Pinelandia: An Anthropology and Field Poetics of War and EmpireAcross the pine forests and deserts of America, there are mock Middle Eastern villages, mostly hidden from public view. Containing mosques, restaurants, street signs, graffiti in Arabic, and Iraqi role-players, these villages serve as military training sites for cultural literacy and special operations, both seen as crucial to victory in the Global War on Terror. In her gripping and highly original ethnography, anthropologist Nomi Stone explores US military predeployment training exercises and the lifeworlds of the Iraqi role-players employed within the mock villages, as they act out to mourn, bargain, and die like the wartime adversary or ally. Spanning fieldwork across the United States and Jordan, Pinelandia traces the devastating consequences of a military project that seeks to turn human beings into wartime technologies recruited to translate, mediate, and collaborate. Theorizing and enacting a field poetics, this work enlarges the ethnographic project into new cross-disciplinary worlds. Pinelandia is a political phenomenology of American empire and Iraq in the twenty-first century. |
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adversaries affect affiliation Afghanistan alāsah American military American soldiers amidst anthropology Arabic archetypes asked authentic became become colonial complex contractors counterinsurgency cultural trainings Cultural Turn David Petraeus death deployed described Ekram empathy Empire enact ethnographic explained fake Fatima Field Poem former interpreter Fort Irwin Green Berets guerilla guys hijab hired human technology human terrain increasingly individuals inside instances insurgents interlocutors interviewed Iraq Iraq War Iraqi intermediaries Iraqi role-players killed laughter lives logic Meanwhile Middle East Middle Eastern military personnel military’s militia mock villages Mohammad Najla offered Operations particular performance Pineland Pinelandia players poetry political potential precarity rapport regime Robin Sage role role-playing Saddam Saddam Hussein scenario sectarian Shia simulations social space Special Forces tactical tell tion told tool training soldiers trust trying U.S. Army U.S. military U.S. soldiers Unconventional Warfare understand United veil violence war game warzone woods