Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War

Belcher, Oliver

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
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1290454