Anthropology of Military and Environment

Abstract

Although the relationship between war and environmental resources was a concern for classical anthropology, the literature on anthropology of war in recent decades has rarely treated the environment as a main topic of inquiry. In recent years, however, there has been a growing interest in the relationship between military activities and the environment both in academia as well as by activists. On the one hand, defense experts now consider climate change as a security concern that contributes to regional conflicts. On the other, environmental protection has emerged as one of the key arguments in opposing wars and military facilities. In this article, I explore how this trend can be studied anthropologically.

The environment has always been a matter of concern for military strategists. Military campaigns often carry invading armies to unfamiliar terrains and unaccustomed climes, bringing them into contact with unknown disease agents. During the Cold War, however, concerns about the boomerang effects of the ever-growing destructive powers of weaponry(especially nuclear)on friendly forces and nations brought such environmental concerns to a new level. During the Vietnam War, the worldwide admonition against the use of chemical defoliants(commonly known as “Agent Orange”)gave rise to the notion of “ecocide”(or ecological-genocide), which sought to extend the protection of civilian life under international humanitarian law to nature. Such an international law framework now provides the means to file grievances for suffering caused by past and contemporary military activities based on supposed environmentally-mediated risks and harms.

Anthropologists studying international humanitarian law and human rights have typically focused on how such legal concepts are applied in practice. Drawing on the Foucaultian notion of subjectivity and governmentality, they have explored how the discourse of rights offers “idioms of distress,” while producing “victims” and bringing them together with an assemblage of advocates, scientists, lawyers and various institutions. Justice movements that draw on international sanctions against the wartime destruction of the environment also reconfigure victims’ subjectivity and reorder their relation to the environment, suffused with the remnants of a tragic past.

Landscapes and bodies scarred by past atrocities also serve as the depositories of memories, in which the traumatic past dwells like a poison that contaminates local residents unbeknownst to them. Such memory-places can be verbalized through recollections or turned into symbolic resources by local communities in the form of memorials or museums. Such sites of memories are often communally shared, just as acts of remembrance often presume and produce communities. But because such “commons of tragedy” also contaminate those communities with stigmas and risks, claims and disclaimers for such sites may reveal subtle negotiations and the aesthetics of remembrance.

In sum, the anthropology of military environment brings together concerns about the political and aesthetic implications of bringing the environment and contaminated bodies onto the center stage of international peace and justice movements. However, anthropology can also contribute by doing what it is best at: writing stories of how military-related environmental destruction leads to human suffering.