Gaming Counter insurgency: file in category "strange"

Here is a link (forwarded to the blog by Ricky Garner, the lead instructor of our Summer Survivors program) to an article in Wired about a new videogame developed by University of Texas researchers to train U.S. troops dealing in counter insurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan in "cultural sensitivity."

The Army's Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC)is backing UT researchers to create the game which is a "3D sim with scenarios in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Troops play themselves, and interact with Iraqi and Afghan civilians in replications of local villages."

The project uses cultural data provided by the military and the goal is to enter a village, learn about the social structure, identify who is influential, and then "work with the community."

You can read more about the game itself by following the link, but the game is interesting for thinking about this topic in part because there is a significant controversy over the participation of anthropologists and other academics in military efforts to collect and interpret data about the culture of Afghanistan and Iraq.

This controversy about the academic bent of current counter insurgency efforts will be something we will take a closer look at on this blog later. But it is worthwhile to note that criticism of academics and anthropologists who participate in producing knowledge that is used by the military could be useful to debaters on this topic who are interested in interrogating the relationship of our own academic relationship as debaters to the question of what sustains the knowledge base that makes militarism justifiable.