Anthropology and the United States Military : Coming of Age in the Twenty-First Century

## Index viii • Contents Preface John P. Hawkins W ith this volume we celebrate a kind of coming of age: that of the anthropology of the U.S. military. Anthropology establishes its data by closely observing daily life in societies around the world and by teasing out the meaning of symbols embedded in this flow of behavior and conversation. In this volume, we begin to see the outlines of distinctive military culture and society through the application of anthropological methods. In a word, we begin to see an authentic anthropology of the military. Every academic discipline or subfield has a history that begins earlier than the first university professional practitioners. For the anthropology of the military, such starting points might include Sun Tzu of China, writing at about 500 B.C. (Phillips 1985), Ardent du Picq of France, writing between 1868 and 1870 (Phillips 1987), or Carl von Clausewitz of Prussia in 1832 (Howard and Paret 1984). These, of course, are theorists of military strategy who came to recognize that success on the battlefield lay not in numbers and weapons, but in organization, orientation, leadership, speed, flexibility, deception, surprise-all matters influenced by culture and cultural difference. Moreover, hundreds of diaries and memoirs record the experiences of soldiers of all ranks, both in war and in peace. From these we can glean hints with which to reconstruct the face of military life in the past. But such works are different from professional, trained, theoretically motivated writings by anthropologist observers. Ralph Linton (1924), the first anthropologist to my knowledge to study the military professionally, wrote "Totemism and the AEF," an analysis of military insignia and group identity formation during World War I. A group of sociologists and anthropologists surveyed the military during World War II, and, after the war, produced the monumental American Soldier studies (Stouffer 1949a,b). Though survey techniques predominated in this work, they used many quotes from less formal open interviews. Today we find only a few book-length ethnographies that examine military units or military communities, whether in peacetime or in combat. Roger W. Little spent over four months observing a front-line unit living out of foxholes and trenches on a ridge in Korea during the heat of combat. Described in detail in his thesis, and abridged in an essay, Little (1955Little ( , 1964) ) insightfully documents the formation of social relationships and unit culture and practice that helped create a sense of camaraderie and security within the horror of the war. In rich detail, Charlotte Wolf (1969) described a community of American military advisors in Turkey. Tiring of repeated survey administration, the psychologist Larry Ingraham (1984), a military research officer at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), employed anthropological participant observation and interviewing to conduct a study of drug use in an American barracks. The methods yielded a rich trove of sociopsychological insight into the processes of alienation among the junior enlisted. Two anthropologists, David H. Marlowe as director and Joel Teitelbaum as participant, collaborated with others to produce the New Manning studies, written up in technical reports distributed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (Marlowe et al. 1985, 1986a,b,c). These reports trace the beneficial impact (and unintended consequences) of COHORT manning, in which soldiers were kept in operational units for as long as possible without rotation, resulting in increased military cohesion and technical proficiency. Pearl Katz, for a brief time also an anthropologist with WRAIR, succeeded in establishing empathy with sergeants and spouses to produce studies of considerable cultural depth (1990). Anna Simons published The Company They Keep (1997), a descriptive study of life within Special Forces units. I recently published Army of Hope, Army of Alienation: Culture and Contradiction in the American Army Communities of Cold War Germany, a study of family, community, and soldiering in the United States Army enclaves of Germany (Hawkins 2001). In this work I detail the tensions among American culture, institutionalized military culture, and the families must manage their lives in the light of both sets of cultural rules within the enclave military communities. The scholars in this volume, a new cohort, likely constitute a large percentage of today's anthropologists of the U.S. military. Their work bears on a number of issues that currently stimulate anthropological thought. First, all but one (Guilleman's analysis of anthrax vaccines) explore current postmodern issues: How is anthropology or how are anthropologists accepted, viewed, engaged with, or manipulated by the people studied, and how do we view ourselves in this endeavor? x • Preface References Cited Cover 1 Anthropology and the United States Military: Coming of Age in the Twenty-first Century 4 Contents 8 Preface 10 Introduction: Subject, Audience, and Voice 16 Chapter 1 Peacekeepers and Politics: Experience and Political Representation Among U.S. Military Officers 30 Chapter 2 Medical Risks and the Volunteer Army 43 Chapter 3 Guardians of the Golden Age: Custodians of U.S. Military Culture 59 Chapter 4 Gender- and Class-Based Role Expectations for Army Spouses 82 Chapter 5 Weight Control and Physical Readiness Among Navy Personnel 108 Chapter 6 The Military Advisor as Warrior-King and Other “Going Native” Temptations 126 Chapter 7 Integrating Diversity and Understanding the Other at the U.S. Naval Academy 147 Conclusion: Anthropology and the U.S. Military 159 About the Contributors 164 Index 166 Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction: Subject, Audience, and Voice....Pages 1-14 Peacekeepers and Politics: Experience and Political Representation Among U.S. Military Officers....Pages 15-27 Medical Risks and the Volunteer Army....Pages 29-44 Guardians of the Golden Age: Custodians of U.S. Military Culture....Pages 45-67 Gender- and Class-Based Role Expectations for Army Spouses....Pages 69-94 Weight Control and Physical Readiness Among Navy Personnel....Pages 95-112 The Military Advisor as Warrior-King and Other “Going Native” Temptations....Pages 113-133 Integrating Diversity and Understanding the Other at the U.S. Naval Academy....Pages 135-146 Conclusion: Anthropology and the U.S. Military....Pages 147-151 Back Matter....Pages 153-162 Peacekeepers And Politics : Experience And Political Representation Among U.s. Military Officers / Robert A. Rubinstein -- Medical Risks And The Volunteer Army / Jeanne Guillemin -- Guardians Of The Golden Age : Custodians Of U.s. Military Culture / Pamela R. Frese -- Gender- And Class-based Role Expectations For Army Spouses/ Margaret C. Harrell -- Weight Control And Physical Readiness Among Navy Personnel / Joshua Linford-steinfeld -- The Military Advisor As Warrior-king And Other Going Native Temptations / Anna Simons -- Integrating Diversity And Understanding The Other At The U.s. Naval Academy / Clementine Fujimura. Edited By Pamela R. Frese And Margaret C. Harrell. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Annotation An edited collection of ethnographic research that seeks to provide visions of and for US military culture from a solid anthropological base. The volume explores several important but relatively unknown cultural variations in the defense community through a variety of lenses. A strong list of contributors highlight important issues such as: anthrax vaccines, the 'Golden Age' culture of the military, gender roles among army spouses, weight control and physical readiness, the military advisor, and the United States Naval Academy This collection of ethnographic research seeks to provide visions of and for US military culture from a solid anthropological base. The volume explores several important but relatively unknown cultural variations in the defense community through a variety of lenses. A strong list of contributors highlight important issues such as: anthrax vaccines, the "Golden Age" culture of the military, gender roles among army spouses, weight control and physical readiness, the military advisor, and the United States Naval Academy In May 2001 I received a call from a Marine Corps major that went something like this: Sir, we're interested in having a political anthropologist join us at a seminar later this month and you were recommended to us.