Dr Oliver Belcher oliver.belcher@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War
Belcher, Oliver
Authors
Abstract
This article analyses a mid-20th century computerized pacification reporting system, the Hamlet Evaluation System (HES), used by the US military to measure hamlet-level security and development trends in the Vietnam War. The significance of the HES was its capacity to translate US Military Advisor observations of Vietnamese hamlet life into a machine-readable format used by US military systems analysts to disclose ‘patterns of life.’ I show how US Military Advisors operated as ‘embodied sensors’ within the HES, producing a distinctive location-based event ontology – a ‘view of below’ – accompanied by rudimentary digital maps in-formation from incoming hamlet-level observation streams. I argue that acts of translating the rich texture of hamlet and village life into an objectified information format constituted a unique form of ‘epistemic violence,’ rooted not so much in the narrative subjection of the ‘Other,’ but in the pure abstraction of life into a digitally stored data trace.
Citation
Belcher, O. (2019). Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War. Security Dialogue, 50(5), 416-436. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010619862447
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Apr 11, 2019 |
Online Publication Date | Aug 5, 2019 |
Publication Date | Oct 1, 2019 |
Deposit Date | Aug 14, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Aug 14, 2019 |
Journal | Security Dialogue |
Print ISSN | 0967-0106 |
Electronic ISSN | 1460-3640 |
Publisher | SAGE Publications |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 50 |
Issue | 5 |
Pages | 416-436 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010619862447 |
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Copyright Statement
Belcher, Oliver (2019). Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War. Security Dialogue 50(5): 416-436. Copyright © 2019 The Author(s). DOI: 10.1177/0967010619862447
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