Anna Simons
Biographic Data
| ID | 3616359 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Anna Simons |
| GIVEN NAMES | Anna |
| FAMILY NAME | Simons |
| SIGNATURE | SIMONS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1914 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
On “Military Anthropology”
17 USC 105 interim-entered record; under review
How Critical Should Critical Thinking Be? Teaching Soldiers in Wartime
In the past decade, Anna Simons has emerged as one of the foremost social scientists studying defense, security, and military matters in the United States. Her 1997 ethnography, The Company They Keep: Life Inside the US In her essay, Simons turns anthropology's concerns inside out by reframing the new culturalism of the post-9/11 era in the context of the military's politics, practices, and epistemology. Anna Simons offers a perspective on educat…
Intellectual Capital: A Cautionary Note
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.55540/ 0031-1723.2911
Non-Western Threats and the Social Sciences
Crooked Lessons from the Indian Wars
One aim of this article is to chide the U.S. military—and Americans overall—for not paying sufficient attention to our historic relations with American Indians. After all, American Indians are the non-Westerners we Americans should know best. A review of American Indian history can shed important light on our current encounters with tribal peoples elsewhere. At the same time, however, great care needs to be taken. Instead of just citing similarit…
Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding
Book Review| October 01 2012 Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding, Afyare Abdi Elmi Anna Simons Anna Simons Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Northeast African Studies (2012) 12 (2): 131–135. https://doi.org/10.2307/41931318 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Perm…
Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding (review)
Reviewed by: Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding Anna Simons (bio) Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding, by Afyare Abdi Elmi London: Pluto Press, 2010; pp. 224. $35.00 paper. Afyare Abdi Elmi is to be commended. He pulls no punches in Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding. Even better, he gives us a book tha…
The misleading problem of failed states: A ‘socio-geography’ of terrorism in the post-9/11 era
Contrary to a commonly held view, significant numbers of international terrorists do not come from failed states. Nor do failed states house many organisations that support terrorism. All states consistently fail some portions of their population. In fact, were we to generalise, it should only be along the following lines: from disenfranchised populations can come foot soldiers, from alienated populations can come terrorists. And these exist in p…
The Military Advisor as Warrior-King and Other “Going Native” Temptations
in Pamela Frese and Margaret Harrell (eds), Anthropology and the United States Military: Coming of Age in the Twenty-first Century, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003
United States special operations forces and the war on terrorism
Small Wars & Insurgencies 14(1), Spring 2003
Women in Combat Units: It's Still a Bad Idea
Among the easiest predictions to make in this first year of the new century is that various interest groups will continue to lobby to open all US combat units to women. At least five seemingly logical arguments can be anticipated: New post-Cold War missions require finesse, not brawn. Twenty-first-century technologies are gender-neutral. An equal opportunity to serve is every American citizen's right. Cohesion does not require that soldiers bond …
The Dynamics of Internal Conflict
April 01 2001 The Dynamics of Internal Conflict Anna Simons, Anna Simons Associate Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, and author most recently of “War: Back to the Future”, Annual Review of Anthropology. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar John Mueller John Mueller Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University. S…
The Acri Command and Control Challenge
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/110.55540/0031-1723.2000
Women can never “belong” in combat
Purity is danger: An argument for divisible identities
This article explores two very different, yet related, sets of reasons to help explain the absence of widespread identity‐based communal violence in the United States. First, Americans can afford to treat identity situationally, and only recently have they begun to bump up against the outer limits of who it can be agreed the state should protect. Secondly, the government has proved increasingly vigilant in its response to separatist groups that p…
Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery
Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery. Catherine Besteman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. ix. 284 pp., maps, photographs, glossary, notes, bibliography, index
Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War
Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War. S. P. Reyna and R. E. Downs. eds. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1999. 282 pp
Making Sense of Ethnic Cleansing
To try to make sense of ethnic cleansing, this article examines certain patterns in the relationships between borders drawn on the ground and markers internalized by people. The effects of increasing globalization are considered significant but, in the end, not as important as the withering away of ideology in a world which also decries conquest. Granted little room in which to maneuver, those who seek to protect or augment their property and sta…
War: Back to the Future
War is a fraught subject. Those who study it often fight about it. This chapter examines the current state of the study of war, described and analyzed by anthropologists and nonanthropologists who employ concepts like culture in writing about the future of war. Warfare seems bound to keep us revisiting certain aspects of the past. At the same time, nothing induces change quite like conflict. Does war have a future? The preponderance of evidence-b…
Thicker than Water? Kin, Religion, and Conflict in the Balkans
Listen then, to what you do not know. The three rivers of the ancient world of the dead--the Acheron, the Phlegethon, and the Cocytus--today belong to the underworlds of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; their flow divides the three hells--Gehenna, Hades, and the icy hell of the Mohammedans--beneath the onetime Khazar lands. And there, at the junction of these three borders, are confronted the three worlds of the dead: Satan's fiery state with th…
How Ambiguity Results in Excellence: The Role of Hierarchy and Reputation in U.S. Army Special Forces
This article explores how group reputations get made and unmade within the strictures of an elite military organization. For instance, within teams there are both formal and informal pecking orders. Above teams there exist layers of command and control. Need to know and information flows are critical to the construction of A-team identities both among teams and for commanders' consumption. Yet, the view from within teams and of teams is never the…
Two Perspectives on War and Its Beginnings War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Lawrence Keeley Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War. Robert L. O'Connell
The Company They Keep: Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces
Memorialized on screen and idealized in the media, the Green Berets are the most famous and least understood unit in the American military. Who are these elite soldiers? How do they train and what are their operations really like? An anthropologist and the wife of a Special Forces member, Anna Simons was allowed access to a single company for over a year, following the group on routines, special missions, and even their off-duty time. She explore…
Democratisation and Ethnic Conflict: The Kin Connection
This article posits that individuation is a determining factor in making democratisation efforts workable or, where it is absent, ethnic conflict likely. Somalia serves as a case study. Since the Somali state has not been able to secure individuals' social welfare or their futures, citizens use genealogies, which chart trustworthiness, to construct social welfare safety‐nets. There is also a moral dimension to genealogy. This is quite different f…
Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone
Introductions Introduction Mogadishu: The Hardship Post First Encounters * Histories Involvements I Involvements II Into the 1980s * Chronology (19881989) The Coming of July 14 July 14 and Its Aftermath * Pastoral Ideology And Urban Realities The Bush. Pastoral Principles Ties Moralities Tribalism * Family To Family. Marriage I Marriage II Divorce and Family Spread Meanings in Mobility * Conclusions A Rigorous Ending Epilogue: No Ending
War: Back to the Future
War is a fraught subject. Those who study it often fight about it. This chapter examines the current state of the study of war, described and analyzed by anthropologists and nonanthropologists who employ concepts like culture in writing about the future of war. Warfare seems bound to keep us revisiting certain aspects of the past. At the same time, nothing induces change quite like conflict. Does war have a future? The preponderance of evidence-b…
The Company They Keep: Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces
Memorialized on screen and idealized in the media, the Green Berets are the most famous and least understood unit in the American military. Who are these elite soldiers? How do they train and what are their operations really like? An anthropologist and the wife of a Special Forces member, Anna Simons was allowed access to a single company for over a year, following the group on routines, special missions, and even their off-duty time. She explore…
Democratisation and Ethnic Conflict: The Kin Connection
This article posits that individuation is a determining factor in making democratisation efforts workable or, where it is absent, ethnic conflict likely. Somalia serves as a case study. Since the Somali state has not been able to secure individuals' social welfare or their futures, citizens use genealogies, which chart trustworthiness, to construct social welfare safety‐nets. There is also a moral dimension to genealogy. This is quite different f…
The misleading problem of failed states: A ‘socio-geography’ of terrorism in the post-9/11 era
Contrary to a commonly held view, significant numbers of international terrorists do not come from failed states. Nor do failed states house many organisations that support terrorism. All states consistently fail some portions of their population. In fact, were we to generalise, it should only be along the following lines: from disenfranchised populations can come foot soldiers, from alienated populations can come terrorists. And these exist in p…
Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War
Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War. S. P. Reyna and R. E. Downs. eds. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1999. 282 pp
How Ambiguity Results in Excellence: The Role of Hierarchy and Reputation in U.S. Army Special Forces
This article explores how group reputations get made and unmade within the strictures of an elite military organization. For instance, within teams there are both formal and informal pecking orders. Above teams there exist layers of command and control. Need to know and information flows are critical to the construction of A-team identities both among teams and for commanders' consumption. Yet, the view from within teams and of teams is never the…
Somalia and the Dissolution of the Nation-State 818-824
Anthropologists appear less interested in examining the dissolution of the nation-state than other social scientists. This is curious. Theoretically we may already possess tools for understanding conditions of dissolution. More significantly, we often are inadvertently caught within such situations. The ongoing dissolution of nation-states such as Somalia should thus raise questions about structure, perspective, and the role of anthropologists
Women can never “belong” in combat
Making Sense of Ethnic Cleansing
To try to make sense of ethnic cleansing, this article examines certain patterns in the relationships between borders drawn on the ground and markers internalized by people. The effects of increasing globalization are considered significant but, in the end, not as important as the withering away of ideology in a world which also decries conquest. Granted little room in which to maneuver, those who seek to protect or augment their property and sta…
The Dynamics of Internal Conflict
April 01 2001 The Dynamics of Internal Conflict Anna Simons, Anna Simons Associate Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, and author most recently of “War: Back to the Future”, Annual Review of Anthropology. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar John Mueller John Mueller Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University. S…
Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery
Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery. Catherine Besteman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. ix. 284 pp., maps, photographs, glossary, notes, bibliography, index
Social Forces in American History
Social Forces in American History. By A. M. Simons. (New York: The Maemillan Company, 1913. 325 p. $1.50) Get access William O. Scroggs William O. Scroggs Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 1, Issue 1, June 1914, Page 117, https://doi.org/10.2307/1896950 Published: 01 June 1914
Somalia and the Dissolution of the Nation-State 818-824
Anthropologists appear less interested in examining the dissolution of the nation-state than other social scientists. This is curious. Theoretically we may already possess tools for understanding conditions of dissolution. More significantly, we often are inadvertently caught within such situations. The ongoing dissolution of nation-states such as Somalia should thus raise questions about structure, perspective, and the role of anthropologists
Two Perspectives on War and Its Beginnings War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage. Lawrence Keeley Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War. Robert L. O'Connell
The Company They Keep: Life Inside the U.S. Army Special Forces
Memorialized on screen and idealized in the media, the Green Berets are the most famous and least understood unit in the American military. Who are these elite soldiers? How do they train and what are their operations really like? An anthropologist and the wife of a Special Forces member, Anna Simons was allowed access to a single company for over a year, following the group on routines, special missions, and even their off-duty time. She explore…
Democratisation and Ethnic Conflict: The Kin Connection
This article posits that individuation is a determining factor in making democratisation efforts workable or, where it is absent, ethnic conflict likely. Somalia serves as a case study. Since the Somali state has not been able to secure individuals' social welfare or their futures, citizens use genealogies, which chart trustworthiness, to construct social welfare safety‐nets. There is also a moral dimension to genealogy. This is quite different f…
Networks of Dissolution: Somalia Undone
Introductions Introduction Mogadishu: The Hardship Post First Encounters * Histories Involvements I Involvements II Into the 1980s * Chronology (19881989) The Coming of July 14 July 14 and Its Aftermath * Pastoral Ideology And Urban Realities The Bush. Pastoral Principles Ties Moralities Tribalism * Family To Family. Marriage I Marriage II Divorce and Family Spread Meanings in Mobility * Conclusions A Rigorous Ending Epilogue: No Ending
War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents
War Stories: The Culture of Foreign Correspondents. Mark Pedelty. New York: Routledge, 1995. 254 pp
Thicker than Water? Kin, Religion, and Conflict in the Balkans
Listen then, to what you do not know. The three rivers of the ancient world of the dead--the Acheron, the Phlegethon, and the Cocytus--today belong to the underworlds of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity; their flow divides the three hells--Gehenna, Hades, and the icy hell of the Mohammedans--beneath the onetime Khazar lands. And there, at the junction of these three borders, are confronted the three worlds of the dead: Satan's fiery state with th…
How Ambiguity Results in Excellence: The Role of Hierarchy and Reputation in U.S. Army Special Forces
This article explores how group reputations get made and unmade within the strictures of an elite military organization. For instance, within teams there are both formal and informal pecking orders. Above teams there exist layers of command and control. Need to know and information flows are critical to the construction of A-team identities both among teams and for commanders' consumption. Yet, the view from within teams and of teams is never the…
Making Sense of Ethnic Cleansing
To try to make sense of ethnic cleansing, this article examines certain patterns in the relationships between borders drawn on the ground and markers internalized by people. The effects of increasing globalization are considered significant but, in the end, not as important as the withering away of ideology in a world which also decries conquest. Granted little room in which to maneuver, those who seek to protect or augment their property and sta…
War: Back to the Future
War is a fraught subject. Those who study it often fight about it. This chapter examines the current state of the study of war, described and analyzed by anthropologists and nonanthropologists who employ concepts like culture in writing about the future of war. Warfare seems bound to keep us revisiting certain aspects of the past. At the same time, nothing induces change quite like conflict. Does war have a future? The preponderance of evidence-b…
The Acri Command and Control Challenge
The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/110.55540/0031-1723.2000
Women can never “belong” in combat
Purity is danger: An argument for divisible identities
This article explores two very different, yet related, sets of reasons to help explain the absence of widespread identity‐based communal violence in the United States. First, Americans can afford to treat identity situationally, and only recently have they begun to bump up against the outer limits of who it can be agreed the state should protect. Secondly, the government has proved increasingly vigilant in its response to separatist groups that p…
Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery
Unraveling Somalia: Race, Violence, and the Legacy of Slavery. Catherine Besteman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. ix. 284 pp., maps, photographs, glossary, notes, bibliography, index
Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War
Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War. S. P. Reyna and R. E. Downs. eds. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1999. 282 pp
Women in Combat Units: It's Still a Bad Idea
Among the easiest predictions to make in this first year of the new century is that various interest groups will continue to lobby to open all US combat units to women. At least five seemingly logical arguments can be anticipated: New post-Cold War missions require finesse, not brawn. Twenty-first-century technologies are gender-neutral. An equal opportunity to serve is every American citizen's right. Cohesion does not require that soldiers bond …
The Dynamics of Internal Conflict
April 01 2001 The Dynamics of Internal Conflict Anna Simons, Anna Simons Associate Professor of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, and author most recently of “War: Back to the Future”, Annual Review of Anthropology. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar John Mueller John Mueller Woody Hayes Chair of National Security Studies, Mershon Center, and Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University. S…
The Military Advisor as Warrior-King and Other “Going Native” Temptations
in Pamela Frese and Margaret Harrell (eds), Anthropology and the United States Military: Coming of Age in the Twenty-first Century, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003
United States special operations forces and the war on terrorism
Small Wars & Insurgencies 14(1), Spring 2003
The misleading problem of failed states: A ‘socio-geography’ of terrorism in the post-9/11 era
Contrary to a commonly held view, significant numbers of international terrorists do not come from failed states. Nor do failed states house many organisations that support terrorism. All states consistently fail some portions of their population. In fact, were we to generalise, it should only be along the following lines: from disenfranchised populations can come foot soldiers, from alienated populations can come terrorists. And these exist in p…
Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding
Book Review| October 01 2012 Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding, Afyare Abdi Elmi Anna Simons Anna Simons Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Northeast African Studies (2012) 12 (2): 131–135. https://doi.org/10.2307/41931318 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Perm…
Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding (review)
Reviewed by: Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding Anna Simons (bio) Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding, by Afyare Abdi Elmi London: Pluto Press, 2010; pp. 224. $35.00 paper. Afyare Abdi Elmi is to be commended. He pulls no punches in Understanding the Somali Conflagration: Identity, Political Islam and Peacebuilding. Even better, he gives us a book tha…
Crooked Lessons from the Indian Wars
One aim of this article is to chide the U.S. military—and Americans overall—for not paying sufficient attention to our historic relations with American Indians. After all, American Indians are the non-Westerners we Americans should know best. A review of American Indian history can shed important light on our current encounters with tribal peoples elsewhere. At the same time, however, great care needs to be taken. Instead of just citing similarit…
Non-Western Threats and the Social Sciences
Political science (23 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Law (16 works) · History (13 works) · Law (12 works) · History (11 works) · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture (10 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works)