The Human Terrain System Controversy: Anthropology and the Iraq War

Following the rise of an insurgency in Iraq, a struggling U.S. military eventually turned to counterinsurgency. In doing so, it focused on cultural awareness as one of the tools necessary for soldiers and marines to achieve their mission more effectively. To develop such cultural awareness, the military sought the insight and expertise of anthropologists, unwittingly lighting a spark that set the whole discipline ablaze and triggered the field’s most volatile controversy since the 1970s. While many anthropologists believed that they had moved beyond their previous—and what most of them considered questionable—association with the national security establishment, issues that had been put to rest since the end of the Vietnam War suddenly resurfaced, more contentious than ever, revealing a deep academic-military gap.