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Ivory Tower? Or Glass?

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11.06.2007 at 02:58am

Regular readers here are aware that

href=”http://homepages.stmartin.edu/fac_staff/dprice/”>Dr. David Price

is an ardent critic of the “pilfered scholarship” behind

href=”http://usacac.army.mil/cac/repository/materials/coin-fm3-24.pdf”>FM

3-24, COIN.  There are many nuances to that discourse, and I don’t

doubt that I am about to bludgeon them into one dimension.  But a core issue Dr.

Price consistently raises is that of attribution.  Or more accurately, non-attribution. 

Non-attribution seems to be the big proton-like nucleus issue around which the electron

issues of plagiarism, shoddiness, informed consent, ethics, dim-wittedness,

speed-to-press, and pesky utility to the warfighter seem to spiral in infinite relativistic

velocity.

The COIN authors’ counter to the

href=”http://www.counterpunch.org/price10302007.html”>Counterpunch

article, et al, has fairly consistently been that it is a manual,

not an academic work.  Not so fast….

Small Wars Journal has found a

href=”http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/coin-draft-excerpt.pdf”>working

draft of part of the manual.  And darn if it doesn’t look like some

legitimate academic rigor went into the whole thing from the beginning.

SWJED professed

href=”http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?p=30063#post30063″>here

of his experience with editors when working on the Urban GIRH.  Many others know

the drill.  It appears that more of the same may have occurred here with FM

3-24 — an editorial decision to go light on the footnotes, not an absence of intellectual

rigor, and certainly not an intent to pilfer.  At least not in this stage of

the development effort.  I’ll also observe, at risk of not only drinking the

Kool-Aid but of spilling some on my shirt, that I am surprised, in a heartening

way, that there has been a bare minimum of finger-pointing from the authors at

the editors.  They knew the scholarship was solid.  They knew the almighty footnotes

were in there.  And they knew that to tens of thousands of operators, it didn’t

matter.  So they didn’t pass the buck. They’ve stood behind the strength of their

work and accepted the editorial decisions, despite whatever individual

opinions they may have.

All along this has been a clash of cultures — that of the

ivory tower, with that of the operator or manual / doctrine writer.  Dr. Price

has a point, within his domain.  Ironically for an anthropologist, he fails to

see and appreciate the limits of the application of his domain.  Even more

unexpectedly, his own published scholarship now seems to fall short of his own standards.  It is one thing to criticize FM 3-24’s

failure to live up to a set of ivory tower academic standards that may or may

not apply, U of Chicago reprint notwithstanding.  It is quite another to throw

stones from a glass house.

Witness, first case in point, Dr. Price’s quote from his first

Counterpoint article.  He quotes section 3-20, Society as:

sociologists define society as a

population living in the same geographic area that shares a culture and a

common identity and whose members are subject to the same political authority

In

fact, section 3-20 in the published version is:

A society can be defined as a

population whose members are subject to the same political authority,

occupy a common territory, have a common culture,and share a sense of identity. A society is not easily created or destroyed, but it is possible to do so

through genocide or war.

Second, in the same article, he states "I have such high respect for Jon Nagl’s

academic work and sense of propriety…”  Perhaps not so much that he

will spell John’s name correctly, or recognize service-specific norms for rank

abbreviation (e.g. LTC vs. Lt. Col. or LtCol).  Nit-picky, sure!    But given

the name-spelling spat as one element of his strident critiques published

href=”http://smallwarsjournal.com/mag-back/”>here in SWJ Magazine

volume 8 on another piece, we no longer know where the bar lies.  Certainly

below our radar screen for substance. But if he’s going to make

this his crusade, at least he could start criticizing the published version

instead of some exposure draft, and living by his little sword.

So onward we go.  FM 3-24 isn’t perfect.  And we don’t

have HTTs down to a science yet.  But the broken eggs are the price to pay for

the bit of cake we have and desperately need.  Let’s get on with the icing, a

better cake, and applying anthropology and other disciplines in practice in our

cultural steps and mis-steps.  Not with trying to put humpty dumpty’s footnotes

back together again.

For the record, Dr. Price was very cordial in offering us

publication of his latest

response.  Given its nature as a direct rebuttal to LTC Nagl, we offered

publication via our blog comments and/or discussion board thread on the topic,

with appropriate editorial highlighting and links to set it out from the fray. 

Dr. Price opted instead to pursue other venues.

– Bill

——–

See also:

Dr. David Price’s original

href=”http://www.counterpunch.org/price10302007.html”>Counterpunch article.

href=”http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/11/countercounter-punch/”>Army

Response to CounterpunchSmall

Wars Journal

Desperate

People with Limited Skills – LTC Nagl, Small Wars Journal

A response to the response(s) — David Price’s

href=”http://www.counterpunch.com/price11032007.html”>reply in Counterpunch.

Published 3 Nov.

—–

3-24 Chapter… Now With Footnotes! – Abu Muqawama

Disregard Academic Critiques of the New COIN Manual – Thomas P.M. Barnett

COIN Manual Plagiarized? – Outside the Beltway

Anthropology Ass’n Blasts Army’s “Human Terrain” – Danger Room (Wired)

href=”http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2007/10/controversy-fm-3-24-plagarism-scandal.html”>Controversy:

FM 3-24 Plagiarism "Scandal" — Abu Muqawama

href=”http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-on-3-24-and-vanguard-of-revolution.html”>More

on 3-24 and the Vanguard of Revolution — Abu Muqawama

href=”http://abumuqawama.blogspot.com/2007/11/fm-3-24-scandal-nagl-responds.html”>FM

3-24 “Scandal”: Nagl Responds — Abu Muqawama

href=”http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/price-describes.html”>Counterinsurgency

Author Hits Back on "Plagiarism" – Danger Room (Wired)

A

Surge in Plagiarism?Harpers

Magazine

How to Make a Molehill out of a Mountain – Open Anthropology

href=”http://savageminds.org/2007/11/02/nagle-responds-to-price/”>Nagl

Responds to Price – Savage Minds

href=”http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4184″>Anthropologists

and a True Culture War – Discuss at Small Wars Council

href=”http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=4218″>“Desperate

People with Limited Skills” – Discuss at Small Wars Council

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