[FRIAM] Lecture August 1: Lawrence Kuznar - Anthropology of Terrorism: Modeling How Envy, Humiliation and Greed Manifest Violent Conflict in Cross-Cultural Perspective

[Richard Harris]

Hey Steve,

I was wondering. Is there is a chance to record and/or webcast this  
for those of us in the FRIAM diaspora?

Cheers,

Rich


On 16 Jul 2007, at 06:27, Stephen Guerin wrote:

> Lawrence Kuznar
> Chair, Department of Anthropology
> Indiana University/Purdue University
> Fort Wayne, IN
>
> "Anthropology of Terrorism: Modeling How Envy, Humiliation and  
> Greed Manifest
> Violent Conflict in Cross-Cultural Perspective"
>
> TIME: Wednesday, August 1 @ 12:30 p.m.
> LOCATION: Redfish Conference Room, 624 Agua Fria Street, Santa Fe, NM
>
> Lunch will be available for $5 purchase
>
> ABSTRACT:
> The rise of ethnic conflict and global terrorism has produced new  
> threats since
> the end of the Cold War. These threats largely originate in local  
> cultural
> contexts colored by culturally unique practices, beliefs and  
> organizations.
> Strategic analysts and military officials have recognized the  
> distributed,
> culturally based nature of these new threats and have called to add  
> "cultural
> intelligence" and sensitivity to religious, ethnic, and cultural  
> sensibilities
> to their arsenal; they have put out a call to anthropology, but  
> there has been
> frustratingly little progress. A central dilemma researchers and  
> policy makers
> face is how to generate social theory that is general, but that can  
> explain a
> bewildering array of specific cultural manifestations. I present a  
> theory of
> risk taking that holds the promise of explaining the roots of  
> conflict in an
> extremely wide array of cultural contexts. Key to this approach is a
> computational methodology that flexibly identifies key, culture- 
> specific values,
> and measures the degree to which greed or grievance motivates  
> individuals to
> take risks with respect to these values. Applications of this  
> approach have
> included coups in ancient states, political mobilization in  
> democracies,
> revolutions, the rise of nepotistic elites, tribal political  
> dynamics, terrorist
> movements in Palestine, and the internal dynamics among the 911 co- 
> conspirators.
> This method permits modeling of complex social systems, and as  
> such, encounters
> difficult issues for validation, analogous to those encountered  
> when modeling
> complex physical systems.
>
>
> SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY
> Dr. Lawrence A. Kuznar is a professor of anthropology from Indiana  
> University -
> Purdue University, Fort Wayne whose specialties include decision  
> theory,
> theories of conflict and terrorism, computational modeling, and the  
> ecology of
> traditional pastoral societies. He has done field research among  
> Aymara herders
> in southern Peru and Navajo sheepherders and cattle ranchers. He  
> has published
> articles in journals such as American Anthropologist, Current  
> Anthropology,
> Human Ecology, Journal of Quantitative Anthropology, Social Science  
> Computer
> Review, and Journal of Anthropological Research, among others. His  
> book
> publications include Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology (Altamira  
> Press,
> 1996), Awatimarka: The Ethnoarchaeology of an Andean Community  
> (Harcourt Brace,
> 1995), and two edited volumes, Studying Societies and Cultures  
> (Pergamon Press
> 2006) and Ethnoarchaeology in Andean South America (International  
> Monographs in
> Prehistory 2001). His current research focuses on terrorism,  
> computational
> modeling and verification & validation issues in modeling.
>
>
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