Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction: Virtual War and Magical Death / Neil L. Whitehead and Sverker Finnström  1

1. Ethnography, Knowledge, Torture, and Silence / Neil L. Whitehead  26

2. The Role of Culture in Wars Waged by Robots: Connecting Drones, Anthropology, and Human Terrain System's Prehistory / David Price  46

3. Cybernetic Crystal Ball: "Forecasting" Insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan / Roberto J. González  65

4. Full Spectrum: The Military Invasion of Anthropology / R. Brian Ferguson  85

5. Today He Is No More: Magic, Intervention, and Global War in Uganda / Sverker Finnström  111

6. The Hostile Gaze: Night Vision and the Immediation of Nocturnal Combat in Vietnam and Iraq / Antonius C. G. M. Robben  132

7. Virtual Soldiers, Cognitive Laborers / Robertson Allen  152

8. Virtual Wars in the Tribal Zone: Air Strikes, Drones, Civilian Casualties, and Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan and Pakistan / Jeffrey A. Sluka  171

9. Propaganda, Gangs, and Social Cleansing in Guatemala / Victoria Sanford  194

10. The Soundtrack to War / Matthew Sumera  214

11. War at Large: Miner Magic and the Carrion System / Koen Stroeken  234

References  251

Contributors  279

Index  281

Neil L. Whitehead

Sverker Finnström

David Price

Roberto J. González

R. Brian Ferguson

Antonius C.G.M. Robben

Robertson Allen

Jeffrey A. Sluka

Victoria Sanford

Matthew Sumera

Koen Stroeken

“...the book is strongly recommended, not least to those who are tasked with finding out whether ‘smart’ warfare does what it says on the box.” —Paul Richards, The Journal of Military History

“...the book is strongly recommended, not least to those who are tasked with finding out whether ‘smart’ warfare does what it says on the box.” —Paul Richards, The Journal of Military History

"Virtual War and Magical Death is a creative project that is bound to stimulate constructive conversation. It inserts contemporary technologies of warfare, particularly the U.S. Army's Human Terrain System, into sociocultural anthropology's current reflections on its theoretical and methodological practices, as well as the purposes of ethnographic inquiry within and beyond the discipline."—Carol J. Greenhouse, author of The Paradox of Relevance: Ethnography and Citizenship in the United States

"By placing in brackets conventional ways of contrasting modernity and premodernity, the contributors to this groundbreaking collection of essays bring into startling relief the phenomenological commonalities that underlie warfare and witchcraft, militarism and magic, while offering radically new insights into the virtual and ritual dimensions of violence and the 'war on terror.'"—Michael Jackson, author of Life Within Limits: Well-being in a World of Want

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