The longue durée of the Human Terrain: Politics,cultural knowledge and the technical fix |
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| Authors: | Benjamin D Hopkins |
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| Institution: | Historian of modern South Asia, specializing in Afghanistan and British rule of the Indian subcontinent. He has written extensively and co‐authored Fragments of the Afghan frontier with anthropologist Magnus Marsden. His current book project looks at the global replication of a system of frontier governmentality in the late 19th century. |
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| Abstract: | The recent end of the Human Terrain System run by the US Army has brought to a close one of the most recent insidious challenges to the field of anthropology. But while the anthropological elements of the programme have been well documented, and contested, its historical roots have not. The HTS and cultural knowledge apparatus of the American defence establishment draw deeply upon the wells of British scholar administrators of the nineteenth century. Of particular importance, especially in regard to Afghanistan, is Mountstuart Elphinstone who published the foundational text about the country, An account of the Kingdom of Kabul, 200 years ago. But unlike the HTS and similar programmes run by other Western governments which treat culture as a kind of technical aspect of governance, Elphinstone appreciated the importance ‐ and legitimacy ‐ of local politics. |
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