paola Castaño, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
  • Small Wars and Counterinsurgency
    James L. Hevia, Director, International Studies, University of Chicago
  • The Moral Economy of War: Galula Fetishism and its Consequences for Pax Americana
    John D. Kelly, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

    • Session 2
    Ethnographic Experiences of American Power in the Age of the "War on Terror"

  • Introduction: Jeremy Walton
    Paranoid Styles of Nationalism After the Cold War: Notes from an Invasion of the Amazon
    Sean T. Mitchell, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
  • Inclement Storms, Hungry Wolves: Consuming the War on Terror in Contemporary Turkey
    Jeremy Walton, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
  • The Cold War Present: The Logic of Defense Time in Southern California
    Mihir Pandya, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

  • Plenary Address

    Soft Power, Hard Power and the Anthropological “Leveraging” of Cultural “Assets”:
    Distilling the Theory, Politics and Ethics of Anthropological Counterinsurgency
    David Price, Department of Anthropology, Saint Martin's University

    • Session 3 (Part 1)
    Destructions and Constructions of Conscience: Counterinsurgency and the Study of Culture

  • Cultural Sensitivity in a Military Occupation: US Military in Iraq
    Rochelle Davis, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University
  • No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy
    Christopher T. Nelson, Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • The Destruction of Conscience and the Winter Soldier
    Kevin Caffrey, Ph.D., University of Chicago
    • April 27, 2008 - Day 3

    Session 3 (Part 2)
    Destructions and Constructions of Conscience: Counterinsurgency and the Study of Culture

  • Introduction: Marshall Sahlins
    Repetition Compulsion?: Counterinsurgency Bravado in Iraq and Vietnam
    Kurt Jacobsen, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago
  • The Cultural Turn in the War on Terror
    Hugh Gusterson, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, George Mason University
  • "Human Terrain" and Indirect Rule: Theoretical, Practical, and Ethical Concerns
    Roberto J. Gonzalez, Department of Anthropology, San Jose State University
  • The 'Bad' Kill or Another Predictable Tragedy in Iraq?
    Jeff Bennett, Department of Anthropology and Religious Studies, University of Missouri, Kansas City
  • The Uses of Anthropology in the Insurgent Age
    Dustin M. Wax, Department of Women's Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas