Interpreting the “Human Terrain” of Afghanistan with Enlightenment Philosophy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12758232 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Benjamin Walter (0000-0002-5606-5247, The University of Queensland, corresponding author), Ben Walter |
| Year | 2016 |
| Pages | ekw009-ekw009 |
| Publication date | 2016-12-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Studies Perspectives (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1528-3577 • E-ISSN: 1528-3585 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/isp/ekw009 |
| OpenAlex | W2562029575 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
In this paper I advance the proposition that Western policymakers’ perceptions and understandings of the conflict in Afghanistan are heavily influenced by certain political ideas emerging from seventeenth-century Enlightenment philosophy. This is particularly evident with counterinsurgency practitioners’ usage of social science disciplines to produce “objective” information about the local societies with which they are engaged. However, Enlightenment-inspired principles constrict practitioners’ perceptions of politics and political conflicts. These shortcomings are illustrated in both the form and content of policymakers’ efforts to gain “human intelligence” about Afghanistan’s social composition, and in the re-emergence of “human terrain” discourse. This blinkered viewpoint has left counterinsurgency practitioners unable to understand the United States’ own role in fueling Afghanistan’s conflictual dynamics
Cartography · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Geography · Perception · Political science · Politics · Proposition · Social science · Sociology · Terrain · Military History and Strategy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · War, Ethics, and Justification · Law · Philosophy
Gender Matters in Global Politics
Doomed to Fail
Modern Social Imaginaries
The ban on opium production across Nangarhar
On the Critique of the Subject of Development
Building Democracy in Afghanistan
A programme of global pacification
Security, Sovereignty, and the Challenge of World Politics
Aporias of Security
Polis, Cosmopolis, Politics
Innovation or Inertia
Elites and Decolonization in the Twentieth Century
The U.S. Military and Human Geography
Geography and the Military
Going ‘tribal
Weaponizing Maps
Locke's State of Nature
The Strange Case of Ethnography and International Relations
The Uses of America in Locke's Second Treatise of Government
The Rise of the Information State
Two Faces of Intelligence Failure
Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration
Human terrain
Ethics, Politics and Non-state Warfare
Towards mercenary anthropology? The new US Army counterinsurgency manualFM 3-24and the military-anthropology complex
The longue durée of the Human Terrain
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |