In an interesting follow-up to an earlier post here, “Social Sciences and the Art of War“, Wired has published an article on the trouble these ‘embedded’ teams of social scientists are having, and the criticism that they are facing.

Two things in the article stand out. First, the embedded teams don’t appear very professional. When I read the description of how one scientists was burned alive, I can’t help but wonder whether the victim might have missed or misinterpreted some important signals. Quite frankly, I’ve never in my life seen a ‘foreigner’ blend in with local culture in less than a few years time, if at all, and these scientist are throw into the war zone with minimal training. It’s almost as if their commanders want them to conform to the ‘bumbling scientist in peril’ stereotype. Imagesh of Indiana Jonesh’ oblivioush, lishping father come to mind…

The other interesting issue concerns the fact that many of these scientists wear army clothing. It reminded me of a discussion I had with a friend who described the many problems aid organizations are facing because of this. The line between aid organizations and the military is blurring. Because the military is often now involved with work that was traditionally that of aid organizations, those hostile to the military are increasingly becoming hostile toward these aid organizations. I can only imagine the frustration that anthropologists or other social scientists in Afghanistan are having with these ‘embedded’ scientists. The confusion won’t make them any safer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.